Go For It, Nakamura-kun!!

Episode 5

Wow, this episode sure gave me a lot of whiplash. On the one hand, I think this episode might've had the best build up and pay off to a joke in the entire show so far. I was genuinely wondering what was going on during the first half of this episode revolving around Takeuchi getting touchy with Hirose. I think the humor was supposed to be derived from Nakamura getting progressively more petty and frustrated with seeing the exact type of friendship he wanted to have with Hirose. Granted, a lot of what Takeuchi was pushing was explicitly not casual friendship stuff like holding hands and sitting on each other's laps. Hirose was also regularly making it clear that he wasn't totally on board with some of the things that were going on. But he went along with it anyway.

I thought the joke was going to be something along the lines of bodybuilding or something, but having the punchline to the joke explicitly be gay-baiting was actually kind of brilliant. I don't understand what leaps in logic you have to go through to think that being overly physically affectionate with your friend of the same sex is a great way of engaging with someone of the opposite sex, but I guess it worked out in the end, right? I loved Hamaoka's response saying that she will go out with Takeuchi as long as he keeps flirting with his male friends so she can continue her boys' love fantasies with her friends. I hope I see more of this couple in future episodes, because this strange yet unique dynamic could warrant a show all on its own.

Where the episode begins to lose me is in the second half when the teacher, Mr. Otogiri starts to get involved. Now, I am very well aware of the fact that there were a lot of statements made by the original mangaka of the series both prior to and during this anime airing. Originally I was coming down a lot harsher on the second half of this episode because at the very least, I was confused with regards to how I was supposed to interpret a lot of the actions between Otogiri and Hirose. Hirose does seem to hold a level of respect for Otagiri as a cool role model. I don't have that strong of a grasp on Hirose's character much because the most I've seen him is through the lens of Nakamura, who definitely glorifies him more than he is willing to admit. But Hirose definitely seems to act a little bit differently around Otagiri compared to how I've seen him interact with the other students. The show almost seems to skirt this line between it being just student admiration and it being some kind of crush. Students get crushes on their teacher all the time, so that on its face isn't really bad, but what could be bad is how specifically the show handles that student-teacher dynamic.

Syundei, the original mangaka, has made it clear that they do not endorse any behavior that could be potentially problematic in these works of fiction. In fact, my interpretation of Syundei 's statements seem to be that they might express a little bit of regret over portraying certain dynamics in their stories so casually, like significant age gaps in adult/minor relationships. Again, I have not read all of their other works so I can only judge the anime as it is being presented to me right now, but I do think it is commendable that a writer is willing to reflect on what type of stories they are telling and is at least open-minded as to why some people might not be such a fan of those types of story beats. Does this mean that I don't think those ideas should be used at all? No, I am personally of the opinion that you should be able to tell a story about pretty much anything, but there does need to be a certain level of care in these stories. After all, you don't want to accidentally give the wrong impression on how certain situations should be handled or accidentally glorify something that could have real world consequences on the very people who are consuming your media.

My problem with the second half of the episode, though, and how this specific situation was handled is that it's very clunky at best and arguably doesn't really fix the issue at worst. The main sticking point of this episode is that Hirose straight up asks Otogiri for his contact information. The comedy is supposed to be in how Hirose is progressively trying to get closer to Otogiri, and Nakamura is losing his mind witnessing all of this in a way similar to how he was in the first half of the episode. The funny thing is that Otogiri explicitly makes it clear that it would be going too far for them to exchange personal information. But then, literally ten seconds later, they exchange contact information and it's not really addressed again. In fact, Nakamura is going on a ranting monologue about how inappropriate the relationship is. So…what exactly was fixed about this scene?

Just because you draw attention to a problematic situation doesn't really make it better that you just do the thing anyway. If anything, I would almost argue that makes it worse because you're explicitly drawing attention to it. Plus, if the idea is for the anime to scale back or tone down a lot of the questionable content of the original manga, and why is the scene even in the episode at all? The only thing I can think of is that it'll potentially be an important plot point later on? But I feel like you could've written around that, since it is not uncommon for a teacher to have a student's contact information since that could be filed away. It'll be especially weird if this plot point just never gets brought up again, because it could have easily been cut from the episode and it wouldn't really change a thing.

I'm not really laughing at Nakamura's over the top reactions, even when the voice actors are putting their soul into it because he's right, this isn't really appropriate. It's just sort of happening and I'm left sitting there feeling really uncomfortable. What is all of this supposed to lead to? If anything, I am curious about that. I'm curious if Nakamura's actually going to draw attention to it or if this is going to come up again at all. This episode definitely was one that I didn't think I'd end up writing so much about, but considering all of the thought that went into portraying this stuff, I feel like it was only fair that I gave it as thorough of a breakdown as I could.

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