Masamune-kun's Revenge

Episode 4

NOTE: Due to me being busy at a convention next week, episode 5 is unlikely to have a separate review. It will instead be covered in conjunction with episode 6 in two weeks.

So the other girl who's been featured prominently in both the opener and closer finally arrives near the end of this episode, and unsurprisingly, she shows up at the absolute worst time and immediately throws a wrench into the developing relationship dynamics. All we know about her is that she's rich enough to have a chauffeur, apparently knows Makabe, and has been hoping for a long time to meet him again. (Well, either that or she's fatefully mistaking him for someone else, which I think would be more interesting but less likely to happen.) These and other clichés practically scream out that the series is now seriously going in a harem direction, even if it isn't a fanservice-driven one.

This provides a distraction to what were otherwise interesting developments between Makabe and Aki. Although much of the episode is still from Makabe's point of view, we finally get to see inside Aki's head a bit. Her thoughts, actions, and words suggest that she's not being standoffish for the sake of being arrogant or because she finds romantic attention irritating (although the continuing harshness of her rejections suggests that may still be true), but rather because she finds the appeals made to her so far to be shallow. She practically pleads with Makabe to explain what he likes about her, as if she's looking for something more than just assertions that she's cute or pretty, and then gets upset rather than irritated when he literally runs away from answering. Either way, her Cruel Princess image is wavering. Makabe, for his own part, seems to be sliding farther and farther away from his commitment to a revenge scheme and more toward actually falling for Aki despite himself, which makes this all seem less nasty at the expense of sapping the bite from the premise. It also raises the question of how Yoshino is going to react if things continue in this direction.

That's all well and good, but the clichés this series is relying on still hold it back. How old and tired is the scene where the guy stops the girl from obliviously wandering into traffic, which proves to be the ticket for turning around a testy relationship? I guess there's a joke somewhere in Makabe relying on romance manga for clues about how to win over Aki, but that just seemed even more pathetic. There's also the scenes at the end of the episode. I'm increasingly getting the impression that the original writer wanted to make something fresher and edgier while still being funny, but didn't fully grasp how to pull this premise off without relying too much on trite storytelling elements. We'll see if this new girl adds any new angle into the mix, but right now, I'm not too optimistic.

Rating: B-

Masamune-kun's Revenge is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.