Taira is alone on Christmas, and to make matters worse, he’s stuck dressed as Santa. As a result, he has all the time in the world to brood and torture himself over bad memories. I guess the girls treated him extra badly back in middle school when he was fat, but… I dunno, something about this feels weird to me. I was once a middle schooler — as we all were — and my classmates back then never seemed that mean. After all, they were literally kids, and from my experience, middle school kids were generally nice. I only noticed a difference once I got to high school. Maybe I was just lucky, though.
Speaking of high school, Taira eventually lost all that weight. He thus got popular with the girls, received his first confession, and even got his first girlfriend of sorts. It soon fell apart, though. Said girlfriend immediately got the ick on their first date. But why? Because he wore sleeves that were too short? Were his cropped pants also too short? And he was slightly cheap? Well, that last one is a little more justifiable. People don’t generally find misers attractive. Plus, it’s called the ick because it doesn’t always have to be reasonable. Well, the damage was done. Taira was never popular again. Even now, he probably feels as though he can’t date until he sorts these issues out. If he and Azuma are meant for each other, he’s got a lot of work to do, and we don’t have a ton of episodes left.
Moving on from Taira, we see Sato pay a visit to the Suzuki household. All they’re doing is just reading manga together in Suzuki’s room, but that’s fine. This might seem like a trivial scene, but this sort of thing actually makes the show feel more realistic. In a lot of romance series, the primary couple feels almost inseparable. It’s like they don’t have lives independent from each other. But already in this episode, we see Suzuki hang out with her old middle school friends, and now she’s with Sato without Tani. This is healthy. Of course, Tani still comes up as a conversation topic. I never said this show would pass the Bechdel test.
In the middle of the episode, Tani reflects on how much fun he’s been having lately, and how this makes him want to share even more moments with Suzuki. He also thinks back to their earlier encounters, perhaps seeing them in a new light and also taking measure of how much he’s grown. Eh, I don’t have much to say here. Tani’s just balancing out Taira. One guy uses his old memories to self-flagellate, the other uses them to look forward to the future. You just hope Taira grows out of his negative mindset one day.
Finally, we get the final story of the episode. Nishi still catastrophizes everything, and she still gets overwhelmed when Yamada stares too hard. C’mon, Yamada is just a simple boy. He’s the purest definition of WYSIWYG. Nevertheless, you wonder when she’ll ever get fully used to his company. For once, however, Yamada is worried, because he realizes he hasn’t actually confessed. Guess we still gotta get that bit of formality out of the way — gotta go “steady” and all that. I dunno, it’s a weird concept to me. Granted, this doesn’t affect these characters. Whether or not they are official, I doubt Yamada or Nishi would even entertain seeing anyone else. But other people get tripped up on this all the time. “Well, we weren’t official, so I technically didn’t cheat on you!” Uh-huh.
Yamada accidentally reveals that he invited her to a study session as a pretext for seeing her. In return, she confesses that she had already finished her homework; she only agreed to come because she wanted to see him. Hold on, lemme go check my blood sugar. But seriously, these two are so innocent that they end up being a little too boring for me. I’m not trying to be a hater, but they’re by and far the least exciting pair. Suzuki and Tani had some early communication problems, and that friction made for some interesting moments. Some people (read: incels) are still mad over Suzuki’s hypothetical about sleeping with a lot of people. Then we have Taira and Azuma, who are almost all friction thanks to the former’s negativity. But man, Nishi and Yamada are just too wholesome for my blood.
Stray thoughts & observations:
— Despite his negativity, Azuma still enjoys Taira’s damn company for some reason. In fact, she’s always been observing him. At this moment, I don’t think she has feelings for him yet. Having said that, I wonder why she has always been interested in him as a person.
— Back in the present, the boys eventually roll up to give Taira some company. Gotta have Christmas cake with the bros.
— There goes that patented cynicism again.
— Oh, we get to see how Suzuki fished for Tani’s contact info from before they started dating. I think this is a callback to a joke back in season one (or more accurately, part one of the split cour). Basically, Suzuki just started worming her way into his heart through nonstop LINE messages. Girl had a mission and she was determined to see it through.
