I’m still operating from the angle that Kuroe’s kaiju…-ness reflects her physical insecurities, but it’s never that simple. In fact, there’s no reason why it can’t represent more than one thing. After all, her mother Rinko says she’s just a kaiju in heat, and we are talking about teenagers. Plus, when Arata leans in close at the end of the episode, this is when Kuroe transforms again. This certainly does lend credence to Rinko’s claims. And as much as Kuroe tries to deny her feelings, the kaiju side of her stubbornly refuses to play along. Hey, love makes you go crazy sometimes.

I still like my body dysmorphia idea, though. After all, when Kuroe thought Arata had a girlfriend, she honed in on Manatsu’s chest. Throughout the episode, Kuroe tries to kill her obvious crush on Arata by reasoning that he couldn’t possibly love an “ugly nerd girl” like herself. This being an anime, everyone looks the same. I can hardly tell if anyone is truly ugly, because ugly characters practically don’t exist in this media. Nevertheless, cute girls get insecure too, so the fact that Kuroe is actually attractive doesn’t change anything. It would’ve been bolder if they had the guts to make Kuroe even just average-looking, but this is fine too.

Speaking of Manatsu, the new girl, the show throws a curveball. Rather than giving us a rival character, she’s actually a huge kaiju fanatic instead. Here she is, pretending to be a larva that will transform into Mothra one day. Yep, she’s in love with Kuroe’s kaiju form, but she doesn’t know that Kuroe is that kaiju. Instead, she dubs the beast Harugon, thinks it’s male, and wants it to step on her…? Kids these days. It reminds me of that Parks and Recreation bit, actually, i.e. this is my Kaiju boyfriend Harugon, and this is Harugon’s straight human boyfriend Arata! What don’t you get? It’s not that complicated!

Anyway, I suppose what I appreciate is that we’re not dragging things out. There’s no love triangle here. In fact, Arata realizes that his being nice to everyone is actually causing problems — it’s encouraging the mean girls to pick on Kuroe (and lock her in a gym storage closet). For example, he was half-assing it. When asked if he had a girlfriend, he says no. The mean girls are thus happy! But then he reveals that he likes someone while staring at Kuroe the entire time. The mean girls are now unhappy. Arata didn’t mean to, but he basically planted a target on his crush’s back.

Luckily, he gets a clue by the end of the episode. As a result, he stops being wishy-washy and directly confesses his desires to the girl he likes. It’s not an outright confession — no “suki” or anything — but it’s still pretty damn direct. Kuroe even tries to reciprocate by being honest with Arata; she tries to show him her true self. Unfortunately, the room was dark, and her tail also went away. As a result, Kuroe inadvertently moons him instead. Whoops. But hey, the intent was there!

I guess every romance show needs to drag something out. So if it’s not going to be the romance itself, then we’ll compromise with Arata not realizing that he’s dating a kaiju girl. This will thus lead to misunderstandings, which will create drama for future episodes, so on and so forth. I guess you can still put a positive spin on this, though. Maybe it’s… a metaphor for how he just sees her for who she is. He likes her for her, so he can’t even see the side of her that gives rise to all those insecurities.

The flip side of this, however, is that it makes Arata seem kinda stupid. Y’see, shortly after he leaves to fetch Manatsu, Kuroe’s becomes emotionally overwhelmed by their encounter — or maybe she’s just in heat like her mother said — and fully transforms again. So what exactly is going through Arata’s mind right about now? “Hmm, I just left the gym storage closet where Kuroe was hiding. And now, there’s a kaiju breaking out of that same gym closet. Straaaaaange.” C’mon, you gotta be as dumb as rocks if you can’t put two and two together. Oh well, they also say love makes us stupid.

Stray thoughts & observations:

— So… is Kuroe actually biologically related to her mother? I mean, I guess it’s possible, but how would that have happened? I think it’s more likely that Rinko found a kaiju baby and just took her in. The alternative is something I don’t really want to imagine.

— If I had to nitpick, the mean girls are too one-dimensional. Even in class, they’re either staring at Arata or staring daggers at Kuroe. Kinda flat, kinda boring.

— What was with the guys who came to fetch Manatsu, though? Why do they look like that?