The least mature person in the episode was the reindeer man, in my opinion. What kind of person steals candy on Christmas Eve? The comments at the beginning and the end of the episode by Azuma-sensei--he always thought that time would make him an adult--provided a nice thematic frame for the episode as a whole. This week focused a lot on the difference between perceived age (from the way that someone looks and acts) and someone's actual age. Akira played an extremely small role in the previous season, so I had no opinion of him (my assumption was that he was Azuma-sensei's boyfriend, since this show seems to encourage me to think in those terms). This episode provided the right amount of fleshing out to his character, since I'm pretty sure that he'll continue to be a side character that'll show up every now and again to ruffle Chizuru's feathers. It reminds me a lot of the relationship that Chizuru and Kaname have, come to think of it... Anyway, watching Akira chose to act childish (even oblivious in some cases) while still insisting that he's an adult ("I have a job!") was interesting in the context of Azuma-sensei's statement. What makes an adult anyway? The answer the episode seems to be getting at is reliability; our heroes, the teenagers, are more reliable than the children--who take their free candy, tease one of their own for believing in Santa Claus and then walk away--yet they can't always pull off what they set out to do--they lose the balloon, can't catch the thief, and then forget their DVDs, which was the whole point of going to the mall. On the other hand, Akira wins his trust in style, stopping the thief and saving the kid all in one swoop. And Azuma-sensei is observant enough to know who the DVD bag belonged to. Of course, this ties into the idea of maturity as well, and Akira also proves that acting like a kid doesn't mean that you have the maturity level of one. However, that's not to say that this episode was an in-depth look at what it means to grow up; the usual antics were still there, with everybody getting on Kaname's nerves, Chizuru trying to look cool and failing, and Shun in a Mrs. Claus outfit. However, I think that Kimi to Boku may have finally hit its stride in balancing humor with an interesting insight on life, which it's tried before with mixed results. I might be biased here, but I think that a good slice-of-life show should do just that. Or maybe I'm reading to much into it. You tell me. Current tally: One (1) Episode(s) without Shun in drag, zero (0) consecutive. Images from Crunchyroll.com.
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