Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Come wa Machigatteiru. Zoku Episode 12

“Is anything… truly genuine?”

Impression

Is it wrong of me to want next week’s finale to feature Haruno being grievously injured in a car accident? I find myself getting so irritated every single time she appears – because her sole aim seems to be pouring barrels of oil onto the fire that is her sister’s misfortune. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the only reason she turned up to the cooking class was to laugh inside at the farcical pretext of giving someone chocolate as a ‘taste test’ – Irohasu said she was there to help, but from what we saw she did practically nothing. And how does she seem to know fucking everything? For someone like her, she may be able to deduce that Hikki is after ‘something genuine’, but her wording and timing was chillingly precise – it’s like the walls are her ears, or something. I find a lot of irony in the fact that she scorns the Service Club for trying to act genuine in an attempt to be genuine, when her entire interaction with society -if she even hangs around anyone except her family and a bunch of high school students- is anything but. I, for one, am actually liking how Yukino has changed. It may mean that she is sometimes too overly dependent on Hikki, which is what I think the ‘sinister’ alternative to trust between them is, but she is forming relationships nonetheless. Her relationship with Hikki has gone through hard times, but it’s something they’ve built up together – and most importantly, it’s something she chose for herself, instead of being something forced onto her by either her infuriating mother or dysfunctional sister.

Yukinon does not like her mother. I understand that – I don’t like her mother, either. But I don’t understand why I don’t like her mother. It feels like something is really off with their relationship – information about Yukinon’s future plans is enough to make Yukinoshita Sr. chase her all the way out to a student council event, where she is then told that she has fallen below expectations. It irks me, and I’m not entirely sure why. Oh, actually there was one part I did understand – she was all too condescending with Yui, who tried to defend Yukinon. Now, that really pissed me off – it was like she was talking to a little kid or something. At any rate, that meeting wasn’t a coincidence – it must have been Haruno who tipped her off about the cooking event. Ahh, what a cunt. I didn’t miss how she tried to stir up some conflict by making some loud remarks about Hayato and Yukinon, only to have Hayato gently defuse the situation. She probably gets off from causing other people pain and suffering – after all, to her the Service Club is ‘lame’ when it’s on the mend.

As for the plot of the episode itself – it plays out like a stand-alone thing if you remove all the unease with Yui and the final scene. An episode focusing on Valentine’s Day is as cliché as it gets, but of course Oregairu turns it into a little story showcasing the importance of maintaining the status quo and keeping up appearances. A girl like Hina can appease Tobe in order to not disappoint him, and the female student population can all have a crack at ‘everyone’s Hayama Hayato’ under the pretence of only giving him some to ‘taste’. I actually liked how straightforward Orimoto and Iroha were with wanting to give Hikki chocolate – Iroha in particular was golden this episode, as usual. Hikki must have scored lots of Irohasu points by now, she’s starting to talk about ‘whispering sweet nothings’ in her rejection lines. Her scenes are like an antidote to all the Haruno we’ve been getting – the basic premise behind them both is that they wear constant masks and are extremely underhanded, but as I’ve said it’s never malicious with Irohasu. Initially though, I was worried that the psychological cost of having Tamanawa and friends return wouldn’t be worth the money the student council would save, as hilariously cheap as the idea was.

I feel for Yui, I really do. Yui has always been a really sweet girl, and her affection for Hikki is a long-standing one – but I suspect her recent unwillingness to make any moves is all down to Yukinon. I haven’t forgotten the infirmary scene from last week, nor the fact that Yui was peeking in on it – she’s been watching Hikki a lot lately, even in the classroom. In muttering that she’s got lots of things to look out for, and that it would be ‘unfair’ if Hikki walked her home, it feels like she’s holding back because of Yukinon – as if she would be stepping on her toes in having anything intimate to do with Hikki. Even in the cooking event, the two of them presented Hikki with chocolate they had jointly worked on, as if implying the underlying stalemate the two of them are at. If Hikki had asked Yui to go somewhere with him in the past, Yui would have jumped at the chance – but now she asks for time to think a bit first. Yui now knows what she wants, but is now torn over whether to go for it at the potential cost of losing something else, and it’s hurting inside as a result. It’s suffering to be Yui, even on her birthday – which is the date this episode aired in Japan. I can guess what she wished for ;_;