Two more love stories to start the season.
Always a Catch! Ep. 1
We begin with an all-too-familiar setup: Renato marches right up to Maria, and declares his intention to annul their engagement. He thought his fiancée had attacked another girl. Typically, the crown prince is the bad guy in these scenarios. The mean girl pulls the wool over his eyes, thereby manipulating him into dissolving his relationship with the heroine. Our heroine then runs off, bumps into a taller prince with dark hair from another country, and falls in love with him instead. Alright, so what’s the twist here? What’s the catch, if you will? Well, the catch is that Maria is not even Renato’s fiancée to begin with. How could the crown prince make such a careless mistake? Does he not even know what his future wife looks like? Maybe, maybe not. Aida, the fiancée in question, barely interacts with the guy. He’s always too busy for her. It appears as though they’re only engaged for political reasons. After all, she has far more chemistry with Placido, Renato’s younger brother. Well, who would wanna steal your bro’s girl? So maybe this whole annulment drama is just pretense to protect Placido’s feelings. So is Renato still the bad guy? Is there even a taller, darker alternative for Maria to pursue instead? I guess the answer to both these questions would be no. Rather, she and Renato will eventually grow to like each other, assuming, of course, that his relationship to Aida is formally dissolved. Their parents might have something to say about that.
I dunno, is this enough to take a stale premise and make it interesting to watch? Well, for a heroine, Maria is also somewhat different… kinda. She’s a tomboy with an independent streak… again, kinda. She knows martial arts, and as a result, she’s quite physically strong. She even wears metal knuckles as hair clip — a hair clip that contains a photo of her precious family. Gosh, how quirky. Maria’s story is that she was meant to take over the family, because up until now, they’ve had only daughters. But as soon as her parents managed to produce a son, her dad pretty much told her to fuck off and find a husband. Literally. Sure, he did it with a smile, but it’s still downright cold of him. I’m speaking from my modern sensibilities, of course. Nevertheless, Maria has no objections whatsoever. She admits that it was never her dream to takeover the family. Okay, fine, then what is your dream? Well, we don’t know yet. All we know is that she’s here to find herself a husband — a catch, if you will. So for now, with the information that we’ve been given, she’s only kinda independent in my eyes. Maria’s not downright pathetic like a recent villainess we know, but she’s not exactly inspirational either. Not yet anyways. Why does she even need a husband at all?
I’ll probably keep watching this show, but I’m still undecided on how to cover it.
Go For It, Nakamura-kun!! Ep. 1 & 2
Nakamura fell in love with the “slightly tanned” Hirose at first sight. Well, I think he needs to get his eyes checked, ’cause “slightly tanned?” Huh? Where? Does tan mean something different where he’s from? But this is neither here nor there. The problem with Nakamura is that he has no balls. Figuratively, of course. He can enact all sorts of scenarios in his head, but when push comes to shove — like, for example, when his crush merely stretches — the boy cowers back to his desk in defeat. Then in the second episode, he can’t admit that he reads BL manga. As a result, he digs himself a deeper hole when Hirose starts asking the entire class about it. It’s gonna be a long season if this how Nakamura’s going to be.
I dunno, I just find it hard to root for scaredy cats. Even when Nakamura does manage to summon up the courage to speak to Hirose, his clumsiness often leads to unintended results. Like, for example, stepping on his crush’s handkerchief. Personally, I find this sort of thing exasperating, because it just feels like an excuse to arbitrarily prevent the story from making meaningful progress. I guess this could work if you find Nakamura’s endless fuckups to be entertaining, but after just two episodes, I think it’s already getting kinda old.
The anime often indulges in Nakamura’s fantasies, because that’s what we do when we’re in love. We constantly daydream about what it would be like to be in a relationship with the other person. Plus, these are opportunities for the show to get creative. One of these daydreaming sessions plays out like one of the BL manga he reads. But from an entertainment standpoint, I need more than just fantasy. Hell, it feels like we spend more time in Nakamura’s head in the second episode than in reality. Point is, you get the feeling that the “will they, won’t they” question will never get answered — not in the anime adaptation, anyway. At the moment, these two kids barely know each other, and Nakamura has barely made any progress by the end of the second episode. Basically, Hirose now knows his name. Yep, it’s gonna be a long season.
So instead of becoming boyfriend and boyfriend, this is a quest just to become merely friends. To be fair, it’s enough to confess your feelings and be vulnerable. It’s probably even harder to do so as a closeted teen. You don’t even know if your crush swings that way. Then again, what normal boy carries a handkerchief? So yeah, Hirose’s probably safe. I kid, I kid. But seriously, there are other factors to be concerned about, like whether or not some bigot might react harshly to a gay couple near them. But the show is rather light-hearted, so it makes no mention of these concerns. At the moment, the only person holding Nakamura back is himself. Like with every other romance, I’m not interested in the chase. I’d rather just see the couple get together right from the get-go, so this anime probably isn’t for me.
By the way, who the hell has a pet octopus? Also, I’ve never seen high schoolers be so afraid of a mere cockroach.
