I still haven’t quite caught up to this - I just read the fireworks chapters about an hour ago, then had to take a break to get my blood sugar levels back down.
This is such an amazing series.
wjs018@ani.social 2 days ago
Loved the Lone Wolf switch-a-roo at the end there. I hope he shows up more in the future. Full steam ahead for the school festival now.
Rottcodd@ani.social 2 days ago
Rottcodd@ani.social 2 days ago
And yes - caught up.
I think uni guy called it - they’re going to hold hands at the festival.
And I’m not going to be surprised if Harima does tag along, so we can get that thing sort of like progress that we get from her and Kirishima. There’s definitely something there, but they’re so mutually antagonistic that they’re actually likely going to move even more slowly than Nayu and Hikiochi.
Nayu and Hikiochi is a strange thing. Because that’s what they learned first, they still refer to each other by their given names inside of their own heads, but they had to work so hard just to be able to call each other by their family names out loud without being crippled by embarrassment. It just makes for such an odd contrast.
And speaking of odd contrast, though they aren’t relevant, I really want to mention Mase and Okute, who might just be the most interesting characters in the entire series. I have no idea what possessed the author to introduce a pair of cynical, world-weary elementary schoolers to inadvertently provide the mains with love advice, but it was brilliant, and just that much more so because it doesn’t seem like there’s any way it could work, but it does. And it’s just that much more interesting because even with only a few appearances, they’re already multilayered characters. Mase comes across as so cynical and so jaded, but then she lets down her guard a bit and you can see that she’s actually a romantic. And meanwhile Okute tries to act as the proper voice of reason, but then we get these little flashes of a cunning maneater underneath that innocent facade. That’s masterful writing.
And broadly, that’s speaks to the real secret behind this series. It is a great concept - basically we get literal audience surrogates (and not just in the main three - like on their cafe date, pretty much the entire cafe was watching them) - but the thing that really sells this is that it’s just extraordinarily well-written. I mean - it took them 21 chapters just to actually work up the courage to talk to each other, and the moment it happened felt like one of the biggest romantic events I’ve ever seen. That’s masterful writing again.
This festival is going to be so good…