Oresuki – Episodes 1&2 (First Impressions)

Sometimes you’re in a romantic comedy, sometimes you’re in a tragedy and sometimes you’re in both. This is the case of one Amatsuyu Kisaragi, nickname ‘Joro’. The first episode begins with a bright and cheery spring opening, your typical romantic comedy. It introduces his childhood best friend Aoi Hinata, nickname ‘Himawari’. Sakura Akino, nickname ‘Cosmos’ and Taiyo Oga, nickname: Sun-chan. It seems like Joro has it pretty good, he’s the secretary on the student council and he seems well-liked enough.
At the end of the school day, Cosmos asks him if he will go out with her on Saturday. Then when he is doing homework, he gets a text from Himawari asking him to go out Saturday. He tells her to wait till Sunday and thus he weekend begins. He meets up with the cool mature third-year student council president. They go through their day and it’s a wonderful time, as it wraps up she asks him to sit with her on a bench and here it is. The traditional set up for the romantic confession.
Surely, the beginning of his romantic school life is here. Except it isn’t, she confesses to him that she’s in love with his best friend Sun-chan and wants his help for hooking them up. The same thing happens the next day with Himawari, on the bench she confesses to him that she is in love with Sun-chan and wants Joro to set them up.

This is where the episode goes from alright to excellent.
When Joro shows his true colors after the two confessions, as he breaks down and goes full Light Yagami on us. No seriously, he started his psychotic laugh and I went “Oh damn, he’s going full Yagami” and then it launched into the actual parody of the ‘He got me’ scene from Death Note. The episode takes a complete turn as now we can see what he’s really thinking and see his truly rotten personality. He agrees to help both of the girls but not be properly on either of their sides in it. His goal, to get to date the one that gets rejected by Sun-chan. Though after his first two completely botched plans to get the girls talking to Sun-chan normally, he’s pretty damn tired of these girls. So he retires to the one place in the school where he knows he’s going to find some god damn peace and quiet.
The library.
The biggest issue with the library is the shy bookworm who makes it her home. Sumireko Sanshokuin, nickname ‘Pansy’ who speaks to him with a sharp tongue. She reveals to him that she knows everything that is going on and if he doesn’t agree to hear her out she’ll tell Sun-chan everything.

Thus the bench appears, even in the middle of the school library. The music, holy hell the music is what makes this scene. The score is very reminiscent of the Imperial March from Starwars and the robotic noses as Joro moves towards the bench crack me up. She begins her confession and he’s begging for it to play out the way it did with the other girls, unfortunately for him she says that she loves him and it’s the only romantic event. Not only does she love him, but she also loves the real him. Not the cute fake boy he pretends to be, the absolute jerk he is underneath.

Honestly, the thing that I like most about this episode is the build-up with Pansy. You may or may not notice her stalking him the entire episode, there are scenes where it’s immensely obvious like her standing behind the bench at each of the confessions. There are other scenes though where she is just chilling in the background. If you don’t notice the first time, it’s like a fun game of where’s Waldo the second time around.

That’s where we hit episode two. Episode two asks us the important question of ‘What happens if Sun-chan already has a girl he likes?’ which could be a huge wrench in Joro’s plan to set up either Cosmos or Himawari with him. Leading us to our fourth faithful encounter with Bench-kun, as Sun-chan takes Joro to the bench to confess who he loves. The person he’s in love with is Semireko Sanshokuin. He asks Joro to help set him up with Pansy and Joro refuses, then, Sun-chan asks for advice another way by using a baseball analogy.
Joro of course, thinking that this is truly about baseball gives him the best advice that he can and moves along his way. He starts thinking that maybe, just maybe his friend’s emotions are the ones that are the most important and approaches Pansy about setting her up with Sun-chan.

This is the first bit of drama, as Sun-chan sees them talking and almost takes it the wrong way. She covers for him by using the library inspection that the student council was doing as an excuse and he gets through this just time. Problems arise later though when Cosmos and Himawari both accuse Joro of encouraging Sun-chan of persuing Sanshokuin. That he completely did understand that the baseball analogy was a metaphor for his love life and gave him actual solid advice and now they were working with Sun-chan to get him together with Pansy.
That Joro was a jerk for leading them on. They honestly kind of treat him like garbage and toss him off to the side, these girls are awful. Like, I feel genuinely kind of bad for him. Despite his true personality, he still tried his best for them and they just turned on him, refusing to listen to a thing he had to say.

The whole thing comes to a head as everyone meets in the library on Monday at the end of the episode and we leave off with a cliff hanger.

This show is way better and way funnier then it has any right to be. The performance from Daiki Yamashita really does it for me, in particular, the random engrish moments. The comedy is on point and it always manages to flip my expectations for it on its head. I’m sad that I was tempted to sleep on this title, I’m glad a friend talked me into watching it. I’ve seen people compare the show to Masamune-kun’s revenge in the humor and i can very much agree with that. So with that being said, I’ve decided to pick this show up a little late and blog it.
Look forward to a double post of episodes 3 & 4 to catch us up next week and give the show a watch. You won’t regret it.

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