Masamune-kun no Revenge – 03
Did you hear that!? Grab a Snicker’s, girl!
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Date-date, no date, with a banana fana sundae (could have been three), fee fi fo its Fate, and a Date! |
Breaking the Ice
So it’s the tutoring of both Kojuurou and Yoshino that becomes this episodes catalyst; man that’s a tough school that forces extra lessons if the whole class bellies up. This has each of our leads taking it upon themselves to lead the support characters into the peer tutoring wilds – with the wager of date vs…potential bankruptcy? also on the line. How else would you classify having to pay for her lunches? Now, by themselves they could ace the tests, but that’s a heavy penalty they would face should they fail. So how do the supporting characters look? Oh, they’re Maggie’s Drawers? Niiiiice….Nicer still that this whole thing is a boondoogle anyway…
So, Yoshino just isn’t test smart, I guess?
Of course, that would be a typical set up. Revenge takes a different approach vector into that crazy business, that being Makabe’s revenge plan. He’s going to try to make it three against one, as he is counting on counting on Yoshino to be able to finagle this particular fiasco into part of his silly scheme. So that sets the rest of the episode in motion. I find it funny that we learn that Makabe really is a bit more than advertised in that he managed the perfect score on the school’s entrance exam, and I loved how Yoshino dangled that in front of Aki, just when the later was feeling very overconfident and felt quite please with herself with her “I decline” shellacking last episode; But then Yoshino even ices that cake by giving the upcoming (and face it, inevitable) date a visual aid – which also show’s just how far ranging Yoshino thinks. So in a way, Makabe get’s to boast, but he doesn’t even have to personally make that boast. Takes Aki down a peg and warms her up a bit…all so she can find out…
Oh, there really is more to him, isn’t there?
But Makabe getting that boast is short lived, cause next scene he actually takes himself down a notch. For all his narcissism he is still a rather predictable teen-age boy, so of course he’s nervous calling up a girl on the phone, even if he clearly has something to gain for his dumb plan by calling her. Then Yoshino lowers the boom and clobbers him in the noggin. He can’t count on her to sabotage Aki in any way nor is she even ready to go along with such a plan. Which when you think about it, is a good thing. But this forces Makabe to knuckle under and really apply himself in the long run, and even with Kojuuro poor test results, he is able to come out ahead and win the wager, anyway to to plot device planned by Yoshino? The coffee/bad lunch angle? Well, random things happen while you’re planning other things. But the end of the first half of the show is just like I said, these two spending time with each other.
Bad Eggs…
Yoshino’s Magic Show
Sheltered life, yes?
“You don’t even know the dress code for dates?” Well, let’s just say that Cure Aki did break some ice. Is that ice underfoot? If so whose feet? Oh, that’s stuff for in the episode. But…Yoshino strikes, to say the very least. When you give this just a bit of thought some things become rather clear. For all his planning of revenge, Makabe doesn’t just want to out and out hurt Aki every step of the way. I mean, yeah, that would spoil his plans right then and there, but he is acting a decent fool all said. So he is mindful that Yoshino is deceiving her mistress outright. But, at least we get the other side of the supplementary class story, in Aki’s own time and telling. Makabe is right to be non-plussed, that’s a huge reveal into Aki’s character. She want’s to be there for someone, even if it embarasses her.
Everyone’s a film critic…
But, she’s very sheltered in her way. I could imagine how we could chalk that up to being a rich girl, but that’s just the show. The underlying narrative, the real theme for her is isolation. She hides behind rules and propriety and acting the right and civil way; so the wealth is a metaphor in a way, and besides she’s hiding behind the trumped up version of those rules. So, acting that way is fine, but you’re not going to last long or honest never venturing far from that. Yoshino is mindful of that, and that’s a good reason to manipulate Aki as any I guess, to get her out of her shell. Tricking her into cosplay is minor, and did she really predict that Makabe would only let Aki take the embarrassment so far? But to keep it in mind, with the story being so mindful of how terrible it is to be manipulating people like this, will there be a price for that later? And what is the secret behind her need for bottom plates of pancakes?
It’s like she’s been tsundere training all her life, and Makabe loves it.
But with all that, in the end, Makabe does surprise. I love how he admits that he was just one slip away from falling for Aki, and to Yoshino no less. A lap pillow would do that to a young man, and you’d be a fool if it didn’t do that to you. So while he can feel that way for a small measure, he does dismisses it, making believe that Yoshino planned every single scrap of the date from word one to the end, lap pillow included. So, he’s playing another kind of fool all the same. That’s two times the fool for him this episode – so failing, or falling? For right now I think we will see them continue to circle each other for awhile, this ride isn’t over quite yet. But the ice on their feelings was broken, if not cracked away completely….See you next time…
This sets the tone for a great deal of the story
Extra Long Extra Short
The Walking Cliche!
About skylion
All around nerd that enjoys just about any anime genre. I love history, politics, public policy, the sciences, literature, arts...pretty much anything can make me geeky...except sports. Follow me @theskylion
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
They had Futaba shouting that “OMG the whole class has to take Supplemental Classes if someone fails!” thing and then just dropped it, so I think it was probably a bad translation of “Anyone who fails the tests has to take supplemental classes.”
I like these characters. I like that both Aki and Masamune are, not too deep inside, fairly good people. Honestly, I feel like Masamune’s narcissism is more of a veneer or a plating, because he folds super fast whenever the chance comes up. Mostly he’s just a high school kid, and so is Aki, and so is Yoshino. They all have that ‘talk big, think big, not realize how small they are even when they are shown to be all talk’ air. Which is actually really nice to see, a show that puts high school kids in high school bodies and minds.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
So Futaba would be “Misunderstand Big, Spread the news, biggerer!” I mean, just giving the opening situation a No-Prize style explaination, maybe she did mishear about the ones that fail having to take extra classes, and accidentally made it so the whole class thought they were all on the hook.
You on about the thing I enjoyed most about reading the manga, that Makabe was pretty much see through, with Aki less so. But at this state Yoshino is pure gear maker, clockbuilder, and gear greaser as far as the plot is concerned. We’ll see how she turns out…