Densha Otoko – 06

Short Summary:
Tsuyoshi gets invited to Saori’s house for tea and a movie. His online friends urge him to confess, but he is unable to. They make another date, but Tsuyoshi later learns that Comiket lands on the same day. He eventually decides to go to the convention, rescheduling his date. The next day, Misuzu drags him to Kazuya’s restaurant where they’re spotted by Saori and her brother. Keisuke and Misuzu pair off, allowing Saori and Tsuyoshi to leave together. Tsuyoshi stutters through expressing his feelings, then saves Saori from being hit by a car. In response, she takes Tsuyoshi’s hand and they walk off together holding hands. Saturday rolls around and Tsuyoshi realizes that he lost the tickets to get in. He calls Kazuya’s restuarant, but Keisuke doesn’t know anything about it. Kazuya finds the envelope and calls Saori who rushes over to pick it up so that she can deliver it to Tsuyoshi. Unable to go in to set up shop, Tsuyoshi and companyo do it utside the convention center. Saori eventually finds their makeshift booth with them excitedly discussing a magazine. She puts the pieces together and is very angry and upset about Tsuyoshi lying to her.

Ouch…
The last 3 minutes of this episode are just painful to watch. Saori and Tsuyoshi make so much progress this episode, from his visit to her house to holding hands going home. She is really excited and happy to be able to deliver the envelope to him, especially after seeing the love umbrella that he wrote on it. They were basically to the point of being a couple. Then she sees his geek side, and, more importantly, she realizes that he lied to her. It really is heartbreaking to see her start crying.
Which isn’t to say that this episode did not have funny parts. I laughed at the various hallucinatory writings and images that Tsuyoshi sees of his online friends urging him to confess, particularly the credits from the movie he watches with Saori which has the message board people dressed up as dogs. The Benoist tea room scene is also pretty funny.
The other big development this episode is that Kazuya also figured out that Hermes is Saori and rushes off to find her. Not sure how he’s going to react if he finds them together. It’ll be even worse if he reveals that Tsuyoshi’s been posting on a message board about their relationship.
So now that we’ve taken like two steps forward and three steps back, I’m curious where that leaves us. Saori doesn’t seem to believe in Tsuyoshi anymore; the preview instead shows her smiling while with Kazuya. It also hints that something happens to Tsuyoshi and that Saori finds him collapsed. She probably still cares enough for him that something like that happening can rekinde their relationship (hopefully).