There's No Freaking Way I'll Be Your Lover! Unless...

Episode 10

This episode felt like the perfect blend of wholesomeness, gay denial, and surprisingly intense emotional foreplay. This is probably my favorite episode of the show thus far. The way that it was able to balance the wacky leaps in logic with surprisingly grounded conversations kept me glued to my seat up until the very end when Mai had to come and screw everything up! I'm not kidding when I said I paused the episode and nearly threw something in my room because her presence is going to get in the way of what feels like the real ship of the show. Why does everything need to be traced back to this woman? At least with Satsuki, it was dealing with a situation that revolved around Mai, but here, this is a situation that is completely isolated from the rest of the friend group.

Granted, there is a theme amongst all of our main cast: they're all putting up a front that they need to appear stronger than they actually are. Mai needs to appear perfect, Satsuki needs to appear mature, and Ajisai needs to be the best big sister ever to everybody. I think the show does a good job of establishing that none of these girls have really had an opportunity to let their hair down and be spoiled by somebody else because they're usually the ones who need to do the spoiling. You could argue that Satsuki's relationship with Mai ruins this a little bit, and the conversations in this episode retroactively make me hate the last arc more, but I see what the show is going for when it comes to Renako's relationship with all of these girls. Despite being the most anxious and neurotic, she can present opportunities for these girls to get spoiled in a way that they didn't think was originally possible, which in turn makes the romantic chemistry that much more believable.

Speaking of believability, the length that Renako will go to adamantly deny that she is not into girls is astounding. This girl is so deep in the closet, I want her to get Aslan's autograph for me, because she is occupying a separate plane of existence. She will throw around the word love with such passion regarding Ajisai and draw constant attention to how desirable she is. She even explicitly says at one point in the episode that she is turned on by being close to her. The funny thing is that Renako is kind of digging her own hole by constantly blurring the lines between friendship and a relationship. Her claiming it's up to the people to lay out if they're friends or lovers was good, but all she's doing is kicking the football down the road by not addressing her actions, which are VERY romantically charged. I don't blame Ajisai for thinking that Renako was at least a little interested in casual romantic intimacy. Both of these characters take that line and constantly skip rope with it throughout this entire episode, from all of the casual physical contact, the sibling role-play, and that entire bath scene. No, Renako, touching somebody on the chest is not the same as touching them on the shoulder, and if you really believe that, you wouldn't be as excited as you are.

When it comes to Ajisai, I do like how her character is presented. She wants to be spoiled after spending so much time taking care of kids all day, and as an oldest sibling who now works in education…I can relate. I want the arc to go a bit deeper into how Renako might feel about Ajisai as she starts letting that façade break down, because in a lot of ways, Renako equates that front she puts on as attractive. What happens when Renako is the one seen as the more mature and capable out of the two from Ajisai's perspective? There were instances in this episode where I thought a kiss was coming, but it never happened. Despite all of the sexual conversations, undertones and even direct callouts, the episode felt surprisingly restrained. It seems to be waiting for the big moment to come up. Given how things are playing out, this is probably the final arc of this season, but now that Mai is here, I couldn't tell you what direction this was going.

Rating:

There's No Freaking Way I'll Be Your Lover! Unless... is currently streaming on YouTube.