After being confessed to by Minami, Fumiya honestly has no idea what to do, or how to respond at the moment. Fortunately Minami is willing to wait, as she did later him during lunch not to worry about it, but she might have to wait a bit. At the very least though, she had been able to get her foot in the door, so good for her for still going for it.
Fumiya wants to be able to respond to her sincerely, but the first thing he needs to figure out for himself is: How does he know that he has fallen for someone in the first place? He doesn’t understand the process, and Aoi’s explanation was not helpful by the slightest. In fact her definition of what it means to fall for someone is described to have emotions such as: “reliance, lust, possessiveness”, which I ironically found to be the more unhealthy definition of such. Surely there are more better ways to describe it… Then again, it could just because that Aoi’s perspective of romance is so jaded, that it warped her thinking of what it’s like to be in love. And perhaps that would also explain why she sees it as nothing more than a game with no actual feelings attached to it, but I digress.
Now that Fumiya has narrowed down that’s it’s Fuuka and Minami who are the two girls he wishes to get closer to, it was very wise of him to proactively change the conditions of the love mission. Right now, doesn’t know how to tell whether he likes someone or not, so until that’s sorted out, he’ll never be able to make up his mind. Furthermore, he doesn’t want to make the confession the goal, but rather whenever he finally confesses, it will be because he wants to express his feelings to whoever that may be. And this is 100% the right way to go about it. GO FUMIYA GO!
Aoi of course was not happy about that adjustment. It was very apparent that she did not want to accept Fumiya moving the goal post according to how he feels. Her idea of this mission was to complete a “normie romance” during the Culture Festival, and have that lead up to securing a girlfriend before they start their third year. (Figured as much). But man, just seeing her being so…. what’s the right word for this… freaking salty about the fact he’s deviating from her course, and how she couldn’t care less about the “process”, and worst of all, seeing her use “Nanashi” as a reason to justify how ‘stupid’ that idea was, just made my blood boil. But unfortunately for her, “Nanashi’s Playstyle” is all about valuing both the process and result. Fumiya firmly believes that would be even more efficient to apply that method in real life, because that’s what got him to the position of the the top ranked player to begin with.
When it comes to advice, though I don’t always agree with Mizusawa (as demonstrated last week with his creepy way of getting a girl’s number), I would still choose him over Aoi when it comes to any sort of advice. From what we have seen so far, Mizusawa doesn’t try to impose his way onto others. And for that very reason, I was relieved to see Mizusawa had called Fumiya in to fill in for work at the very moment he was about to call Aoi about what to do about Minami’s confession.
I do appreciate that Mizusawa immediately told Fumiya to cut the crap with his bad habit of denigrating himself (the point he looks even relieved). The timing of this couldn’t have been better, because it did help nip the bud of this issue dragging out longer than it needs to, and helped Fumiya reassess his perspective. Mizusawa definitely hit it home when he made the strong point that seeing Fumiya denigrating himself will only upset those who cares about him. So it was a really good thing that it ended up being Mizusawa who Fumiya ended up talking to about Minami’s confession compared to Aoi.
In fact, I found it actually quite interesting that Fumiya gone out of the way to not tell Aoi this at all. But she probably has already figured it out herself considering neither he or Minami were acting like themselves when they saw each other the next day. Actually funny enough, we actually saw him and Aoi collaborating on trying to put both Minami and Fumiya on the spot during lunch, meanwhile Tama was just like: You’re all being weird. I definitely believe Aoi and Mizusawa had arranged to do this together in advance. They were too much on the ball with the whole topic of, ‘Haha, everything thinks we’re dating’.
Meanwhile when it comes to discussing any matter involving relationships, the person Fumiya is actually more comfortable doing this with is Fuuka. This is largely because he is able to use the characters from her story as a proxy of a sort to word his questions, which helps him find the courage to finally ask some of these things directly. It was such case with one of his tasks today, which was: What does dating mean to you?
As one might expect from Fuuka, she was a wholesome answer. She likens it Andi’s Scissorman’s Lie romance of the princess and Scissorman’s relationship, where no one else can replace their partner. A special relationship, taking one ideal shape.
Fumiya still doesn’t have his answer, but hearing Fuuka’s certainly helped him gain more perspective of what it means not only to date, but also a much better description of what love can mean to someone. It was very adorable when she asked him to share what it means to him once he figures out what it means for him. I do love how the story has formed a bridge in a way for them to comfortably communicate this subject.
And last but not least, Fuuka’s story! We finally got to see a bit of the actual contents this week. She’s still working out the second half, but has made a lot of changes to simplify the characters emotions in order to help accommodate their classmates acting out the parts. The biggest change Fumiya has noted was that by doing so, it stripped them of what made them compelling characters. It was the depth of their emotions that engrossed him, so even though it means making it a bit more difficult for their classmates, he encouraged her to go back to how she had initially written them, which was really nice to see.
UPDATED (March 1st, 2024) Important Notice: Initially there was supposed to be a server maintenance on March 3rd, but that has been postponed due to schedule conflicts. Once I determined when it will be rescheduled, I’ll have a post about its schedule. At this time, Jaku-Chara Tomozaki-kun S2 Episode 10 should be coming out as initially scheduled.
I know viewers were definitely meant to take Fumiya’s side given the show repeated the still of Aoi’s sketchy eye, which is show her when she is at her most unsavoury. Her attempt to drag “Nanashi” into it to try to get her point across was very infuriating. This is one reason why I believe Fumiya will probably end up with Fuuka at the end of the story given that Aoi might be unfixable as a sociopath since the show never attempts to hide when Aoi is in the wrong. We’re meant to see that Fumiya’s more organic approach is the better way to live life than Aoi treating everyone as a tool.