Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai Ren – 04
Awfully beatific
Quite the focus shift this week. If you were looking for a lot of Rikka and Yuuta action, well, you’d be disappointed, but Dekomori and Mori Summer, er, I mean Shinka? They were in full force.
Fake or Real
Always check under the podium? Didn’t you see Police Academy?
Satone continues to be the device that’s being used to bring plot points to the fore. This time, with Shinka running for Student Council President, she has to run the Dekomori gauntlet. By the way, this is the first time I’ve seen a reference to a Japanese school having general officer elections for the student council at the beginning of the new school year, rather than the end of the previous year. Has it been like that in any other anime? Or is it just a plot convenience here?
A meeting from the past
Either way, the helpful Satone this time vouches for the authenticity of Shinka as Mori Summer, with incontrovertible photo evidence, from the time in middle school when Shinka and Satone were comrades-in-chuunibyou. This is enough to completely change Sanae’s mind, and bring her full support behind Shinka. Her full, smothering, support. It sure doesn’t take long for Shinka to tire of the fawning, but I have to give her some credit for recognizing that though she’s annoying, Sanae is earnest and capable. And a complete and utter fangirl.
So close and yet…
Premature Congratulations
Shinka just makes one mistake: rewarding Sanae too soon for helping her with the election. If she’d waited until after the speech, she probably would have gotten a great speech out of Sanae and possibly been elected. But by igniting Sanae’s devoted fervor, she instead inspired Sanae to pull out the Mabinogion at the speech and kill Shinka with embarrassment. And of course she loses, although if she’d kept it together and gutted it through Sanae’s off the wall speech, she might have gotten votes for being an original person. She certainly couldn’t have done worse. Well, maybe she could: she could have been below Makoto, who was running some sort of comic relief campaign about being a man.
And torpedoed in one fell swoop
Shinka’s run at the student council is still another episode in what I think is her continuing chuunibyou. She’s tried to remake herself so many times, and tried to have some perfect anime / manga version of high school, and it always fails because she’s not being herself. And really, the times she’s seemed happiest and least stressed, is when she is being herself: meddling in Rikka and Yuuta’s relationship, hanging out with the rest of the group, giving and taking with Sanae. Maybe she’ll realize this at some point, but I doubt it.
When these two are at their best
Not a lot of Rikka and Yuuta at all. Mostly just as reaction shots, with the frenemies of Shinka and Sanae taking center stage this episode. Not a bad episode overall, and it gave a lot of people what they wanted to see about Mori Summer. I’d imagine we’ll get back to the main pairing next week. I’m still not sure what they’re trying to do with Satone / Sophia. Is she just a catalyst for bringing out the chuunibyou in everyone else? Or is she going to ever do more than just pop up and go “nya-ha-ha-ha!” I’m not really sure at this point, but it really doesn’t seem like she’s a threat to our main couple’s relationship, except through Rikka’s growing jealousy. Speaking of that jealousy, it seems that Rikka’s not really good with anything that seems to threaten her close friendships. She didn’t react well to Satone and Yuuta being friendly and close, and she doesn’t react well to Sanae and Shinka being close. Will this become more of an issue as we move forward?
POWUH: 600-699 and LN Enthusiast with 623 comments
The stalker appears again. It was probably a few seconds give or take to the last screenshot. What’s the deal with that?
And that was a short-lived friendship. Feels bad for the fans shipping these two I guess. Then again they were already shipping the two even if they’re not getting along.
That part where Deko was tickling Nibutani’s feet was just angled the wrong way. It looked like it bended a full 90 degrees there. Why didn’t she report it to the teacher though? Ah well.
Still fun and cringe-inducing with the secondhand embarrassments.
As for the elections, Clannad comes to mind with Tomoyo running for the StuCo there. The upcoming anime Mahouka also had its elections in the middle of the school year.
Those are the ones I suddenly remembered and I’m sure there’s more so it’s not really a plot convenience or anything.
POWUH: Meta Resident and LN Informant with 1529 comments
Makoto’s bid for presidency never stood a chance… -__-”
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
Makoto’s ideas never stand a chance no matter what they are.
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
It was a ship that sank before it could even sail.
POWUH: Metanorn Regular with 110 comments
feel sorry for nibutani give trying best for normal life & chance for student pres.
but ONORE dekomori yea give too much whole mori summer doing & etc even thought it was real deal.
yet too much over-focus on dekomori’s addict to mori summer say hello to nibutani got screwed by dekomori.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10997 comments
I kinda feel cheated by the “maintain status quo” approach here. But with these two nitwits, it seems only natural.
Yeah, what’s up with that Sophia Saturn Two Door Coupe girl?
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
The whole point of Shinka and Sanae’s relationship is that they think they are enemies, but they are really close friends who don’t accept it. It’s also the defining characteristic of Shinka’s personality: She doesn’t know who she is, but she is adamant that she’s not Mori Summer, so she must fight that as much as possible. Even though she’s happiest and most comfortable being more like Mori Summer than any of the other faux personas she tries to adopt.
We’ll have to see if Sophia / Satone becomes more of an actual character. At the moment she’s on the order of Kuzuha: a person who just shows up to shove the plot in a convenient direction.
POWUH: 900-999 with 915 comments
I almost skipped through the end =.=’ So much humiliation, it was painful to watch. Something close to what I felt with WataMote.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
Perhaps I don’t feel as much sympathy for Shinka in the failure of her schemes like this because it never feels like her plans are sincere. Like she doesn’t want to be the seitokaichou because she really wants to lead the student government, but rather because she wants to be an anime / manga character. It’s the failure of an adopted persona, and I seem to recall that she’s complained before about the success of her adopted personas, so I wonder what she’d really have done if she won the election and found out it would be a lot of work.
The difference for me with WataMote was that Tomoko’s failures were ones of her authentic personality, either through a mismatch of her expectations with the rest of the world, or her own inability to follow through with something (because it was generally asking too much of her). As such, Tomoko just felt much more sympathetic and tragic.
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
This we can agree on. It was a lot to take, really putting a toll on the nerves. I was cringing during the incident and it wasn’t even happening to me.
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
Man, I know Nibutani can be mean spirited but that humiliation was excruciatingly painful to watch. No one deserves something of that level. She and Dekomori could’ve had a proper relationship but alas, it was for naught. Sanae came on a little too strong.
So Yuuta is about to be consumed by his own Dragon of the Darkness Flame. This is what happens when the wielder is weak. Dekomori’s hair attack on Nibutani was almost perfect. The only thing missing was the “GET OVER HERE!!!”.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10997 comments
She did go just that in Third Place’s joke subs. The script is written as if they are all spies.