Well did she leave him to Chihaya

Or retreat to fight another day?

Although it said so on the T-shirt

NTR, that’s just not her way

 

Didn’t anybody tell her?

Didn’t anybody see?

Nuk-kun’s on the way to Grandma’s

Good boys can’t just let you be, oh yeah

As I noted earlier this week, I’m perfectly fine with Nuk-kun-kun getting with Anna – which is what I expect to happen eventually, if Makeine runs long enough. I like her and all. But in the broader sense I think I’m Team Lemon at this point. I love her whole free-swinging, freewheeling attitude. She’s so direct and so unburdened by the need to try and BS people about who she is. Maybe that mummy “costume” isn’t any more socially acceptable than draping yourself in velvet, but it’s Lemon to the max.

But this isn’t Lemon’s arc, it’s Komari’s. And I think, to an extent, all the arcs represent the nature of their heroines quite effectively. Anna’s was over the top and rather slapstick. Lemon’s was heartfelt and easily the most dramatic (and deep). And Komari’s? It’s relatively low-key. And juvenile – it’s a good way. As I suspected this is really more the school festival arc than the Komari arc. An important element to consider is that of the three, Komari’s “romance” was easily the most unrealistic. It was a 1st-year girl crushing on a 3rd-year guy (and at that age, those two years really matter). It was a childish fantasy, and in the end this is more about Komari the person than the romantic object.

But first, we have Karen (Waki Azumi). Heretofore she’s mostly been a figure of legend, occasionally seen in the distance, but now she becomes (very) real for Nuk-kun. His “8K vs. 4K” metaphor vis a vis Anna is obviously harsh, but it’s on-point. Karen is without a doubt amply possessed of many of the qualities prized by the superficial man. She seems genuinely friendly, to be fair, but for Anna that kind of makes it worse. The way this whole Nukumizu encounter was handled is reflective of how this series strikes a balance few LNs do in terms of being self-referential. It has no illusions about how vapid LN romcom cliches are, but doesn’t belabor the point – it just makes it with a certain wry affection and lets it speak for itself.

I don’t want to sell Komari’s plot short – to say it’s low-key and juvenile compared to the others is not really a criticism. I think what we saw here will resonate with any introvert – and she’s hard-core “I”, even compared to Kazuhiko. I think many of us reach a point in adolescence where it becomes clear to us that our introversion is making things hard in a world built for extroverts. We develop an awareness of what it deprives us of. And we have a desire to change it, if not always the ability. At 16 the belief is often that we can be “fixed” – and this invariably leads to heartbreak. As we get older we come to realize we were never broken in the first place, and what we need to do is adapt to the world rather than try and change it.

I think it’s because Kazuhiko is himself an introvert that he can see what Komari is going through with such clarity. And whether he realizes it or not, he’s maturing through his desire to help her – starting his own adapting process. Nuk-kun is legitimately a kind and empathetic person – truly a sweet kid if ever one existed. He’s gaining perspective on himself by watching Komari struggle, and helping her because he just can’t help helping. There needs to be a “physician, heal thyself” at some point – where he stops trying to be what others need him to be and worries about himself (and he still has issues, for sure). But really, I think he’s doing just fine for a 16 year-old boy. He’s growing in his own way.

As we see another series (The Elusive Samurai) seemingly fall victim to Umehara disease, it’s worth taking a moment to again praise Makeine for just how consistently gorgeous it is. Stuff like Konuki-sensei’s ceiling stain (I definitely wouldn’t want to hear that story either) is a good acid test for how serious a show is about the details. School festivals in general seem like a glorious canvas for really ambitious productions to strut their stuff, and this is no exception. We also got out first look at Chika’s house (and chibisukes), as Nuk-kun and Konuki (hmm) accompanied her home after she passed out from anime exhaustion. And if any image ever exemplified Nuk-kun, it’s him sitting in the dark watching over a sleeping Chika. What a good boy.

Again, though, the narrative still seems to be painting Kazuhiko and Anna as an inevitability. The interesting question is just how aware each of them is aware that this dance they’re engaging in is indeed a dance. Judging by their behavior – she jokingly teases the subject while he  engages in rather intimate behavior with seeming disregard – suggests that Anna is the more tuned-in of the pair. At least consciously. You’d think Nuk-kun’s romantic “literacy” through LNs would help him spot the signs here, but maybe that lexicon is so elementally devoid of truth that it’s actually blinding him to it.