I really felt this chapter in a personal way.

The emotional storytelling that this ecchi series has been able to deliver has been excellent with this grad school arc. It’s so rare to see a male adult protagonist just break down in a good cry.

There were a handful of times during my time in grad school where I broke down like that. Life is brutal when you are barely able to make ends meet and the demands placed on you are completely overwhelming.

I feel like I barely made it to the end of my PhD, after countless dead ends and experiments that just never worked. During those years, I was making approximately minimum wage and had to figure out how to live in one of the most expensive cities in the US. I don’t think my bank account ever cracked four digits all those years. It’s a life in which one stroke of bad luck can be utterly, life changingly devastating.

It’s really nice to see Naruto dealing with the stresses of life in a perfectly human way. It’s also really nice to see Renge be there as simply another human to help lift him back up.