Almost halfway through the season, and it’s already a new school year.  Suki na Ko isn’t skipping much of anything in terms of adapting – this event happened at about 30 chapters into the manga (in fact, the seat-changing chapter was an extra).  Most of the manga takes place during the third year of middle school, which is where the best middle school romcoms seem to spend most of their time (Konobi, of the eternal chuuni, being a notable exception).  With the manga announced to end next spring at about the 165 chapter mark and the anime set to use less than half of that, it’d be interesting to see how a second and final season (the anime is doing much better with Japanese audiencess than Western) might look.

Last week’s episode (Valentines/White Day) was about as substantial a plot mover as this series gets this early on (that changes later).  This week is back in slice of life mode, despite once more diving into some standards of the romcom genre.  First off we have Ai excited to cash in her frequent customer card for a free dessert, only to discover it needs to be postmarked that day.  Naturally it’s one where she’s forgotten her glasses (which happens about once a week on average) so Kaede offers to take her to the post office.  But when she hears him turn down an invite from his buddies to go to the arcade (as close to being a bad boy as he gets) Mie-san feels a rush of guilt over being an imposition on Kaede’s time.

Kaede is actually a serious gamer (it becomes a plot point later on) but it’s not as though he’d ever consider anything Ai asked of him an imposition.   Still, one respects her impulse here, both in terms of not wanting to be a burden and not wanting to appear helpless generally.  Her lie about wearing contacts is transparent but it’s the thought that counts.  The most important part of this exchange is when she lets slip how nice it feels when she “has him to herself”.  As ever with Mie-san is does sort of prompt the question of whether she’s aware of the secondary implications of such a statement, but I truly don’t think so in this case.

With the start of the new year comes the assembly (they actually have a ceremony at the start of every trimester, which I always think is a bit much).  Both Komura-kun and Ai receive a perfect attendance award (she certainly never begs off because she forgot her glasses), which means a trip on-stage.  Glasses-less Ai has a game face which is easy to misread, though I think Kaede is worrying unnecessarily here.  After that it’s the aforementioned seat change, one of the sacred rituals of the romcom.  Changing years it’s not even a lock to end up in the same class, but that bullet is dodged without any suspense.

For Mie this is all rather straightforward – she just wishes her boy could be next to her.  For Kaede it’s a tussle between his genuine desire that she be okay and his possessiveness.  This is exemplified when it seems like she’s going to be next to Azuma-kun – someone who’s guaranteed to help Ai out, but also the most transparently threatening romantic rival in the class (except he’s not).  Fortunately for Kaede his neighbor in the back row Hizuchi-san asks Ai to switch so she can be closer to the board (ironic), which Ai is fine with given the difficulty in dozing off unnoticed up front).  Once again the key takeaway is one of her seemingly innocent observations – she’d get in trouble if she were “looking back” all year.  Poor Kaede is left to wonder just how much she’s letting on, as usual.