In French and Cajun cuisine it’s called a roux, flour and melted butter. You can use a slurry of corn starch and water, or even just flour. Whatever it is, the purpose is simple – it’s a thickener. For sauces, soups, whatever. Plots need thickeners sometimes too of course. This was certainly the roux episode of Alya-san, though I guess you could call it the flashback episode too. Whatever it was it certainly did a fine job of thickening the plot (and adding a good dash of spice, too).

The catalyst for all this flashing back was Alya’s older sister Maria, though ironically we didn’t actually get to see any of her past, at least from her POV (maybe later). Masha is the diminutive she goes by, and we met her only briefly in the lunchroom. She’s rather convinced that her sister is sweet on Masachika, and in this case her onee-dar is right on the money. Alya protests of course – she is a tsundere – but doesn’t really have a good answer for why she likes this seeming slacker when she generally disdains such people.

The simple answer- Masachika is much more capable than he projects, though that’s hardly a secret. We get a look at Alya going all the wayback to Vladivostok, where her penchant for rigidity and pushing people away comes into focus. She’s driven and has no patience for mediocrity, and – most crucially – she’s insanely competitive. That isolated her back in mother Russia after a group project disaster, but the lesson she took away from it was the wrong one. Which Masachika rather directly points out to her, once the flashback moves to their high school meeting.

I liked the way this was handled, for the most part. It wasn’t too tropey or simplistic, and Masachika’s advice to Alya was right on the money. She’s directed her relentless energy in the wrong direction – which is certainly something many driven kids do. He’s a clear advocate of the “work smart, not hard” approach, but Masa is not allergic to work. He’s just good at greasing the gears and getting things accomplished without being flashy about it. And again we see Alya-san apologizing – and admitting she was wrong, to boot – which casts her character in a better light than it might otherwise be cast.

But who are we kidding, the headline here is the not-unexpected revelation of who the little Russian girl in Masachika’s earlier flashbacks was. It seemed unlikely he could mistake Alya after spending so much time with her in the present, but he barely knows Masha so I guess I can just about believe he didn’t make the connection (it’s still a stretch). In his defense her hair color seems to have changed but still – how many Russian girls does he expect to find in his town? The fact that he’s “Sa-kun” – who Masha adored enough that she still carries his photo in a locket – does complicate things. But early returns indicate she’s going to step aside and play wingman rather than try and hijack the plane.

I rather like Masha – more than Yuki, anyway. She’s goofy and sweet in a way that reminds me of Miu-senpai from Mashiro-iro Symphony (which, now I think of it, this series puts me in mind of a bit generally) Speaking of Yuki, courtesy of Sa-kun’s own mini-flashback we now know why he and Yuki have different last names and don’t live together – their parents split and he chose their Dad, she their Mom. There’s more to that story too , clearly – seems like Yuki was a sickly kid – but at the moment I’m more invested in the sisters and that intriguing little triangle. Still too early to commit, but on balance Alya-san is looking like one of the better offerings in a very crowded field of romcoms this summer.