Can a Boy-Girl Friendship Survive?

Episode 11

I will give Can a Boy-Girl Friendship Survive? this, I genuinely did not expect it to go this direction narratively. The show has done such a mixed job juggling the romantic development of its two leads that it honestly distracted me from the surprisingly solid foreshadowing it has done to get to the narrative conclusion. This isn't anything new, but I wasn't expecting this type of resolution to come out of this show specifically. However, it has arguably has always been there.

Since a few episodes ago, that idea of passion versus romance has been brewing with Himari, explaining that part of the reason why she fell in love with Yu in the first place was because of his passion. The two tried to combine their passion for opening a shop together with their love for each other and we even had a whole episode where Yu basically admitted that he wasn't making these accessories for his customers anymore, he was making them for Himari. Now that sentiment has come full circle to bite him in the butt and there's nothing he can say or do about it.

I didn't have a good opinion about Yu's sister because she's just allowing adults to step all over these kids' lives while she just quietly eats snacks in the background. But now I kind of see where she's coming from. A lot of us underestimate just how difficult it is to open something like an accessory shop and have it be a success. That is the kind of dream you tell your parents and a lot of them would immediately shoot it down. Yu's family never seemed to shoot it down because they recognized that he was working hard at it, but now he's at crossroads: does he pick a budding and potentially raunchy romance with his childhood friend or does he go all in on pursuing this creative endeavor? It's a crossroads that I feel like a lot of people hit in their lives where they need to make tough sacrifices for the sake of pursuing something that would naturally be out of their reach.

I like the way that the adults in the room frame all of this as them potentially having their cake and eating it too, but they need to make an adult decision about it. They can have their romance now, but potentially not open their shop in the future, or they can perfect their skills and then share their dream in the future when it is more solid. It is basically a story of them needing to put their relationship to the test, and it sucks that the timing was just awful because they came to this conclusion just after they reached that point of no return with getting together as a couple. I like that there wasn't any big romantic gesture or huge confession scene, but the two just sort of acknowledge that “yeah they like each other,” but now they can't act on it. This is really good and I will give the show a lot of props that it had the balls to do this. I think it would've been stronger if it developed Hibari a bit more, because it still feels like Yu is taking most of the brunt of this when she is arguably just as much at fault.

Perhaps if she wasn't so wishy-washy with everything or was actually forward with how she felt, Yu could've had more time to breathe and process everything. Maybe that's not the story that they wanted to tell. I just think that there was a lot of room for this foundation to be made a lot stronger. I am fully expecting a time skip next week where our cast meets up again after graduating high school or college already. The question is, will this time apart make their feelings stronger, or is there a chance that things will be strained? Only time will tell, but I suddenly have a lot of high expectations for the directions that this show can go in.

P.S. Rion out here just CASUALLY dropping that she'd be ok entering a poly relationship with Yu and Himari was the funniest bit in the show.

Rating: