Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai! Ep 7: This is Reality

“Blast reality. Burst it into shreds. Banishment… this world!”

Summary

It’s summer vacation, and Rikka invites her club and Isshiki over to her house now occupied by her grandparents, which is situated near the beach. When everyone realizes that Rikka is not her usual self, Tooka ends up telling Yuuta about the Takanashi sisters’ deceased father, whose death came as a shock to Rikka, who refused to accept it.

Impression

Summer vacation is here (for the cast anyway), and there’s nothing like starting it off with a bit of Isshiki x Kumin-senpai, which seems to have actually developed from last episode if only on Isshiki’s side of things. With the OP hinting at a beach episode, I wasn’t surprised to see everyone drop by the beach near Rikka’s house, and much fanservice and hilarity ensued. Shinka and Dekomori sure got quick suntans, in contrast to Kumin-senpai who still looked exactly the same (probably since she was sleeping the whole time again). I’m pleased to see Shinka and Dekomori grow closer to each other… it may not seem like that on the surface, but they talk together more and Shinka takes care of Dekomori some of the time, so I guess we can say that their relationship has improved somewhat.

There was that slight feeling of foreboding all along from seeing that something was not quite right with Rikka, and it went from uncertainty to a quiet “oh, shit” near the end of the episode. Last week we were given the first pieces of the puzzle – Rikka holding hands with Yuuta for comfort and Touka asking him to accompany the Takanashi sisters on vacation, which turned out to be back at their home (presumably far away from the city). From Rikka not joining in with Dekomori and acting like her usual chuunibyou self, it was easy to tell that she doesn’t like returning home – be it her down-to-earth grandparents or that nothing happens in the house. The “mental assaults and pressure” she mentioned may also be closer to the truth than I’d like to think.

Rikka’s father died too abruptly for her, and she never ended up accepting it – still seeing him past the horizon on the day of his death. I suppose that would be the target of her chuunibyou delusions: using the power of her Wicked Eye to reach the Ethereal Horizon, where her father is. All the time she’s never been able to gather her emotions together and visit her father’s grave, and so whenever she visits home she was always conflicted on what she should do. It’s actually really sad, and not what I expected the show to pull off at all – no, looking at it this is exactly as expected out of KyoAni’s pick for the season. There was that short, peaceful interlude where Rikka is properly happy for the first time this episode, then it shattered into bits and everything was hammered home really painfully back into reality.

It’s just like Touka to be harsh and blunt, but I do wish she could have been a little gentler about it, despite it being a wake-up call to the reality of not just the situation with her father, but also from her chuunibyou delusions. Rikka was so looking forward to seeing her old home again, and it’s just an empty plot of land now – I don’t know about you, but I found that horribly depressing in a show that I look to for weekly laughs. Everything seems to be fitting together, and things like her trigger catchphrase kinda make sense now – she’ll blast reality, and burst into shreds the world she doesn’t want to accept.