Gonna be real with you guys: This episode was super uncomfortable to watch, and that was all because of Aoi. She has no remorse whatsoever for what she has done because she feels like her actions was justified. You could tell she was getting irritated with the fact Fumiya told her she took it a step too far, and she even admitted that it was revenge. But revenge for Tama? Yeah no. Absolutely not. It was revenge for whatever happened in the past. And we know for a fact that if Tama heard this entire conversation, she would be incredibly disappointed in Aoi.
And don’t even get me started on the hypocrisy of ‘doing it for Tama’ but turning a blind eye to Hirabayashi’s suffering because ‘she didn’t do anything to help herself’ bullshit.
If you thought it couldn’t get more disturbing, somehow it did: Aoi suddenly decides that it’s time for Fumiya to find someone to date…And she starts listing out of the people, and guess who’s among them? Yuzu. Fumiya rightfully responded with: WHY IS SHE EVEN ON THE LIST?! And what does Aoi say? “There’s no rule to saying you can’t go after someone who’s attached”. LIKE WHAT IN THE WORLD IS WRONG WITH YOU AOI!?!?! I can’t believe she had the audacity to even suggest that despite surely knowing all too well of the potential consequences of such a ridiculous choice.
And as though that wasn’t already bad enough, guess what? She wants him to date two people at the same time!
“WAIT WHAT. SHE’S SAYING DATE TWO PEOPLE AT THE SAME TIME?!?!?! Holy crap, Aoi needs to stop!” was my exact reaction to that. She claims throwing the girls in a tizzy is part of the process of gaining confidence, juggling between two to have a backup and all that– UM, HOW ABOUT NO!!!!!
It truly left me speechless, because the freaking audacity for her to say that. This is yet another instance where Fumiya really needs to put his foot down and draw a very deep line, because as we have learned these past weeks: Aoi has no conscience whatsoever, and it’s really distressing to watch. They are merely pawns to serve for her own gain. Once she feels they no longer are to use to her, she’ll discard them, just as she had tried to do with Fumiya last season when his morals clashed with her apparently non-existent ones. And frankly it has gotten to a point that it’s so alarming, that I feel it’d be just better for Fumiya to get away from her. Just… stick with Minami, Tama and Fuuka… They aren’t toxic like this…
Speaking of Fuuka: I can’t tell you how freaking relieved I was when we finally got her scene because at that point I was so mentally exhausted from listening to Aoi, that Fuuka ‘purified the air’ so to speak. She is so precious, and the way she shyly brought up she had written another novel and wanted Fumiya to read it— HNNNNGG MY HEART! PROTECT FUUKA AT ALL COST!
That’s why this next mission that Aoi has set Fumiya on is making me really worried because I don’t want to see Fuuka get hurt. SO FUMIYA PLEASE DON’T BE STUPID ABOUT THIS. YOU USED YOUR HEAD AND NAVIGATED YOURSELF WITH A MORAL COMPASS BEFORE, NOW DO IT AGAIN! Ugh this kind of shit stresses me out.
Additionally, considering how shy Fuuka is, I don’t know if she’d even be comfortable with taking selfies with Fumiya. It might’ve been okay if it were just between them, but something that’d get uploaded to Pinstagram that starts of private, but will probably go public once it’s not longer barren is something else entirely.
Oh yeah before I forget, Fumiya and Fuuka did end up discussing Aoi’s actions this week. It was nice to see since we didn’t see too much of her reaction during the whole ordeal, but she definitely nailed it on the head. Aoi was acting off, like the anger was coming somewhere inside of her, that she couldn’t forgive anyone for it. Honestly it’s quite remarkable on on the ball Fuuka can be when it comes to analyzing her.
And finally before I wrap this up: Poor Fumiya was trying so hard to get a selfie with the guys. I feel like Mizusawa caught onto what Fumiya needed to do and help nudge Shuji into agreeing since Takei had already agreed to it with a great sense of humour. Also on a side note: I will say though, I definitely didn’t expect all four of them (or rather, Shuji specifically) to get involved with the Culture Festival. It will be an interesting dynamic considering Minami and Yuzu also volunteered to be part of the class’ committee.
I almost puked in my mouth watching this episode. And the main reason would be Aoi suggesting/demanding that Fumiya date not 1 but 2 girls at the same time? Like wtf? I can understand Aoi not caring about Fuuka since she’s not part of her social circle, but Tama, Mimimi, and Yuzu are all part of her social circle, and this strikes me as something you REALLY shouldn’t do to your friends as she’s treating them as disposable pawns for the sake of Fumiya’s development. I understand she wants to give Fumiya confidence, but that should not come at the expense of other girls’ mental health.
It suggests that Aoi really has no morals and maybe doesn’t even believe in the concept of friends, and if I’m wrong about that, maybe she just doesn’t consider anybody in her current social circle an actual friend. I really thought that Aoi cared about Mimimi given she tasked Fumiya with making sure Mimimi wasn’t hurt too badly in Season 1 by making sure Mimimi came in a respectable second place when they competed with each other instead of a distant 2nd, but this episode makes me question that.
This coupled by Fumiya thinking in Episodes 2 and 5 that Aoi committed to a plan with 0 regard for how Tama would be affected and her remark that if Tama changes this will be for nothing suggests that Aoi is an extremely self-centered person to disregard Tama’s own wishes to do that brutal take-down of Erika. Fuuka assessed that people get angry when they think that that’s not how things should be, and Aoi stating earlier in episode that Tama’s directness is beautiful and that some things cannot be forgiven, shows that she was adamantly opposed to Tama’s changing, and I suspect that Aoi was the Tama to someone’s Erika in the past, and that is why she reacted so strongly to the big incident of Season 2.
I began to think that Aoi didn’t really consider Tama a friend but as someone she chose to be a part of her social circle with Episode 3’s developments, and now, I think it’s possible this is the case with ALL of her friends as this Fumiya needs to date 2 girls task is extremely insensitive especially given she knows most of the girls she wants Fumiya to target well. I thought back to Season 1 after this episode when Aoi revealed that the reason she wants to help Fumiya’s improve his social skills is not out of the goodness of her heart because she couldn’t stand that she lost at TackFam to someone who was terrible at life, it shows she did so to lessen the damage to her ego that she lost to him and that she wants him to be the best of the best at life so that her self-esteem recovers from losing to him. All of this leads me to conclude that Aoi is a monstrous sociopath who cares about no one but herself as even Fumiya is being used to recover some lost self-esteem.
//I thought back to Season 1 after this episode when Aoi revealed that the reason she wants to help Fumiya’s improve his social skills is not out of the goodness of her heart because she couldn’t stand that she lost at TackFam to someone who was terrible at life, it shows she did so to lessen the damage to her ego that she lost to him and that she wants him to be the best of the best at life so that her self-esteem recovers from losing to him. //
You make a really great observation there. Now that you mentioned it, perhaps this may be the reason why we saw her being all cocky when she beat Fumiya one time in TackFam. She wants to one up him, and she can’t stand losing. By making him popular, she “wins” because she’s “right”.
But holy shit, she’s absolutely terrible. I feel bad for all the girls around her, they have no idea who they are dealing with. Absolutely disgusting that she’d suggest such a thing behind their backs. And it definitely wasn’t a coincidence that SHE wasn’t among them for being left in a tizzy. If anything, she’d probably get a kick out of it because she’s the “superior” one.
Honestly god, I have no idea how they plan to redeem her character, or if she’s even going to be redeemed at all. I pray this won’t be “I can fix her” with Fumiya leading to them ending up together. It’s been a while since I’ve responded this strongly towards a character, but man, there’s just so many red flags around Aoi it’s a legit concern.
If this is true to life, there won’t be any fixing of Aoi. Fumiya will just have to accept her the way she is if they end up together. I would much prefer it he ended up with Fuuka though as she is so adorable and precious.
I was wondering what was up with this episode’s subs considering it dropped Aoi’s signature line, and it appears that there was a change in translators, with the current one possibly never having watched Jaku Chara as well as being a poor translator who misses crucial context from readily available information from the episode.
Someone from a forum told me the reason Aoi wrote down on the whiteboard which two to get closer to rather than which two to date is because she never intended for him to date 2 girls at once. He said the term translated as other girlfriends is very general and can mean anything between 2 people, whether it be a positive relationship or 2 people having enmity for each other. He checked the English light novel translation for the relevant volume to confirm that this is the case.
So we have a good reason to find Aoi sketchy, but this is actually not one of those times.
Goodness, that’s a major error with the translation. :\ That changes the context of everything for that conversation. Thanks for sharing!