Episode 5 Impression
After last week’s hilarious Mori Summer episode, I was definitely expecting something more… sober this time round, but I guess they weren’t quite done with all the wacky side stories yet! I must admit, at this point I’m getting slightly anxious as to whether the Yuuta x Rikka (x Satone) dynamic will be properly explored to the sort of depth I’m hoping for – I’m writing this without having watched Episode 6 yet, so maybe my fears have already been addressed. As entertaining as these are, they’re essentially filler episodes, which is somewhat worrying.
Anyway! If last week was a Nibutani episode, then this week was very much a Kumin-senpai one. While napping’s always been her “thing”, there’s not much room at all to extrapolate on that, much less give it an episode to itself… until now. I can’t believe that proper napping competitions actually exist, where people compete in sleeping – and that their school would be perfectly fine with a society in which they do exactly that (although to be fair, the other hobby groups at that meeting did all look awfully shady). Apparently 2010 saw a national siesta competition carried out in Spain, in which participants had to sleep for as long as they could within a 20 minute time period. Much like what Kumin-senpai was talking about, they’re judged on how fast they fall asleep, their posture, how deep and how long they sleep – they check whether you’re really asleep through measuring your pulse, although I’m thinking it’s possible to play possum if you’re really good at it. It’s unfortunate that Rikka ended up challenging a serious Siesta Club with her society’s existence at stake – that sort of plot is what you’d expect from a team sports series or something 😀 There’s not much else to say here, but I do love how KyoAni are managing to insert lots of chuuni fantasy scenes wherever possible – even while coordinating a shared lucid dreaming sequence!
Episode 6 Impression
Well, I asked for some Yuuta x Rikka, and that’s definitely what we got with Episode 6. They’ve taken another small step forward – graduating from nose kisses to a kiss on the cheek! Here’s hoping they fully kiss by the end of the series 😀 Throughout most of the episode though, there was a lot of awkward floundering; I definitely shared Nibu’s exasperation. True, it probably doesn’t help that they’re on a class trip, with classmates who are rather interested in their relationship status – Yuuta and Rikka were already rather touchy over the whole dating thing even at home with Kuzuha. But steering clear from anything romantic whatsoever is still a bit too conservative, no matter how bad a mix chuunibyou and romance is – we’re already halfway through the show! And it’s not like they’re trying to hide anything from anyone, either. The bed scene was admittedly great though, it definitely made up for the lack of romance thus far.
What they need is a nice, big push in the right direction – a Satone-flavoured push if possible. It’s a pity she hasn’t really been around lately, other than in a few short scenes here and there. They sort of introduced her as a potential romance threat, then left things hanging with her. Other than Satone, I’d have liked more screen time for our impromptu Dekomori/Kumin combo! You’ve really gotta feel for Dekomori here – with no Rikka to play around with and no Mori Summer to fight with, she must have been bored to death (see what I did there).