I paused the episode and wanted to yell at the screen when they did that. Stupid misunderstanding romcom tropes make me want to drop a show immediately.

Pulled myself together though and continued watching, and thankfully this one doesn’t seem to play out as I feared. It might even have given Yamada the necessary push to give Yukari a clear answer… which can only be a no, right? RIGHT?

Akane’s confession got Yukari-blocked, but that scene in front of the konbini with her and Yamada was very sweet. Almost as good as a confession.

Wow. Cat’s outta the bag, huh? Kyotaro is Origin, and Shobon is producing all this for her entertainment (and to live out his fantasy of getting back at Otaku-dom for not appreciating his genius).

Gotta say, that’s actually a weaker reveal than I would have expected, but it’s certainly surprising. All the predictions based on the imagery in the ED were apparently way off-base (unless there’s another twist in the final episode).

The imagery was all the more impressive in this episode. Reminded me of Evangelion 3.0+1.0. And Slayer’s realization that doing what she loves means beating Anarchy into a pulp was… almost heartwarming?

This show leaves me with so many conflicting feelings. I don’t know if I’ll even give it a rating after it’s finished. It’s somehow a masterpiece and trite trash at the same time.

I always liked reading along with the /r/anime rewatches, but never got around to really actively participate in them, partly due to lack of time and partly due to different timezones meaning that my comments would come pretty late to the discussion. Also a lot of commenters wrote these really long and elaborate texts, it was honestly almost intimidating.

That being said, this is a different, still much smaller community, and the bar for visibility is lower. I think it would work with an adapted format, like one parent post per rewatch with toplevel comments per episode. The default post sorting on Lemmy takes into account comment activity, so such posts wouldn’t drop off the “front page” too quickly and not clutter the community either.

There was some discussion about doing airing show discussions in that format, but the counter argument was avoiding spoilers for people who are not caught up. But for rewatches, I don’t see that being so much of an issue. In fact, keeping all spoilers for one show in a single post could even be an advantage.

Man, the friendship between Yuzuki and Makoto is just the most heartwarming shit! The whole girl squad was really wholesome this week actually, with Mika now firmly part of it. And we even seem to have Shima take his first steps to reconnect with his familiy.

But of course Ririka has to show up to stir some shit. That glance between her and Shima’s mother at the end does not bode well. They obviously recognized each other and were both pretty shocked. It’ll be very interesting how this plays out next week, with Shima possibly between the front lines.

Edit: I just saw on MAL that Ririka is voiced by Minako Kotobuki (Mugi in K-On). With Aki Toyosaki (Yui) voicing the teacher, that’s two of the K-On girls’ VAs reunited in this show. Not really relevant, but I like spotting connections like that. Well, they are both really talented and versatile VAs, so it’s not that surprising that they’d get a large number of roles.