Click.

That was really a lovely episode on so many levels.  One season is not going to get to the best that Suki no Ko has to offer, but I’m glad it will at least start to give audiences a taste of what this series is really about.  It’s so much more than the hook – and as I noted last week, the supposed hook isn’t even the actual hook.  And an episode like this one really starts to peel back the layers and get to the real story underneath.  And it’s a damn good, with considerable charm.

This ep might have been the finest thing I’ve seen from GoHands – ever – and in general, they’ve far exceeded expectations with this adaptation.  One issue though is that Kaede’s inner voice has been too intrusive and too often leaned on for comic effect.  I think that’s for some new viewers that’s masked the truth about the character, which is that he’s actually an incredibly nice boy and a paragon of consideration and responsibility.  That creates its own set of problems – “too nice” is how Ai sees him, and in a sense he is – but it’s who Kaede actually is and I hope now that’s starting to come out.

As to how others see them, it’s a lot more clearly than Ai on a day she forgets her glasses sees.  Their friends know the score – the two of them only have eyes for each other.  When it comes to something like a field trip to a science museum, both Kaede’s bros and Ai’s sisterhood know that the pair of them have to be grouped together.  She’s adamant that she won’t forget her glasses, her grand plan being to put her spare pair in her bag.  Which she does, and needs them when she steps on her main pair running to school (both she and Kaede were so excited they couldn’t sleep).  The problem is that she’s accidentally brought a pair of over the counter glasses she bought on the last field trip.

Mie-san gives off the aura of being clueless, but she knows full well that others see her as pretty much helpless and disaster-prone.  And for a 14 year-old girl, that really hurts.  She’s torn between gratitude for people (especially one person) looking out for her and embarrassment over being a burden.  And that actually creeps into self-loathing sometimes, which is a very rough place for a teen to be.  This is a problem in that what Mie wants is to be strong and independent, and what Kaede wants is for her to depend on him (he openly admits that every night, he wishes she’ll forget her glasses the next day).  His kindness brings out a side of Ai she doesn’t like – and she also doesn’t like the fact that she likes it when Komura-kun takes care of her.

That breakdown Ai had when she got lost (which is exactly what her friend Asuka-san predicted would happen) was a rough moment, and it put Kaede in a rough spot – that’s a lot for a 14 year-old to process.  It leads to some awkwardness between them, but Ai is so straightforward about her feelings that it’s probably healthy in that it gets stuff like that out in the open.  It’s not like Kaede would have been ready to initiate that conversation anytime soon otherwise.  He’s honest in return, and while there’s still an impasse between what they want, at least now neither can doubt the feelings of the other towards them.

Asuka falling for Yasaka-kun is the lever that moves the train onto the right track here.  Again, Ai has more awareness than one might think – she may say she doesn’t understand what being in a relationship means, but she understands what the look on Asuka’s face means.  And what it means when she sees it on Kaede’s punum the next day.  The hand-holding, the close up facial exploration, Kaede’s near-confession – this is now a relationship, no two ways about it.  Both of them are aware of their own feelings and that’s the most important thing – especially since those feelings align…