It’s the day of the cultural festival, and if you’ll recall, the F/ACE boys are filming scenes at the school today. Wouldn’t this cause a riot? No, it’s okay! The boys are all concealing their faces! This way, they can walk around the school unbothered! Actually, I feel like this should have the opposite effect. If you saw a dude donning a gorilla mask, wouldn’t you be suspicious? And of course, the dickbag Ori would be the gorilla. Typically, the trope dictates that the main couple spends precious time together walking the grounds, taking in all the activities. Unfortunately, Ori insists on third-wheelin’ Utage and Tamon. The sad part is, at the end of the day, Tamon will tell Utage how much fun he had with her, she’ll return the sentiment, and neither of them will even remember that Ori was with them. Dude’s a complete non-factor, but he’s still trying to get with someone else’s fan. Ori has no shame.

Once again, Tamon is in the corner sobbing. It’s the same ol’ conflict again. He wants to be closer to Utage, but she wants to maintain a safe difference between the two of them. Not because she’s an uber professional or anything, but because she’s an idol fan. Utage says it herself: her biggest priority is Tamon’s dream. She will not do anything that threatens that dream, i.e. fostering a personal friendship if not relationship with the guy of her dreams. More importantly, what Tamon personally wants is immaterial. He’s lonely? Suck it up, buttercup. I would feel bad for the guy, but he did threaten to kill himself earlier in the series in order to manipulate her. As a result, I’ve gone cold on this… this… whatever you call this “romance.”

Utage’s new teacher Asuka is also a F/ACE superfan. In fact, she likes the yellow one. I didn’t think this would be something to shake on, but… here we are. I guess this is what it’s like when superfans meet in the wild. So to pile coincidences on top of coincidences, Utage immediately bumps into Natsuki at a store. Small world, blah blah blah. Anyway, on camera, Natsuki is… very over-the-top cheerful, so knowing how they tend to write characters on this show, he’s probably the opposite of that in reality.

Ori thinks Tamon and Utage kissed on the beach that day, and he’s been obsessively replaying the scene over and over in his head. By the end of this week’s episode, he will admit to himself that he’s in love with Utage. But why? Literally why? What does he even know about her other than that she’s crazy about Tamon? Oh, she tells him to be his pure and sincere self? That’s enough to be in love with someone? C’mon, get out of here. I’m not convinced. I’m simply not. Ori was right the first time: “I thought I only wanted to get her to look my way because of my pride…” He has his own fans — a veritable sea of them — but he wants what he can’t have. He’s just another petulant child.

I looked back over my notes only to realize I don’t have a central theme to hone in on. So… I’ll just cover this episode as a series of bullet points.