It’s sort of interesting that this show almost never gets a comment. Why? I mean, it is rather provocative to say the least, and it plays around with some fairly modern anime tropes. In my mind I’ve started calling it “Uchi no Oh-no!-tou” because it just keeps pushing the limits. This series has a unique ability to make you say “are they or aren’t they going there?” And the answer is almost invariably “yes they are”. That’s rather unsettling when it comes to Raku and his teacher, and where that might be headed.
I had an uneasy hunch about why Syu got his ridiculous physical level-up, though I tried to dismiss it as far-fetched at first. Now it seems clear that it was done to make his eventual romantic link to Ito less starkly “wrong” (which was my hunch). It’s like the whole step-sibling thing wasn’t enough, so Uchi no Otouto had to raise the bar by introducing an age gap too. Syu’s transformation can’t hide the fact that he’s 15 and she’s 17. And while that’s not expressly taboo or even “wrong” on its own terms, it is a pretty honking difference at that stage in life.
But that’s where we are. And as usual, this show displays another of its talents, presenting this sort of thing in a way that’s not as freaky as it probably should be. It’s pretty obvious when Syu asks Gen how he’d feel if “someone else” showed interest in Ito that the die is cast. As much of a jerk as he can be I do feel sort of bad for Gen here. He tries to do the right thing with Ito and just can’t untangle himself. And now his little brother – until recently a basket case he worried about constantly – is his love rival for a love he doesn’t even want to pursue.
Syu is kind of in the inevitability phase of life here. Given the circumstances and the fact that he’s just entering serious adolescence, it’s hardly surprising he’d fall for Ito too. He’s a smart kid, he understands how unwieldy and unlikely this all is (even for an “IRL” girl seems unlikely to him – and Komugi-san). But here he is calling Ito by her first name (which is unusual for younger siblings in Japan) and calling out Gen for the way he treats her. This all builds to a challenge for the sports festival, that age-old arena where teenage love rivalries are aired in Roman arena fashion.
Do they really let first-year and third-year boys go head-to-head in the Kibasen (cavalry battle)? That seems extremely unfair – at that age for boys two years may as well be two decades. Again, Gen is in a no-win situation here. He’s a beast, obviously he can kick even Syu 2.0’s ass from here to Cleveland when push comes to shove. So what’s he supposed to do when Gen keeps coming at him? He’s in love with Ito too, he’s just trying to pretend he isn’t for the sake of family unity. As he tells Ito (“read the room” indeed) he can’t just blow Syu’s challenge off because that would be a huge blow to his pride.
What a mess. I think the endgame of all this is pretty clear – and the manga is still running, of course. But it falls on Gen and Ito to put Syu out of his misery here in a way that doesn’t shatter his newfound and still utterly fragile confidence. Because boys and girls are different and Ito doesn’t understand the former as much as she thinks she does, Gen is more sensitive to this than she is. But he’s still a man-child with a brusque nature and doesn’t really know how to deal with people in a diplomatic way. One might expect Raku to find some way to broker a non-disastrous exit strategy, but he seems pretty detached from the whole thing.
