After last week’s episode, I’m kinda dreading this one. But fine, let’s see how our kids (mostly Arata) manage to mess things up even further. Immediately, the situation gets messier and messier for Arata. He lets himself get roped into doing a supposedly minor role in a kaiju movie. You just know it’s going to keep escalating, though. Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile. And again, he can walk away at any time. But Arata’s gullible. He’s getting involved in a world he knows nothing about. Even worse, he’s doing it without anyone on his side to protect him. I’m talking parents, agents, lawyers, mentors, etc. You don’t jump headfirst into showbiz like this. That’s an easy way to get taken advantage of. He doesn’t even know if any of this will even help improve Harugon’s image.

Unfortunately, Kuroe is perfectly capable of screwing things up on her own as well. It turns out the guy who tried to blackmail Kuroe wasn’t her age after all. Instead, he’s actually… uh, an elementary school student. He’s also a huge Harugon fanboy (though not quite at Manatsu’s level). I guess I’ve seen this before. The Like a Dragon series did a similar thing with Ryuji Goda in Yakuza 0. But that was just a gag. It was a short, little side story that you could potentially not even encounter. In Kaiju Girl Caramelise, however, Daichi exists to drive a rift between Kuroe and Arata.

Again, it’s just a dumb kid. Pat him on the head, then just go on your merry way, right? That’s what should’ve happened. Instead, Kuroe heads to his apartment to play Minecraft. Girl, c’mon, who the hell hangs out with a complete stranger on their first meeting? It doesn’t matter what they look like! But again, Daichi only exists to create drama. I’m quickly proven right when Arata soon finds Kuroe and the kid embracing in public later that day. When Kuroe tries to go after her boyfriend to explain the situation, Daichi grabs and loudly declares his affinity for her, but y’know, in a kiddy way. The only winning move all along was to not play; Kuroe never should’ve indulged the kid in the first place. But I guess she’s a pushover much like her boyfriend.

Arata continues walking away, so out of frustration, Kuroe initiates the break-up. Ugh, I don’t really know how to evaluate these two, because they’re just kids. They’re literally kids in high school. As such, I shouldn’t expect them to be rational. But I mean, just seconds ago, Kuroe was crashing out because Arata wouldn’t listen to her. And he’s not listening to her because he probably thinks he’s protecting her. After all, they’re drawing a crowd. And because Kuroe isn’t getting what she wants, her first instinct is to protect herself, i.e., you can’t fire me because I quit! It’s stupid and it’s self-destructive, but it’s also an all-too-common pattern of human behavior. A part of Kuroe has always felt like Arata was out of her league. It’s not that she would ever cheat, but she was never 100% committed to the idea of their relationship. As a result, this breakup is Kuroe’s lizard brain — ’cause she’s a kaiju! — telling her to cut bait and run now before she gets hurt even worse. And while I can totally understand that instinct, Kuroe never should’ve started dating in the first place, especially when she still has so such a low sense of self-worth. Getting yourself a hot boyfriend won’t fix your fundamental problems.

The next day, the girlies hear Kuroe out, and they immediately try to pump her up, and assure her that everything will be okay. Unfortunately, we can’t have nice things. After stuffing themselves silly with dessert, Kuroe and her friends see a TV crew shooting a scene in public. To their surprise, Arata is there as one of the actors. Even worse, one of his co-actors — that conniving actress that we first met last week — walks up and embraces him. Kuroe and the girlies literally just talked about clearing up misunderstandings. That was mere minutes ago. And yet, what does Kuroe do? She runs off in tears. She instantly jumps to the conclusion that Arata must have replaced her already. Worst of all, Kuroe tells herself that her mother was right about not falling in love.

Look, the biggest problem here isn’t that our girl doom spiraled. After all, the human mind can be crazy like that. We can’t stop the negative or intrusive thoughts even if we tried. But it’s what we do with said thoughts that defines us. When Arata walked away from her earlier in the episode, Kuroe whined to herself: “You’re not even going to hear me out.” Sure, you can argue that turnabout is fair play; he didn’t let her explain herself, so why should she extend him any grace? In life, you’ll often encounter these situations. You can stand your ground and refuse to be the bigger person out of principle, and that’s fine; that’s your prerogative. You just also have to accept the consequences, which is that you likely won’t have a relationship with the other person. If Kuroe’s okay with that — if she’s okay with potentially walking away from Arata for good — then sure, all she has to do is keep running away as she’s doing now.

Well, Kuroe doesn’t have time to pity herself, because that other kaiju is finally here. It doesn’t look friendly, either. We all know what’s going to happen next. She’s going to turn into Harugon, and there’s going to be a big, blow-out battle between her and the other kaiju. Towards the end of the fight, Arata is going to put himself in danger by getting close to Kuroe/Harugon somehow. He’s going to explain, apologize, or do whatever it is he has to do, because let’s face it, he fucked up first by trying to fix a problem she never asked him to fix, i.e., Harugon’s poor public image. He fucked up by literally not even spending time with his girlfriend. Finally, they’ll get back together again. Even so, my issue isn’t that the conclusion is easy to predict. Rather, it’s the fact that we could’ve avoided this whole mess in the first place if both of them weren’t such idiots. “But then we wouldn’t have any drama!” I’d rather have no drama than cheap drama.

Stray thoughts & observations:

— The other kaiju is already on a rampage, but it oddly doesn’t do as much damage as you might expect. I assume everyone here is going to survive, ’cause Kaiju Girl Caramelise doesn’t seem like a show where anyone would actually die. Also, should we refer to it as Kuroe’s sibling? Hell, do we even know if they’re related?

— Daichi might not ultimately get the (much older) girl, but hey, he might have a chance at a lucrative basketball career.

— Well, Kuroe is right about one thing: a new relationship shouldn’t have this many issues. Ideally, they both work out their issues before getting back together.