Man, last week I said to myself, “I cannot get enough of this jerk talking.” Thank god my prayers were answered and this episode was almost entirely the main character talking. If it hadn’t been, I don’t know what I would have done with myself.
So the episode starts up with the main dude talking to the girl he met on the hill that day with the hat. And they got one thing right at least. Hot Damn is this chick boring. I mean like…she talks like an android. There’s no personality behind this and at first it’s a little funny, but it gets boring really really fast.
Basically he takes her to a cafe where he begins to talk to her for a good ten minutes on why she’s the perfect girl for his dating sim and why she’s not boring.
This scene was probably the most boring thing i’ve had to see all season. The only thing that was interesting was they had this weird recurring joke about how the next table over this waitress kept messing up the guy’s order, and honestly, I was more invested in that running joke than the actual story.
Eventually the other two main girls show up and act Tsundereish.
After he talks to the android-esc girl for awhile they head back to the place where they first met but she informs him that they actually met on the first day of school but he just didn’t notice her. He gets annoyed and takes her back to his house.
There he basically shoves a dating sim down her throat and makes her play two all the way through the night. And that’s basically where the episode ends.
Yeah. It’s a short recap. BECAUSE NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENS.
I don’t know if this show is trying to get me to LIKE this main guy because they’re failing MISERABLY. Not only do I not care about this guy, I do not even LIKE this guy. He’s a selfish jerk who is still pushing his ‘dream girl’ for his dating sim on three separate girls. He’s not endearing, he’s really pissing me off.
Something we also learn is that the main guy is apparently also very well known in school because he got manga put in the school library and anime shown at the school festival. And because of that the whole school knows who he is, to the point of being the most well known male in the school. Yeah, i’m going to call bullshit on that. The most well known guy in school is not going to be THE OTAKU GUY WHO GOT MANGA PUT IN SCHOOL. It’s going to be the Yuki’s From Fruits Basket or the Tamaki’s From Ouran. Look. You can pretend in your little fantasy world that otakus are the most well known people in your school but they’re not. They’re just not.
It really is hard to talk about this episode as NOTHING HAPPENED. Besides sitting and talking about how this girl is perfect for his dating sim even though he knows nothing about her, (Which, honestly is a little creepy and disturbing) he basically flat out BEGS this girl to stay the night and play a dating sim. I don’t know what this show’s trying to make me feel, but whatever it is, i’m not feeling it. All i’m feeling is a mixture of uncomfortableness and absolute boredom.
My favorite character only had a few minutes in the episode and it wasn’t even a good scene. Also, I can tell she’s going to be a ‘thrown to the side’ character to make way for the most boring character since drywall. And I understand that the series is about this boring getting becoming not boring, but here’s the thing. I saw episode 00 which takes place in the future…and she’s STILL not interesting. So it’s not like she’s going to GO anywhere. God. I’m not invested even slightly. Pff… oh well, at least it isn’t Vanadis.
Episode 3.5/10
-Hideki
I don’t think Kato’s voice is meant to be ‘talking like an android’…I think she’s meant to be talking like a person. Which is to say, not an anime persona like the other main girls. Japanese people speak in a rather monotone manner in real life, and I believe her unremarkable voice is meant to reflect that. She’s a really real 3D girl, not an anime/VN heroine. When they discuss whether she is or isn’t ‘boring’ in the restaurant, I believe this was something of a translation error- the word they use is ‘jimi’ which would be most accurately translated as ‘plain’ and not boring. Plain, in the MC’s crazy otaku mind, means the token ‘plain girl’- glasses, freckles, braids- until the show takes off her glasses, let down her hair and goes tada! She was beautiful all along! In that sense, she isn’t ‘plain’.
But she just might be boring. That klutzy waitress distracting you as Kato is speaking? The one you wanted to learn more about? She’s there to prove this point. Kato is a background character. She fades away as you focus on other, more interesting people. And so does the MC. The show wants to make you feel how he feels- the frustration of GOD DAMN IT THIS GIRL IS BORING, and how can the story go on with her as the lead!? I assume the MC is going to hang in there and try to look for points that can be fleshed out, eager to see the day when she does become an appropriate heroine. And that’ll be our story, with some fanservice, meta galge jokes and pointless love pentagons thrown in here and there. As for episode 00, I thought it illustrated her hidden depths pretty well. The focus on how Tomoya was ‘the first person to notice her existence’ proves that she’s been agonizing over it in one way or another, for being noticed is something she cherishes. She hasn’t made any outward progress asides from growing her hair, but she’s looking forward to the game and hopes everyone enjoys it. What this tells me is that she’s hoping they’ll find her to be an enjoyable heroine, which in turn means she’s hoping she’ll become someone noteworthy by the time it’s all over. She has no idea how to go about changing herself, but she has hope. I find this to be a very boring, ordinary and absolutely human description of what many people actually struggle with in real life.
I for one really like side characters like Kato. I get tired of tropey archetypes like the tsundere childhood friend or ice queen sempai now and then, so to have a purely normal girl take center stage is rather refreshing. Ah, and I don’t think they were saying Tomoya was famous in a good way. At all. It’s more like ‘that one super creepy and obnoxious otaku guy’. There was someone with a similar reputation where I went to college. Almost everyone knew who he was when I mentioned him.
@ Noc. ME too. I am sick of archetypes like the tsundere childhood friend or ice queen sempai in every single anime that I watched over the years. Hideki just don’t understand side characters at all. Kato as a character is a refreshing thing to come to watch these days when the rest of the winter season has stupid harem hijinks unto them.
Absolute: Megumi Kato IS THE BEST GIRL (for me)*. Okay, I’m jumping the gun there since we haven’t learned of the two to come, nor how Aki helped Eriri and Utaha. But Megumi is a really nice contrast to Aki. It’s probably why Aki’s character can afford to start off so cringe-worthy, even if he doesn’t have his good points.
Maybe I just really enjoy how Kato’s the one sticking it to him since I’d guessed that would be the role she would play, but at the same time Eriri and Utaha aren’t left out of it because Aki flashes back to what they point out about his delusions, too. In fact, I like how Kato pokes holes in his bubble just by way of discussion and learning, versus Eriri and Utaha who poke for the purpose of poking.
Hopefully Kato’s role in balancing out Aki will continue, while Aki actually manages to bring out more of her as a real person in his deluded attempt to shape her as a 2D heroine. I don’t really understand why he’s so adamant about that… Isn’t it enough to base the heroine character on her and have her read the lines of herself “in another life”?
I mean, if she’s good enough to be a heroine of his coveted 2D games, why not just date her..? I guess that’s the eventuality though.