Shoujo anime sure do love this orienteering business. I remember seeing this in Ao Haru Ride, too. Is this what the shoujo audience really wants to see, though? Getting close to your pretty boy by building school spirit at some mandatory after-school activity? It just seems so… lame. Then again, I’m the last person to have school spirit. Oh well. Onto my notes and observations…

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— Nozomi is all over Kyouya, but remember, he’s deeply concerned that Kyouya has chosen to not play the field. Naturally, Nozomi is going to fix this little discrepancy, because that’s what playbros do. If you see a potential playbro trapped in the banal life of monogamy, you gotta give his dick a little tickle and let him know what he’s missing out on!

— I’m not even joking! This guy is messed up! But I’m just kidding around. Nozomi’s motives are quite transparent. He might exude an air of confidence, but he’s really quite insecure on the inside. He doesn’t actually believe his own bullshit, but if he can convince Kyouya, then perhaps he’ll convince himself as well. It’s similar to crab mentality, i.e. “I don’t know if what I’m doing is right, but I’ll get you to do it with me so that I won’t suffer alone.”

— So on the bus there, poor Erika has to sit next to her best friend and not her boyfriend. Aw, I really feel for her. Ayumi, that is. I mean, what did she do to deserve this?

— The girls start to wonder if perhaps Nozomi is interested in Kyouya. They’re clearly joking, but Erika’s reaction is not the reasonable “Well, I know my boyfriend is hetero, so whatever.” Nope, she briefly freaks out a bit before coming to her senses. Even if Kyouya was bi, you should be able to trust that your boyfriend won’t cheat on you, but then again, Kyouya has been so emotionally abusive with the girl, maybe she honestly doesn’t know what to think.

— Thanks, playbro! How did you know that my bladder was full?!

— A girl just walks up and hands Nozomi a bento box. We see later that he has an entire rotation of girls to cook for him. This way, he never has to buy lunch for himself all week long. But y’know, you reap what you sow. Nozomi may have a lot of girls at his beck and call, but he doesn’t form a single, genuine connection with any of them. As soon as they find someone that they actually care about, they’ll just abandon him. He thinks his good looks will keep them around, but c’mon… he can’t be this naive, can he?

— Nozomi nevertheless uses this opportunity to sell Kyouya on the idea of dating multiple girls. Look! Look! You get free lunches! I just don’t get why Nozomi cares. If Kyouya isn’t a playbro, it just means more girls for Nozomi, assuming that he’s as charming as he thinks he is.

— What do we see next? Erika sheepishly asking Nozomi what he had talked to Kyouya about. Remember, she doesn’t suspect a thing. As a result, he gets her to unwittingly agree to help him in his playbro evangelism. Together, they will open up Kyouya’s heart! But if Erika truly loves her boyfriend, shouldn’t she have noticed by now that Kyouya wants nothing to do with Nozomi? Hell, even Ayumi can see this: “I don’t see those guys coming to an understanding…” But Erika comes back with, “But he really ‘got’ Kyouya! I’m sure it’ll be fine!” What kind of girlfriend are you?

— Nozomi’s first attempt is to introduce Kyouya to a bunch of cute girls. One of those cute girls definitely has an interest in the latter. She even asks him for his cell phone info, but he pretends as though he doesn’t have a cell phone period. Still, shouldn’t these girls know that Kyouya’s already taken? Or do they just not care?

— Nozomi is just trying too hard. Even Kyouya can’t help but feel as though the guy belongs to some weird playbro religion.

— For once in this series, Kyouya makes a lot of sense, and all he’s basically saying is “Mind your damn business!” But Nozomi can’t take a no for an answer. Well, he’s a playbro, so that’s not too surprising.

— Uh… case in point, only a guy who doesn’t have the word “no” in his vocabulary would say something like that.

— Erika misses her boyfriend, but she made her own bed. She encouraged Nozomi to spend all day with Kyouya. Even so, her “friends” tell her to sneak into Kyouya’s room. Ayumi doesn’t think that’s a good idea, but the “friends” then accuse Erika’s best and only friend that Ayumi’s being a wet blanket. Hm, who should we listen to? Our “friends” or our actual friend? Gosh, this sure is a tough one.

— Erika wants Kyouya to have a friend, because she doesn’t want him to feel as lonely as she did at the start of the year. But shit, why don’t you just talk to him? You’re a couple, right? Why don’t you just ask him if he’s okay? Why don’t you just ask him whether or not he’s actually lonely? Why do you pretend as though you know what he wants when you could just ask him and find out for yourself exactly what he wants? Holy shit, isn’t that what being a couple is about? Being able to confide with each other about these things? They’ve only been dating for a short time, anyway, It’s okay if she doesn’t know exactly how he thinks or feels. It’s okay to just ask the guy about his goddamn feelings. Of course, knowing Kyouya, he’d just bite her head off, but speaking hypothetically, a couple should just be able to communicate with each other.

— Pfft, “friends.”

— Yeah, it might be nice if Kyouya made a friend, but he’s a big boy. He can take care of himself. He doesn’t need his girlfriend making secret plans with some asshole behind his back. If he did, he’d ask for it.

— So a bunch of girls sneak into the room that Kyouya and Nozomi share (with a few other guys as well). For once, however, Kyouya falls to peer pressure and gets roped into hanging out with  the rest of the group.

— The group plays the king game, which is getting pretty boring now. I mean, you see it all the time in anime and even video games (see: Persona 4). But like the whole orienteering business, I guess we just wouldn’t feel complete without seeing a bunch of kids play the same game over and over. So when it’s Nozomi’s turn to issue commands, he orders Kyouya and some girl to kiss. This is easy, right? You just say, “Sorry, I have a girlfriend,” and leave it at that, right?

— Nozomi honestly believes that no man can resist a cute girl. That’s kind of sad, isn’t it? Just because he has no self-control, he thinks it must be true of everyone.

Yeah, we’re just horny animals. We can’t control ourselves, man. Shit, I don’t know if we should even have rights since we clearly can’t think with our heads and not our penises! Quick, take away our suffrage! Unthinking animals such as us don’t deserve to have a say in this world!

— “…live a fun life with me?” Is he that desperate for a fellow playbro?

— Kyouya rejects the girl, but doesn’t say that he already has a girlfriend. Hm… it still feels incomplete to me. You gotta draw proper boundaries. This girls should know that it isn’t appropriate to hit on a guy who already has a significant other. I mean, it’s silly that you have to even wave your girlfriend around just to scare them off, but sometimes, that’s honestly what it takes.

— This is hilarious. And more talk about what a man should be. And of course, Nozomi is trying to be selfless here, gawsh! He just wants to show Kyouya the path to enlightenment!

— So one of the girls in Nozomi’s harem decides to cut her ties. She’s found an actual boyfriend, you see, so she’s not going to be hanging out with our playbro anymore. Whoops. That’s what it comes down to, I guess. He thinks he’s playing them, but they’re really just playing with him. He’s a momentary distraction until they find a real boyfriend. In other words, as I had suspected earlier, they don’t take him seriously whatsoever. But what does he honestly expect? He doesn’t take them seriously either. You reap what you sow, buddy.

— Boy, he’s just as charming as ever!

— I guess Nozomi now wants to turn a new leaf. He’s not sure if he can find that one special girl, but now it’s Kyouya’s turn to be the true bro:

Kyouya: “You could, very soon.”
Nozomi: “Really? You’re just flattering me. Do you have any basis for that?”
Kyouya: “Because I was just like you.”

Oh lawdie lawd, I have seen the light! I have seen the light!

— So he sees what Kyouya and Erika have, and he wants the same thing for himself. But what Kyouya and Erika have is fucked up! Ah well. Ayumi’s the only person in this entire person who doesn’t have a screw loose in the head. Wouldn’t it be sad, though, if the writer decided to pair her up with the playbro?

— In any case, is this arc over already? Have we defeated the playbro once and for all? It ended up being a lot less dramatic than I thought it’d be. Oh well.

Your moment of zen: