Rascal Does Not Dream of Santa Claus

Episode 9

“What is love?” That is the age-old question at the center of this arc. Himeji is a girl used to being loved. From a young age, she had the certainty that Kasai, her neighbor and childhood friend, loved her. All those around her treated it as if this love was a natural, forgone conclusion—including both her and Kasai. They were certain to end up together—right up until the day they didn't.

Kasai developed a crush on Futaba—and through it, realized the love he felt for her was far different from what he had felt for Himeji. Finding out that such a cornerstone of her reality was no such thing threw Himeji for a loop—forcing her to question the nature of love and triggering her Puberty Syndrome.

The issue here is how Himeji (at least this Puberty Syndrome-afflicted version of her) seems to view love. To her, love is something others do to her—not something she does to others. She enjoys making people love her and feels jealous when those feelings change after she doesn't reciprocate. This also means that it doesn't matter who loves her. They're all interchangeable, so once she gets her fix of “love,” she moves on to the next person. Over the course of this episode, she is confronted with two possibilities on the topic of love she doesn't want to accept.

The first is the idea that there is a man out there she would be unable to seduce. Sakuta's interest in Himeji is anything but romantic. He cares about her professionally as his student and is scared of the possibility that her Puberty Syndrome could be a danger to Mai. However, her flirting and innuendos mean nothing to him—he's a master of conversational jousting, after all. And you can see her getting frustrated by how he is never flustered and even goes on the counterattack at times.

The second issue on the topic of love is the idea that being loved the most by the person you love the most is a superior feeling to having tons of people in love with you. This, of course, piques Himeji's interest. Love is her drug, and getting a superior hit sounds intriguing to say the least. However, she has never felt this kind of love—and might not be able to in her current state. However, the plan basically writes itself. All Sakuta has to do is make Himeji fall in love with him while not falling in love with her. Yeah… this is going to be a mess.

On the topic of love, the other interesting bit to come out of this episode is a look into how Mai views her relationship with Sakuta. She states that the thing she loves most about Sakuta is how much he loves her. This comment, while sounding vain at first, is actually rather deep.

On one level, it mirrors what Sakuta himself says—i.e., about how being loved the most by the person you love the most is the best. But on another, there is the fact that Mai is a celebrity, one of the most popular in Japan. Thousands of people love her fanatically. However, the difference is that those people love Mai Sakurajima, the model, while Sakuta loves Mai Sakurajima, the normal girl. Or to put it another way, he loves the true her rather than the public persona—and that is worth far more to Mai than the supposed love of a million fans.

All in all, another solid episode, though I am not exactly looking forward to the train wreck to come—especially if it means that Sakuta misses out on his Christmas with Mai.

Rating:

Random Thoughts:

• If I were Futaba, I'd be livid at Sakuta for using me as a prop to hurt another person without cluing me in first.

• I can't help but feel like Mito is an important piece to what's really going on. She's been presented as the female Sakuta in pretty much every way (though, without a Mai to call her very own).

• It seems Sakuta has accidentally discovered Touko's real identity.

• I remain convinced that the looming danger to Mai is Touko and her becoming the same person—and that dealing with that will be the season's final arc.

Rascal Does Not Dream of Santa Claus is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

---

Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.