Episode 9 Trigger Warning: Attempted Sexual Assault between 12:00 – 13:42. If you want to skip both the scene and brief mention of it (which includes a flashback), skip to: 17:29.
I think I can speak for everyone when I say Mizuki’s lack of self-awareness and self-preservation is absolutely infuriating to watch. As funny and sweet it is to see how patient and mature Izumi was about the whole situation where MizukI (without her bust wrap on) crawled into his bed half asleep, this is just yet another example of Mizuki’s carelessness. For a girl who has brazenly entered an all-boys school in “disguise”, boy is she incredibly naive in thinking she has everyone fooled that she’s a “boy.” But we know that’s not true. And in these last three episodes, we’re really starting to see the consequences of really not heeding the blaring alarm bells that should be ringing regarding Makita, a college guy they are working alongside with at the boarding house.
Not only Nakatsu and Izumi have picked up on the fact Makita’s trouble, but so did Makoto, who’s staying there as a guest. He even warned Mizuki outright that Makita has a bad vibe about him when he heard the two were going out for errands. These guys are rightfully hyper vigilant because the guy has made it clear that Mizuki’s his next target from the get go. It doesn’t help that Makita has been by definition sexually harassing her by needlessly being touchy. For crying out loud, it’s not just one person saying, it’s THREE FREAKING PEOPLE. THEY ARE TRYING TO PROTECT YOU MIZUKI. TAKE NOTICE ALREADY YOU IDIOT!
While this is in part because her brain is dense as a rock apparently, this is also because of a terrible combination but she was being petty because she was jealous of the fact Tanami (Makoto’s sister) who has been clinging to Izumi like a leech (who’s less than pleased by the fact himself). She argued this kind of thing is common in the States (though let’s be be perfectly clear here: it’s absolutely not appropriate for strangers, and even friends when boundaries have been established to be doing this!) But what she’s failing to notice is that Izumi’s seriously looking out for her. This guy been an absolute guardian angel and master communicator, as he flat out asked Mizuki if she felt like she was in trouble at all, which was his way of showing he’s ready to help her out if she was in any way uncomfortable with that guy and may had decided to keep it to herself. (Also worth pointing out, he was the one to help clear the air from their awkward spat when he was checking up on her by pointing out how stupid their argument was.)
In fact Mizuki has no idea just how lucky she is that not only Izumi knows she’s a girl, but the fact he’s helping her hide the fact and is doing his part of looking out for her. The latter is absolutely not something he should feel responsible for doing, this was all her decision after-all! But this goes to show that Izumi cares about her enough to make sure that she stays safe and keep her secret under wraps (literally). We saw this pan out when the student dorms was announced to be closed for two weeks due to maintenance. Initially Nakatsu had extended an invitation for Mizuki to crash at his place in Osaka, but Mizuki turned it down in fear she’d be caught. Then Izumi offered her to come back to his place, but she doesn’t know that he knows, so she said no to that too. If she had, well things would be a lot simpler now wouldn’t it? In the end, Mizuki settled for the opportunity to temporarily work and board at Hokuto’s sister’s Boarding House, and so tags along Izumi (who wants to keep an eye out for her) and Nakatsu (who doesn’t want the two to be alone together). Additionally, we see this even more throughout episode 8, where Izumi takes quick action when Mizuki passed out because her chest binding was far too tight. He did everything necessary to make sure she wouldn’t get exposed. Seriously, if it weren’t for Izumi, she surely would’ve been caught already!
Now, Izumi’s starting to realize that the feelings that driving him to look out for Mizuki is more than just feeling responsible for her safety. He’s coming to terms with the fact (besides the fact he sees the danger), he’s also starting to harbour feelings that goes beyond their platonic relationship.
Unfortunately in episode 9, everything Izumi’s been high on alert of since he had discovered Mizuki was a girl came crashing down onto them. And because of that, it goes without saying, Episode 9 is the most infuriating episode to date.
For starters, the biggest and most aggravating thing of all was despite now knowing Mizuki’s a girl, Io still had Makita and Mizuki go out to do groceries errand together. This lady knows what Makita is like, and yet she just turned a blind-eye and said nothing, did nothing, didn’t even bat an eye when the excuse came in that the “car stalled”. Freaking Izumi smelled that bullshit immediately and set out to look for them. How he even managed to get to them as soon as he did, I don’t know, I don’t care, because unlike this stupid character, he knew they couldn’t afford to risk waiting.
And as if that wasn’t stupid enough, IO WOULDN’T EVEN SUGGEST TO PERSONALLY SEARCH FOR IZUMI AND MIZUKI WHEN THEY HADN’T RETURNED AFTER DARK, LIKE WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?! Talk about the most irresponsible adult in the room! It left me absolutely flabbergasted at the sheer stupidity of it all. Holy shit. It’s freaking Nakatsu who was like, ‘Absolutely not. Get the car, we’re looking for them!’ I don’t remember what I thought of this when I read this as a teen, maybe I just skipped the whole thing because it was uncomfortable, but as an adult, god this whole thing makes my blood boil.
Second, and this circles back to Mizuki’s appalling lack of self-preservation. Despite all the warnings, Mizuki continued to be utterly careless– again, from not realizing her wet shirt was going sheer (Izumi was trying SO HARD to discreetly tell her this), not locking the bathroom door when taking a bath, or locking it when changing (LIKE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. YOU HAVE LITERALLY, ONE JOB MIZUKI. ) to doing errands alone with Makita because she had naively thought she was fooling everyone that she’s a guy. And lo and behold, Makita really did see her as a girl that she is. But you know what? The fact she’s a girl doesn’t even matter here because this whole terrible situation could’ve still played out if he was into guys too! She was warned time and time again, and her sheer stubbornness to not heed those warnings is unfortunately what go her into the mess today. This is the part of Mizuki’s character that drives me absolutely insane!
Thirdly—and the part that made me throw my hands up in the air while yelling, “OF COURSE!” was when Izumi “had” to give Mizuki water via mouth to mouth. I always have mixed feelings about these types of scenes, especially following events of sexual assault because I do feel like follow up to these events needs to be handled tactfully. Izumi for his part, was doing his best to assure Mizuki that she was safe, but the whole thing with them getting them stranded on a cliff’s edge because he slipped, conveniently next to a waterfall for water, and needing to do a mouth to mouth to give Mizuki water because of her fever… They were definitely pushing the amount of “plot conveniences” in this entire event. For that reason, I do feel like it watered down the tenderness of the post-incident. Did they really need to have a lips locking moment? No. But I suppose the one thing Mizuki did get out of it is a better memory to think about.
Apart from that, I did check the show’s episode count again, and I was a bit surprised to see this only going to be twelve episodes. For a series that’s 23 volumes long, I honestly thought this was going to be 24-26 episodes (unless it’s a split cour, that’d make sense too). I went to check to see how far along they are, and we’re only at chapter 15 (vol 3) out of 148-150 chapters (23 volumes). Sooooo... yeah, we’re only adapting up to vol 4 it seems. I seriously wonder how much of this they are planning to adapt…
Lastly, I do want to point out that it is possible I may end up doing a triple post for the final three episodes as well. So just keep an eye on any updates from me, I’ll let you know if that ends up being the case!
