You know, when it comes to romance in anime, i’m getting really sick of two things.
- When they have like 10 year olds act like they’re in super real love
- When the character is in love with the most popular guy/girl in school
Now which of these two things do you think this episode is about? If you guessed both, then you are absolutely right. And boy…does it suck just as much as you think it would.
Yeah, for the first thing in a while, I found an episode of this show that I just flat out didn’t like. Why is that? Pff. well I guess i’ll explain it.
So the episode starts out with Valentine’s day just around the bend. Kokoro is walking home with her friends when a girl she hasn’t met before pops out and and introduces herself, telling her that she has a crush on her brother and wants to give him some chocolate on valentine’s day.
Kokoro then realizes she should give her chocolate to the guy she likes. (Aka soccer guy)
She goes home and the Cocotamas ask her what Valentine’s day is as they have absolutely no idea. The book one uses her magic to explain that it’s the time of year when a girl makes chocolate and gives her friends and the boy she likes. The female Cocotamas get excited and decide to make everyone candy.
Kokoro ends up making the friends little bags of chocolate but also makes an extra special one for the soccer guy. The next day at school the female cocotamas come with her to make sure everything goes well. However, of course when they arrive, all the girls want to give soccer boy chocolates. Because he’s the most popular boy in school.
Ok look. This is something that has bothered me in pretty much every show I’ve ever seen. If a girl/guy has a crush on the most popular girl/guy in school it does NOT make me think that they’re the special one for that person. Just because it’s their show, I don’t all of a sudden go “Wow! All you random people make way for the person who truly deserves them!” No. No I don’t do that. If everyone in the school likes this person, and you like them too, you are just another person who likes that person. You are not special just because it’s your show. It makes you seem just as petty as everyone else. You like that character at first because everyone else likes them. I don’t care if the characters thinks they’re special because they like them for other reasons, or they had a conversation with them while walking home or something stupid like that. They liked them originally because they were the most popular person in school. Whatever their excuse or reason, it makes the main character seem shallow. It is far more relatable to have the main character like a person in the school who is a friend, or a random student. Having them like the most popular kid in school just makes them seem shallow and poorly written characters.
Ahem. Sorry about that. Now where was I?
So Kokoro wants to give soccer boy her chocolates but she’s too embarrassed. With some encouragement from the female Cocotamas she eventually shoves it in his locker.
After a while however, Kokoro gets too embarrassed and decides she wants to take the chocolate back. So there’s a bunch of shenanigans until finally she gets ahold of the soccer guy by himself and tells him that she accidentally gave him the wrong chocolates. She switches them for the friend bag and there’s no hard feelings.
However, that night everyone eats her chocolates and they taste terrible as she fucked up the recipe. the end.
If you couldn’t tell by the way I raced through the end of the recap, I did not like this episode. From the first episode I said I didn’t like the idea of romance being in this show, and this episode was a glaringly obvious reason of why it doesn’t work. First of all, they’re too young. These kids are in elementary school. I don’t know about Japan, but when I was this young, girls still had cooties. I don’t know why they feel the need to shoehorn in romance into series that don’t need it. It’s a girl looking after underwear egg gods. I’m pretty certain your target demographic for this series is not worrying about getting dates. Just saying.
Secondly, As I stated before, the whole “He’s the most popular boy in school” trope is so so so so overdone it actually kind of hurts. I would actually lose respect for someone if they told me that they had a crush on the most popular boy in school. I’d be like “fucking really? REALLY?” As I said before. YOU’RE not a special one who gets the most popular kid. you’re literally just another face. Fuck you.
This episode just brought up every feeling I have about this trope and how much I hate it.
On top of that, notice something I didn’t talk about a whole lot today? Yeah. The Cocotamas. They really didn’t DO a whole lot this episode. The males were hardly in it at all, and the females tried to help Kokoro but didn’t do that great of a job in the end anyway. They didn’t get a whole lot of stuff to do or screen time, and it was mainly focusing on the crappy awkward kid romance.
Overall, I hope we stay away from this topic in the next episode. I understand it was the Valentine’s episode but..ugh. I’m just glad it’s over.
Episode 3/10
-Hideki