Oreimo 2 Episode 6: Confessions

“What did you just say?! Kirino with a boyfriend?! There’s no way she has one, right?!”

Summary

Kirino introduces her acquaintance as a man named Mikagami Kouki, whom she originally met through modelling for Misaki-san. Kyousuke suspects that this might be Kirino’s hinted boyfriend, but Ayase hasn’t heard of Kirino entering any sort of relationship. When Kirino sees Kyousuke spending time with Kuroneko, she spitefully declares Mikagami as her boyfriend, bringing him over to the Kousaka house to meet her parents.

Impression

They really laid the drama on thick this week – and it was quite a shock too, with Ayase’s segment dividing things up into separate slices for us. Let’s talk about that first – you can never have enough Ayase 😀 As usual, the OP managed to give lots of teasers away, but I didn’t imagine she’d actually chain poor Kyousuke up after inviting him to her room. Though I can’t really blame her…Kyousuke’s not as dangerous as Ayase makes him out to be, but he’s grown into a bit of a pervert, don’t you think? Ayase reliably manages to keep him in line though – she’s got him whipped more than Kirino does. She can’t be that scary can she? In comparison to other yanderes (cough Gasai Yuno cough) Ayase’s pretty mild. I can’t say the same if someone’s threatening “her” Kirino and there’s a knife lying around though. Did you see how she reacted to finding that photo sticker of that fateful date? Scratch that, how did she even get her hands on a copy?

Anyway – the drama. I’d like to remind everyone that when they were introduced to Mikagami Kouki near the beginning of the episode, Kyousuke commented “Well, it looks like this won’t turn into a tragedy like that time with Ayase.” Well played Kyousuke, well played. Mikagami’s managed to do pretty well in life so far – he’s a part-time designer that has his own brand (“Eternal”) which works under Misaki-san, that agent who went after Kirino a few episodes back. As a guy who has the looks, the smarts and the money, I can see why he’d want to hide his otaku hobby from his everyday life  – his reasons are fairly similar to Kirino’s, who hid her own otaku ways from him. And they’ve met up a few times after that, which sparked something off in Kyousuke. Mikagami’s a decent enough guy – it’s not like he’s a jerk or a classic douche like some guys are, but his appearance managed to set off a massive time bomb.

I’ve never…disliked Kirino, but I know a lot of people hate her with a burning passion, and  this episode highlighted many of the reasons why. And no, it’s not because she quickly turned up to cockblock Kyousuke and Kuroneko’s moments together – instead it was her reactions that really pissed me off. Kirino sees Kyousuke flirting with Kuroneko – fine, I can understand her getting jealous over that, especially with her tsundere affections towards Kyousuke. What I didn’t find necessary was Kirino’s sudden action of constructing this elaborate lie about Mikagami being her boyfriend, all just to spite Kyousuke and Kuroneko – the latter calling her out on it immediately, while Kyousuke was pretty slow on the uptake. And if that wasn’t bad enough, Kirino went on to spout some pretty nasty things to the brother who’s always looked out for her – the entire thing was bang out of order, especially when it was supposed to be a Summer Comiket after-party that Saori organised. Kirino basically said to Kyousuke “you’re not needed any more”, which was a really bad way of handling things. Despite what they said, he cares about it, and she does as well – it was stupid of her to make it worse.

They should rename this show “My Little Sister’s Friends Can’t Be This Cute”, because at that point I realised I’d much rather see a romcom focusing around Ayase or Kuroneko than Kirino despite her apparently being the heroine. Kyousuke has received a lot of physical abuse lately (mostly in the form of slaps) and while I’ve tried to write off the earlier ones in the series, I didn’t feel comfortable with this one – the expression Kirino wore didn’t sit right with me at all. Nor did I feel throwing a cake at him was necessary. Kyousuke’s done too much to receive this kind of shit in return – he even found himself defending Mikagami in front of his dad, who very much wanted to sock him a couple of times. I know Kyousuke was being a retard in his own right, but I actually didn’t want him to back down and apologize like that – I would have much preferred to see Kirino being taken down a peg or two. Even when they made up, Kirino couldn’t properly say what she felt.

…Well, after Kyousuke’s speech on his overflowing siscon love, Shironeko’s asked him out. I’m actually quite happy jumping on this ship, as it’s a pairing I can see that might genuinely work out. Here’s to hoping Kirino won’t throw up a massive storm when she finds out.