Summary:

The day after Jun asked him to go out with Noe, Shinichirou is looking for her at school even though he doesn’t really have much to say to her. She wants to eat lunch with him, but he says that a guy and a girl eating together is weird, so she instead asks him to walk home with her after school. Shinichirou’s excuse for why he can’t do that either is that he has dance practice for the upcoming festival, and Noe is surprisingly impressed by the fact that he’s going to be dancing. Without Shinichirou to eat lunch with, Noe ends up sitting with Hiromi and acting as her friend. After class however, Noe sees Shinichirou walking out of school with Hiromi, despite what he had told her earlier. Nobuse meanwhile goes to Aiko’s store and notices that she’s wearing a rather plain purple sweater. It leads to him saying that he’d like one hand-knit by her, and she agrees to do it. As for Hiromi and Shinichirou, they go to the waterfront on Hiromi’s suggestion, and when she notices that Shinichirou is feeling cold, she gives him her scarf to wear. She also tells him about having lunch with Noe and how they shared food like friends. That night, after she saw the two coming home together, Shinichirou’s mother privately tells Hiromi not to walk with Shinichirou outside anymore since they already live together under one roof, and Hiromi quickly understands what his mother is implying.

The next day, Noe brings a lunch consisting of octopus-shaped wieners that she cooked, but Hiromi isn’t at the usual eating spot. Instead, Hiromi is in the gym practicing her shooting skills with a basketball. Noe is later returning home by herself when she hears some music playing, and she ends up finding the place where Shinichirou practices dancing for the festival. After interrupting them, she gives Shinichirou some of the food she cooked, but she doesn’t want him eating the octopus-shaped wieners. She considers them to be fake because of their artificial coloring, and she thinks that eating such things will cause him to become a liar. When Noe starts talking about his tears again, Shinichirou questions how she plans on getting them from him. Noe claims to be still thinking about it, though she does lick his face to show him one way. At home later, Shinichirou is working on a Raigomaru picture book story when Jun shows up on his motorcycle again because he wants to know if Shinichirou has decided yet. Shinichirou half-jokingly challenges Jun to go out with Hiromi in exchange for him going out with Noe, but Jun doesn’t even know who Hiromi is until Shinichirou reminds him. Jun then comments on how she’s cute and agrees before riding off.

Frustrated by all this and unsure if Jun was serious, Shinichirou goes to Hiromi’s room to talk to her about it. After both of them make note of how this is the first time he’s been in her room, Shinichirou tells her about meeting Jun and how Jun had said that she was cute. Hiromi doesn’t look too happy about this though and says that a meddlesome guy is like a fool. She doesn’t care for the fact that he came into her room to tell her this, and she notes that it’d be bad if his mother found them together here, so Shinichirou leaves. In the hallway, he then runs into their family’s employee who’s carrying around some old picture albums. Inside, Shinichirou finds photos of his father from back when his father was young, but there’s also a picture where a woman’s face has been cut out, and the caption indicates that it’s Hiromi’s mother. The following day, Shinichirou heads to Aiko’s store after school and gets there before it opens. Aiko returns to find him waiting outside, so she lets him in through the back door. Once inside, Shinichirou notices that Aiko is sewing a sweater and guesses that it’s for Nobuse. Since Shinichirou has a similar shoulder length to his friend, Aiko claims that she wants to measure him and takes her time doing so. When Nobuse eventually comes knocking on the front door of the store, Shinichirou tries to get up to go open it, but Aiko sits him back down and asks him not to.

Preview

It was a little weird for them to repeat the same scene (of Shinichirou going to Hiromi’s room) from two different points of view without much transition in between. It certainly confused me for a moment because I thought that Shinichirou had gone back to her room or something. There weren’t even any huge revelations the second time around either, so I really don’t know why they decided to do it that way. At best, it was a lot of time spent to reinforce the fact that Hiromi wasn’t happy with what she considered to be meddling. What’s more interesting is that Shinichirou screwed up – if he had kept his mouth shut, then Jun could have continued on not knowing who Hiromi was. Shinichirou instead now has to deal with Jun going after Hiromi (and probably in a playboy way since Jun doesn’t appear truly to have feelings for her). There’s also still the nagging issue of Hiromi’s mother and Shinichirou’s mother, and this episode did little to clear that up.

Anyway, what I liked most about this episode is how it ended. I think I’ve said this before, but they’re really good at finishing with a cliffhanger moment, and this week was no different. I’d love to see how Aiko explains her way out of this. I get the feeling that she really wants to give the sweater to Shinichirou, and I can’t help but root for her even though she’s got the least chance of ending up with him. If the preview for next week is any indicator, Shinichirou will probably find out the truth about her feelings soon.

46 Comments

  1. This really makes me hate bandai more. I don’t know whether to continue reading the blogs regarding TT and Shigofumi since there won’t be anymore subs. I don’t know enough japanese to adequately follow along, neverminding the fact that my computer doesn’t have sound. I can’t decide if i’m better off not knowing what i’m missing, y’know? Tough times, indeed. lol.

  2. There will of course be more subs. The new eps have already been subbed.

    I am quite happy to buy DVDs (I have literally hundreds and hundreds of legit R1s), but Bandai Visual deserves no support at all. They’re a cancer on the market.

    Just continue downloading it.

    d
  3. I’m sold on Noe, but it is amazing to have almost equal sympathy for all three girls, and to see them all with a chance for the protagonist’s affection. And the protagonist is really a good guy, even if he is so block-headed, like 90% of all harem leads. At least his block-headedness is at a fairly high level of subtlety, lol.

    I liked the idea of repeating the sequence in Hiromi’s room, but I didn’t feel there was enough new info in the second run-through to make it worthwhile. We could see and hear Hiromi’s feelings the first time, in the animation and voice, and didn’t need them spelled out.

    This episode had a Korean director and animation supervisor, and all the named animators were Korean. (In episode two, I thought the names were Chinese, since they are given in kanji, but now I know they are Korean.)

  4. This series is getting more and more interesting but the part where they repeat the same secenes is confusing since the is no pause or anything indicating that and it looks like next episode it looks like as if there’s a confession.

    setsuke
  5. Oh, looks like my initial suspicion was correct. Jun doesn’t know Hiromi after all and she just made up that story about them meeting last year. This just goes to reassure the idea that Hiromi actually likes Shin’ichirou.

    Also, I’m starting to see the reason why Hiromi had to “seal” her feelings away after she moved into the Nakagami household. It’s probably the fact that Shin’ichirou’s mom doesn’t want her being seen with him in that way (or her going out with him), given what she said to Hiromi this episode. I find it kind of unreasonable for his mom to take out her frustration on the child of the girl she apparently hated, but I guess that’s what adds the needed “tension” in the Shin’ichirou x Hiromi relationship.

  6. Showing the same scene from two different perspective during the Shinichirou “let’s dig the hole a bit deeper” conversation with Hirmoi didn’t work out. The director should have switched to first person mode. (SHAFT would have done it 100x better) It did save some animation cells though >_

    Ronin8317
  7. @GP:

    No, they didn’t quite explain that yet, but Shin’ichirou did come across an old photo album with Hiromi’s mom’s face cut out of all the pictures. Both Shin’ichirou and his wine cellar boy found it odd, but it didn’t cause a commotion.

  8. @divine|s
    I don’t know if Hiromi lied about meeting Jun once or not but Hiromi’s statement of meeting Jun once wasn’t prove false. Considering they weren’t even on Last name bases they were barely passing aquitances. Besides Jun does know her. In his conversation with Shin’ He said so number 6 (Hiromi’s number) lives here, and clearly stated to shin’ that he think she is cute. Shin’ told Hiromi that Jun think she is cute in her room and she said busybodies are idiots.

    deadceyx
  9. i prefer jun liking noe … and then in the preview he touches hiromi’s face .. i wanted siscon!! or maybe jun has some kind of illness where he has to touch every chick’s face … im rooting for a school days ending 🙂

  10. Oh man, I know you guys find it funny but school days is done and over. Not all SR shows are like it or even come close in the psycho department.

    That said, I still beleave 100% that Hiromi is holding back her true feelings for Shin cuz of his mom and whatever bad blood she has with Hiromis mom etc. At first I thought that she felt that way because she now has to live at his house, so she’s trying to take on the sister role. But the more we see how Shins mom flat out hates her the more I think that Hiromis reason is related to that.

    As far as Hiromi and Jun goes. They barally know each other. Having seen each other play and thus only using their numbers and not their names when talking about them with others says to me that they don’t really know one another the way Hiromi was trying to make it sound to Shin in ep4, or to her best friend at the end of ep3.

    For me this show is still about Shin x Hiromi, they’ll probably end up together through their interactions with the rest of the characters, mostly Noe though. I don’t see her brother Jun just coming in and snatching up Hiromi like that. Yeah he might be cool and good looking etc. But you never really get over your first love. Or forget about them fully for that matter. So her having to live with Shin stops her from trully being able to get over her love from him and move on with someone like Jun.

    Still you never know. The writers might wanna do something else in the end.

    GP
  11. I’d like to know why Jun is touching her face also. But it looks like we’ll have to wait till ep6 for that one. Either way, seems like Hiromi is mad for once. Probably at Shin though.

    GP
  12. I wouldn’t be surprised if Hiromi was actually a child from Shin’s father’s affair, or something like that, making them siblings. Hopefully they will clear things out, why Shin’s mother despises Hiromi so much; that’s a very interesting topic actually, wouldn’t think of that in an anime.

    HolyHawk
  13. I’m so confused now, just watched the raw as well.

    Hiromi said she sealed away her feelings when moving into the house and shows signs that she does like Shinichirou earlier on. I knew she was lying about the basketballer in the previous episodes but now I’m totally confused on what she wants.

    Does hiromi like shin or no? I’m totally shipping for them lol. Or aiko, but plz no more Noe and chicken feed

    Fumika
  14. @ Vulpix

    I agree. Shinichiro knows that she likes Jun and she showed him a different world when she talked about Jun on episode 4 I think. He’s just looking out for her and all since he thought that she wants to get closer to Noe for Jun. Unless, Hiromi flat out denies it Shinichiro will only know that she likes Jun. I mean no one can read each other’s minds thus the 2 PoV’s on the room scene and we haven’t seen any confessions yet.

    Izual
  15. OMG!!
    That scene were Shinichirou goes to Hiromi’s room to talk to her….and she just kicked his ass like a wild horse!! it was almost like she thought like this:

    ” SO AS AT LEAST YOU CAME HERE , TAKE OFF MY CLOTHES AND FUCK ME YOU IDIOT!! I AM WAITNG YOU TO PUT ME IN THE BED…NOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!! ”
    ” I WANT LITTLE Shinichirou IN MY ASS NOW!!! SO STOP TALKING AND DO IT YOU MORON!! ”

    :D( daitan na hitou né!! )

    Tensai Otaku
  16. I doubt they’re half siblings etc. There might be something else. I think TT won’t have that type of drama in it. Maybe Shins mom just hates her cuz her mom did something to her in the past but that doesn’t mean it was anything like cheating with Shins dad etc.

    Maybe her mom and Shins mom are like sisters? The fact we don’t see her face makes me wonder if they look alike a bit or not. Or maybe it’s something really simple like Hiromis mom used to go out with Shins dad in the past but Hiromi isn’t related to it at all. Shins mom could just hate her out of simple jealousy for her being around or something.

    I’m still waiting for some subs for ep5 so I can see what they say if anything. And ep6 should be big to the story from the looks of the preview. I’d really like to know why Hiromi is mad in the last pic for the preview. And if she’s mad at Shin which is what i’m betting on.

    GP
  17. I also thought that maybe Shin’s dad had an affair with Hiromi’s mom and that Hiromi could have been their child, making Shin and Hiromi half-siblings. It would go with what he told her earlier that now Hiromi was their child too, but that’s really stretching it. Even if they were siblings I’d probably want them to end up together because going seperate ways feels like the easy way out.

    If Shin’s mom hates her it’s probably something significant, otherwise there’s no point to building up the suspense.

    I think Hiromi’s gonna actually fall for Jun. Maybe they’ll understand and compliment each other from their experience of being in love with someone they can’t be with. For Jun it’s being a siscon, but for Hiromi who knows why she can’t be with Shin.

    I really want it to be Shin x Hiromi, but most Japanese romances, no romances in general do what I consider a cop out by pairing everyone up with someone just to give it a happy ending. Besides the show feels like it’s been steering us towards Shin x Noe the past 5 eps. The real good ones say fuck it to this formula.

    I’m with Tensai Otaku, Shin should’ve thrown her down on the bed and had his way with her. That’s the only real way to be sure. If she screamed no, then we’d know her true feelings. But I have a feeling she wanted it bad, and that she’d have screamed anything but no.

    White Star
  18. I don’t think the show is going for Shin x Noe at all really. Yeah she’s in the lead so to say for these 5eps but most of the, if not all, key story/drama parts are between Shin x Hiromi.

    His mom hating her doesn’t really have to be because of something big. Women aren’t like guys in that they fight over little things often. We’ll see though, maybe in the next episode. I don’t think they’re related at all though. Shins mom probably just hates her cuz she looks like her mom (how her eyes are the same).

    Maybe her mom and shins dad had a little flings at one point but again I don’t think they’re related. For one thing Shin and Hiromi are the same age so they’re born the same year. I really don’t think the dad is the type of guy to go knock up two girls who seemed to be close to each other in the past (looking at the old photos), at the same time.

    Actually I don’t even think Hiromi knows why shins mom hates her. But because she does Hiromi has to now fight her feelings.

    These are just guesses though. I hope ep6 will answer some of these things insted of just giving us more questions, like why Jun is touching Hiromi etc.

    GP
  19. why can I see this show steadily drifting into a Shin x Hiromi centered romance? She’s interesting and all, but I don’t have much empathy for her in comparison to the other girls. I also have a feeling some of the theories about Hiromi being Shin’s half-sister or something may become true, (take note of Shin’s mothers reaction when she see’s them walking home together, she DEFINATELY doesn’t want anything going on, they’re old enough and all so I’m assuming there’s a deeper meaning behind it), and if that’s the case; DO. NOT. WANT.

    I am sorta rooting for Aiko, even though it’s unlikely that it’ll happen. And people that are disliking Noe just because she ‘gets in the way’ of Hiromi and Shin need to shut up! All the characters are great! I personally don’t like Hiromi as much as the others, (It’s weird, I just really can’t empathize with her story), but I wouldn’t voice that just because she was ‘getting in the way’ or anything. All the characters are important to the story, I really am starting to adore this anime and can’t wait to see where it goes!

    law
  20. Maybe when Jun is touching Hiromi’s face, he’s thinking “If only I could touch Noe’s face,” or “So this is what it might feel like if I touch Noe’s face.” LOL! Either that or he’s got huge issues with touching girls’ faces. I’m hoping that it’s siscon though, and I wouldn’t mind a ShinxHiromi ending. But I don’t think Noe is “getting in the way” either. She does start to show some jealousy, but guys can be friends with girls, right? Well, maybe Noe is beyond that and would be kinda annoying in real life, but hey, it’s anime, lol.

  21. What I would like to see is some confessions go commence. All the girls still seem like they are holding it all in. And Shin just has no idea at all. I mean…I know he is trying to be the good guy and help everybody out, but when it comes to himself and what he wants he still seems a bit unsure. I guess all he need is a bit more incentive so he can actually make a move to any one of the girls, in which I don’t mind him taking any of the three really. But the plot is thickening..so I can’t wait to see the next episode!

    Dando008
  22. I’ve got a speculation… that Hiromi might actually be Shinichiro’s father’s illegitimate daughter, but like I said I’m just speculating.

    But it kind of explains Shinichiro’s mother’s attitude towards her, and also that photo of Hiromi’s mother (cut out) and lastly, the reason as to why Hiromi has to “seal” her feelings away for Shinichiro, due to the fact that they may infact me half-siblings.

    Boohoo

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