NouKome – 04

Guest appearance by Miya Tachibana

Could things be looking up for Kanade? And what exactly is Chocolat? I know I gave out a lot more chocolate than I’d prefer to with Halloween, my least favorite holiday. But that’s in the past now and we head into November with Episode 4 of NouKome.

A New Classmate

Everyone in class loves a new pet

Of course Chocolat was going to end up going to school with the rest of the gang. Whatever the heck a “Studies Assistance Pet” is, she’s probably exactly that anyway. But that doesn’t make her any less popular with all the guys in the class, or even the girls. Not that her presence helps Kanade’s reputation at all, since she mentions that he “kunya-kunya, funya-funya”s her in bed. All the guys want to beat him up, and all the girls are afraid he’ll do that to them, even if the one with a handful of Chocolat’s boobs is Yukihira (seriously, that went on way too long, Yukihira).

This guy doesn’t even count as a trap

Things might be looking up for Kanade tho, since the choices seem to be getting less bad, this time requiring the choice between Harem Time with popular students or something that feels really good. Even if they turned out to be not that good, with a harem of the most popular boys in the school (and an omake of a coma where he dreams he’s surrounded by women for the other choice), they’re still better than having to debase himself in front of everyone, as normally happens. The explanation comes from Douraku-sensei, who confirms it’s because he’s actually completed some of the missions. We also get our first confirmation that she’s been through the exact same thing, although there’s a mental block that keeps her from talking about it, just like Kanade can’t tell others about it.

Besides, there are things he just doesn’t WANT to tell anyone

A Challenge From the Best to the Worst

Seira and Souga invite the ‘winners’

The gauntlet has been thrown, and I’m not sure about how I feel about it. We get to meet two of the popular students, one of them a girl from the OP, seitokaichou Seira Kokubyakuin, along with fuku-kaichou Souga Shishimori. The Popularity 5 (Seira, Souga, and Konagi, as well as a guy with green hair and the ring-curl big-boobed oujo-sama from the OP) and the Reject 5 are going to have a ‘battle’ on stage, although it’s more like the Reject 4 + a wildcard (hands up if you think it’s going to be Chocolat… wow, that’s a lot of hands).

Nobody wants to be near Kanade

This is kind of what I was worried about with the “Reject 5” designation, that in addition to being the butt of jokes for the show, they’re the butt of jokes for the whole school. That hasn’t really seemed to be the case to this point, but it really does seem like Seira’s playing them for a laugh so far. But as usual, it gets worse for Kanade, as he’s got a pretty tough mission: have all the girls participating in the battle say they like him. Now, thanks to the malleability of “suki” in Japanese, it’s not like he needs all the girls to confess to him, or kiss them like Keima Katsuragi. But it’s still going to be a tall order, perhaps allayed a little bit by the flexibility of definition that the tasks have shown so far (perhaps even if they’re saying it falsely, it’ll count).

Bonus Reject 5

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Another episode of NouKome that just ran by with the normal great flow that the show has. It really moves from one gag to the next to the next without feeling rushed or without feeling like it has too much downtime, even layering them so that there are multiple things going on at once, like the sequence with Furano fondling Chocolat, Ouka impersonating Kanade, and going right into her feigning embarrassment and wearing spats. It’s really the best thing about the show, because it continues to be an experience that’s greater than the sum of its parts if you try to deconstruct it.

Like I said, I’m a little concerned that they’re having a laugh at the “Reject 5”, although if you’re going to name people the Reject 5 in the first place, they’re going to be targets, aren’t they. I just hope that we’re not just in for humiliation of Kanade, Furano, and Ouka. Especially Ouka, although I don’t know if anything really can humiliate her, more than temporarily.

About Highway

Proving that you don't have to be young to love anime, I enjoy all genres and styles of shows. If it's not hurting anyone else, you should never be ashamed of what you like!