It’s remarkable that Seihantai na Kimi to Boku has found another gear so dramatically by radically changing the sort of series it is. Remarkable when you consider how good it already was, I mean. Taira and Azuma are from a totally different show, but they don’t feel out of place. I still dig the stuff with the other two couples and the general school life asides – they’re as charming as ever. But these two just take the story to a much deeper and more emotionally raw place. Koucha-sensei knew exactly what she had here, but this sort of late-innings shift is unicorn rare in romantic comedy animanga.

As I’ve noted before, this is a series fans of Boku no Kokoro no Yabai Yatsu tend to really like, which was one of the first things that brought it to my attention. The two series are obviously very different – apart from both being great. But for obvious reasons that gap has narrowed as Seihantai has evolved this season. And it really struck me hard when watching Episode 10 (which made sitting on it for a week torture) – TairAzuma is like Bokuyaba if Yamada didn’t exist. A stretch? I really don’t think so, and I think it’s an idea that holds up under scrutiny.

For starters, there’s Azuma’s “People who are friends with me have people who are even closer to them. I mean, that’s just how it goes” – maybe the line of the entire series. It hit me as exactly the sort of thing a Bokuyaba character would say – but Moeko, not Anna. And Moeko is really very much like Shino in so many ways. She’s friendly and casual friends with tons of people, but struggles to get really close with any of them. Her self-esteem issues drive her towards boys who treat her badly. The person on the inside is so very different from the one people see every day. And in a sense, she’s the most logical person to have wound up with Ichikawa (if anyone did). And that’s why they ended up being basically best friends.

If Taira like Ichi? Yes, in obvious and sometimes superficial but nevertheless very important ways. Anna and Ichi are good for each other because they fit together like puzzle pieces – their jagged edges fill gaps in the other. If Kyoutarou and Moe had gotten together it would have been (even) messier, darker, more halting and hesitant. As with Shuuji and Shino, there’s too much overlap in their jagged edges even though they’re very different superficially. But they would still have been drawn to each other, as Shino and Shuuji are.

As I watch these two – and absolutely riveting and very painful that is – I’m torn over what should happen. Impulsively I want them to get together – that’s the romcom thing. I want them to risk everything, to accept the likelihood of pain for the possibility of reward. But what makes these two so fascinating as they don’t feel like romcom characters, they just seem like people. Objectively I’m not sure Taira should be in a romantic relationship now – he has too much work to do in the way he perceives himself. I just worry that the two of them getting together would just make their own issues worse, like a couple who have a child thinking it will fix the trouble in their relationship.

If the above line is Azuma in a nutshell, Taira offered his version of that here – “I’m only here because they don’t know what I’m really like”. If any sentence ever defined self-loathing it’s that one. He has what he now realizes he always wanted – friends, social engagement, acceptance. “Fitting in“. Except in his own mind he doesn’t fit in, no matter how the others act. He has those things, but he doesn’t deserve them. So how could a girl like Shino possibly like him that way? It is, in the words (word) of Vizzini, “Inconceivable!” Intellectually he knows this is wrong. “I feel inferior. But to who? To what?” But this is not an intellectual problem.

What a mess these two lambs are, honestly. Azuma telling Satou “I want to know what a decent person would do here” was so very Azuma (and I could hear Moe saying it in my head). The irony of Shuuji perceiving her as being on “the other side” and his crossing over – or trying to – is that actually she’s been on his side all along, she’s just better at faking it. Believe it or not, there’s another half to this episode. And it’s really good – it’s just hard to follow up something like that. We go right back to Seihantai the romcom, and we’re reminded of what a good romcom it is. And it does feel like sweet relief in a way, even if we know we’re just putting off the big issue we need to address.

As someone who’s an inveterate defender of the virtues of wasting time, this B-part really appealed to me. It was a fitting theme in so many ways. There’s nothing nobler in life than doing nothing important and sharing the experience with like-minded others. That’s what this snack party was for these kids – just wasting time when the privilege of being indolent is slowly being taken away from them. Sharing the unutterable joy of being young and doing nothing important together. We even almost got a look at Gapacho – though I wasn’t about to be suckered in by that. Maybe in the end, Gapacho was all of us…