Raise wa Tanin ga Ii is about as squarely on the bubble as a show can be at this point. It happens to fall on a day of the week without a ton of scheduling conflicts, which helps its chances a bit on the margins. I’m far from embracing it but it does mystify me to an extent, and there are worse ways to be towards a series than mystified (and better ones too, of course). So at this point I really have no idea if there will be further posts or not.

This episode was pretty different tonally than the first four, and in some ways probably the most interesting. Kirishima was almost normal for most of it, which if anything I find even creepier. His exchange with Yoshino after he stays the night in her place reflects just how confident she is around him – more than she should be, in my view. At this point I worry less for her than those close to her – his fixation on her will probably prevent him from doing anything too crazy with or to her, for now.

After Shouma’s intervention in the story, we get another of those close to her this week. It’s a cousin from Kyoto, Akashigata Tsubaki. She’s a year older than Yoshino and moving to Yokohama, which leads to a get-together after finals (which Yoshino struggles pretty hard with). This cousin may or may not be blood-related – she’s the daughter of a mistress – but Renji raised her and Yoshino clearly doesn’t care. Kirishima invites himself along on their date and reveals that he’s done a lot of research where the cousin is concerned. Whatever there is to know about Yoshino or those she cares about, she’d best assume Kirishima knows by now.

Tsubaki is glamorous, plain-spoken, and in most ways a better match for Kirishima than Yoshino is (and not for the reasons Yoshino thinks she is). The conversation about Kyoto women was engaging, but it’s when the two of them are alone – first when Yoshino goes to buy shaved ice and later when she taxis back to Tokyo to turn on forgotten math assignments – that things get really interesting. Given her family connections to a possibly shady medical group, it’s no stretch to guess she was who Yoshino turned to for her kidney sale. And as it turns out, Tsubaki tricked her and never took the kidney (just a liter and a half of blood).

On the one hand it’s kind of a relief knowing Yoshino still has her kidney. But Tsubaki’s role here is pretty murky. Maybe she was telling the truth when she says she tried to talk Yoshino out of it, but I still don’t fully trust her even if Yoshino does. She and Kirishima do a little dance here that’s half-threatening and half-flirting, and wind up swapping photos of their beloved (she’s totally into Renji). They’re allies now, and they match up as lovers, but I could definitely see this turning into a serious enemy relationship is circumstances ever went south.

As usual with this one, I find myself more intrigued in an abstract way than actually invested in the plot and characters. I continue to find this a very opaque series, and I still don’t have a sense of what its aims are and what story it’s trying to tell. If this is going to work, either it’s going to have to close that circuit by giving me the answer, or prove so interesting in the abstract that I feel like sticking around anyway.