God, I am half convinced that this episode was one very long subliminal advertisement for umbrellas. I may need to go back and count how many times they say the word ‘Umbrella’ in this episode. It was pretty easy to guess with how much they were talking about umbrella’s that this week’s monster was going to be an umbrella monster. What I couldn’t imagine though was what kind of problem could you have that would lead you to becoming an umbrella monster.
Well it wasn’t so much what his problem was that turned him into an umbrella monster. It was the hyper fixation he gained on umbrella’s after trying and failing to join the boys conversation about umbrella’s in the bathhouse.
His real struggle was honestly something I can relate too all too well. Being awkward and unable to properly be able to make friends and fit into conversations.
You see in the scene where he sees the defense club talking about umbrella’s in the bath that he desperately wants to go in and assert himself. Join the conversation, maybe become friends with these people. He spends far too much time overthinking it though and standing outside the bath talking to himself. So much time that the members of the Defense Club start to think he might be a weirdo peeping tom or he’s up to something suspicious.
Awkward and completely unsure of how to approach the boys. He keeps assaulting them with umbrella’s since it’s the only subject he can think of to bring up with them. The boys are rightfully freaked out by his attempts to approach them so awkwardly and they keep fleeing from him.
Eventually, the student council steps in and turns him into a umbrella monster. The Defense club transforms and they figure out the identity of the monster quickly. Even realizing that they are kind of the source of his unhappiness and that he is a pretty good, but awkward guy.
They talk him down, make him happy again and everything is well and good.
It’s overall a pretty standard episode. It was a general pause in the character development, it reminds me vaguely of the melon episode from season 1. Where there would be nothing really lost if you skipped watching the episode. Sure, it’s funny, but it does nothing to advance the characters or the plot.
The most of anything character driven we get is a few angry outbursts from Ata. Who seems to be progressing more and more down a path of bitterness. Is his anger this week linked at all to the picture from the time capsule? He says that Kyōtarō has always been like this and that Ryoma enables him. I am hoping that we get more into this story as the series enters it’s second half. It’s been doing really well at fleshing out it’s cast of characters and I am very invested in the relationship here. I’ll probably end up shipping it the way I shipped Kinshiro and Atsushi.
Next week we skip from the rainy spring season to summer as it looks like sports will be played and, wait a second, you can put pixels over his face all you want. That’s totally the teacher from the first two seasons! How many years after the original is this supposed to even take place anyway!?