Aharen-san wa Hakarenai Season 2

Episode 9

It's another week focused first and foremost on our side characters—in particular, now it's teachers and Mitsuki, all of whom I love. The teachers, in particular, I think have been really slept on as some of the best side characters in this show, so I'm really glad to see them get some time in the spotlight—not to mention, y'know, a new teacher as well. But this time, she's weak to yuri-esteem.

Let's back up a bit: the first chunk of the episode is about the teachers, and then the second is Mitsuki. Starting with the teacher portion, yeah, Aharen and Raido have now become third years. And a new year means a new teacher. Side note: I wonder if this means we're going to see the anime reach their graduation? On one hand, it seems like an obvious thing to do. On the other, with only three episodes left in the season, that'd be quite the speed run.

Anyway, the new teacher seems really charming. We love esteem in this house, obviously—and we also love teachers who want to understand what the other teachers are talking about when they're referring to esteem. Defining esteem—which is something that's been somewhat abstract until now—seems like an obvious bit for this anime to have done, yes, but that doesn't make it any less funny. Nor does it make it any less charming when the new teacher comes to realize that while she's still not entirely sure she understands what esteem means yet, she seems to feel it for all things that look yuri. In a way, it almost feels like this anime's way of wishing us a happy pride month.

Pivoting to Mitsuki, I enjoyed this segment too, but for different reasons. Here, we're seeing Mitsuki open up about wanting to go overseas and attend beauty school. This stands in sharp contrast, of course, to her love of martial arts. Nonetheless, she still wants to do it. And she communicates this to her sports-anime-style rival through, of course, her fists. So while there's still a bit of silliness in there, especially by way of the over-the-top-ness of it all, it's still pretty heartfelt.

I really like the point Mitsuki made about how she can still love karate whilst her goal is to get into beauty school. All too often in anime, we get used to the glorification of a single-minded pursuit of a goal that allows little or no space for unrelated hobbies. So it's refreshing to see an anime reminding us that, hey—you can still love and do martial arts without it being a stop en route to your goal. It is, in fact, okay to have hobbies—including hobbies that have little or no connection to your larger goals.

So overall, this was a good episode, although it doesn't quite reach the highs we've seen from this season of Aharen-san. The episodes more focused on the side characters just generally aren't as strong. And I wondered why that is, and here's the conclusion I reached: the main appeal of the series is, I'd say, the Dr. John Dorian-ian fantasies Raido allows himself to get swept up by. And while it's not to say the series has nothing else going for it (it does! A lot of the characters are very charming!), that's without a doubt the main attraction. And Aharen is generally what gets the gears in Raido's head turning. So when an episode is largely absent of the two, it throws the balance completely off. So I think a lot of these bits that are more focused on these side characters would fare a lot better if, rather than entire episodes being dedicated to side characters and little else, they were spaced out better, and paired with Radio-and-Aharen-centric segments.

Rating:

Aharen-san wa Hakarenai is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Mondays.