Aharen-san wa Hakarenai Season 2

Episode 10

That there aren't more musical episodes of non-musical anime is a tragedy that you could make a 3–5 minute ballad about. I can think of a handful of anime with play episodes, and even a few series that fully revolve around creating a theatrical productions. But the idea of a musical episode isn't really something you really see in non-musical anime—in fact, to be honest, the only other contender that springs to mind is the rap episode from the first season of Aharen-san. I can think of plenty of (non-musical) live action shows (especially sitcoms) in English that've had musical episodes (including, interestingly, Scrubs—which I've compared this series to a couple times now), but that's about it. As I sit here thinking about that, I wonder why that it is that there's virtually no musical episodes of (non-musical) anime? Answerman, if you're out there and are in need of another question, well, there you go.

It speaks to the power and creativity of Aharen-san that its musical episode worked to its benefit. What little dancing was there was incredibly basic, there was no fancy Classic★Stars-esque set dressing, and all the songs seemed like normal dialogue that was just read in a way that was a bit more melodic. And yet, Aharen and Raido were having a ton of earnest fun with it. And their joy is infectious, and invites the audience to share in that fun, which is unrestrained by things like sets or choreography. It's as though it's saying you don't need all those things to feel the magic of the musical medium, and that's really sweet. Not to mention, in its own weird way, it still has a comedic tone. More than most bits in Aharen-san, this one seems like it must've been an incredibly difficult needle to thread, but they did a fantastic job.

I've said all this, and I haven't even gotten to this episode's hilarious flex: ACANE (the vocalist) from ZUTOMAYO had like, one whole line. Truly, if you blink, you'll miss it. Thanks to the news article that was posted here about it the other day, I knew that theoretically, ACANE's voice was somewhere in the episode, but I couldn't figure out where. And then, I went back and checked the article, which says that ACANE was, “the student [that] talks a bit about tuna mayonnaise sandwiches and their bread.” Put more simply, she was someone in that massive crowd of people trying to buy food. It's a barely noticeable line, and I think it's hilarious that they still got ACANE to do it. Again: what a flex. While I'm not necessarily optimistic this will happen, I think it'd be funny if they can bring this joke over to the dub—probably by way of getting a VA who's also well known for doing music (AmaLee, Lily Pichu, and Cristina Vee all spring to mind).

But excellent as it was, the musical section (and subsequent section where Aharen and Raido were being extra fancy) wasn't the only bit in this episode—we also saw our protagonists playing legally distinct "Life" (which included a nod to what I maintain is the funniest bit in the first season of Aharen-san and possibly the whole series overall: the fidget spinner). At first, I thought it was going to turn into the squad learning about wealth disparity, and eventually teaming up to take down the billionaire class (Aharen). But no—flying in the face of expectations, instead we got a hilarious Akagi parody, complete with not-the-first-nose-job-of-the-episode-for-Raido.

The episode closes on the note of Hanako finally confessing her feelings to Ishikawa, who turns her down because he can't return her feelings—and for unspecific reasons, Hanako already knew this. This anime has been implying pretty hard that Ishikawa has romantic feelings for Raido, and this is another very big point in favor of that. The only thing holding me back from feeling totally certain is how by now we've seen Aharen-san defy expectations plenty of times, and set things up only to go in a completely opposite direction. So while we definitely have enough to say it's very realistically possible, nothing's totally confirmed. Still, I said it before and I'll say it again: this show can be very heartfelt when it wants to be, and I'd be interested to see its take on a character coming out as queer.

In case it wasn't obvious, I absolutely loved this episode. Definitely one of the better ones, though that's no small feat seeing as how there's been a lot of great episodes in this season. I can't believe it's getting so close to the end, but at least we can still look forward to a few more episodes.

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