My Senpai Is Annoying

Episode 10

Do you ever go out with a bunch of friends only to realize that all of you collectively share maybe one or two brain cells? That's what this episode felt like but I mean that in the best way possible. I wasn't expecting a majority of the episode to take place on the basketball court and I think it's fair to say that we've more or less abandoned the office setting that originally helped define this series in the first couple of episodes but if it leads to more cute and out there interactions between characters like this then I don't really see that as a loss.

Sakurai and Kazama do get a bit more focus this episode and I like the fact that both continue to reveal different things to each other as well as to the audience. I was not expecting Kazama to apparently be really good at basketball of all things since the show has really gone out of its way to make him seem like this soft-spoken gamer that stays out of everyone's way, but it was nice seeing him and Natsumi go ahead to head for a bit even if they did get carried away. It also acted as a great way for him to bond with Yūto. Likewise it was nice to see Sakurai be a lot more forward and direct about her feelings when she spends so much of the show trying to play things casually. There were a couple of moments where it's clear that she was jealous and frustrated about not spending any alone time with him but I didn't expect her to just come out and say that to his face by the end of the episode in front of everyone. Like she says at the end, doing things like that every now and then is fine.

Most of the characters in the show are adults but it's nice to see them lean into the more childish aspects of their personalities from time to time. It's nice to see Takeda get carried away playing basketball even though he could easily step on people if he's not careful. It's nice seeing Futaba get visibly jealous over the fact that she wants to continue to experience seemingly innocuous moments with her senpai after hearing him have fun experiences when she's not around. I'm not sure how I feel about the episode ending more or less on a joke about how underdeveloped her body is though. It feels like it's been a while since we've leaned so hard into that type of humor but I don't think it's enough to drag everything else down. The show would need to do a lot wrong for me to start disliking it this far in because as it stands now, I feel this way about the series the same way that these characters feel about those little seemingly childish moments.

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My Senpai Is Annoying is currently streaming on Funimation.