Can a Boy-Girl Friendship Survive?

Episode 6

I'll definitely give Can a Boy-Girl Friendship Survive? this, I'm not sure where the show is going anymore because this whole episode was a series of left turns that I didn't think the show had the balls to do. Since Himari and Yu firmly established their feelings for the other, that did leave Rion in sort of an awkward position. She is the third wheel who doesn't have the history these two have in order to compete with their relationship. I was curious about what the show was going to do in order to justify her presence here, and while I don't necessarily think we've arrived at that conclusion yet, I think this is a solid step in the right direction. What happens when you have two childhood friends with great chemistry, but no confidence to confess to the other? You introduce a rival that is on the exact opposite side of the spectrum. While Himari is very wishy-washy and self sabotaging, Rion is almost painfully direct about where she stands, what she wants and how she's gonna go about it. She's much braver than I would ever be if I was in her situation.

The fact that she has technically confessed to Yu about four times by the time this episode ended is crazy. I like the fact that Yu has been direct back at her by rejecting her advances, but is also not stopping her from doing what she wants to do. In some ways, it can be seen as him taking advantage of her, but she is the one willingly putting herself in this situation. I don't know if she is in denial about being rejected or if she really does have the confidence to win over both of these idiots. Situations like that really make me wish more shows would take the polyamorous route, because I could sort of see a dynamic between these three, but then we wouldn't get any of that juicy drama. Still, Rion's presence means that Himari is still gonna be forced to take some kind of action based on what her brother says. But the question is, what is she going to do?

Oh and speaking of Himari's brother, I like that there is this strong implication that there's some kind of story involving the siblings of our main cast. Apparently those three had some kind of history from back when they were in school and it's loosely informing the relationship of our main trio in the modern day. It's kept just vague enough that I'm genuinely hoping for an episode that was just a flashback going into that. I do wonder what happened between all of these older siblings because of how it's inferring Himari's brother's decisions. He talks like he knows what's going on with Himari in a way that implies he's been through this type of situation before, so maybe he's genuinely trying to look out for his sister so she doesn't repeat his mistakes. I could be reading too much into it, but this episode did give me a lot to chew on, and I appreciate it for that.

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