Now this is what I expected going into this show. After three episodes of bad pacing and one episode of distractingly lazy animation, it looks like the show has finally hit its stride. There were no awkward childhood flashbacks, the cats were back in full force, and stuff actually happened in this episode! Now that the viewers have spent a sufficient amount of time getting to know the main cast and their quirks, this episode finally set them lose in true slice-of-life comedy fashion. The humor was one of the many strengths of this episode, as I've mentioned before that the scattered humor throughout the previous episodes always worked for me. A lot of it was generated by Chizuru this time around (I was pretty amused seeing him act the Spongebob to Kaname's Squidward...and yes, this comparison is stuck in my head now) but there were also a lot of laughs from the twins, who continue to be loveable deadpan trolls-in-training. I'll admit that I was a bit concerned last week when I saw that this episode was focused around the anime staple of going to a random festival, but it worked for introducing yet another element to the series that has only been hinted at before: love triangles. So for starters, Masaki likes Shun, which was pretty obvious from the get-go, and after butting heads for most of the episode, it looks like Chizuru likes her too. And now there's Kaname's deal as well... As shown in the last episode, despite being the butt of the twins' jokes for liking older women, he actually does currently like a girl who is older than him--the older sister of his childhood friend/neighbor. And also shown in the last episode, it seems like she likes Kaname. I'm going to need a chart before all of this is over, won't I? Anyway, I approve of this new development since it gives the characters a better chance to branch out and interact than in the previous episodes where the content was stretched thin to the point of breaking. Also, adding in the romance aspect is finally starting to make the boys act like boys, which has been my main request since the first episode. Of course, the obvious exception here is Shun once again, but the inclusion of Chizuru provides a nice counterbalance. If the rest of the episodes in this series are as good as this one, I'll be a happy blogger. Images from Crunchyroll.com.
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