Ore wo Suki na no wa Omae Dake ka yo – 09

「俺なりに考えた結果」 (Ore nari ni kangaeta kekka)
“My Conclusion After Much Consideration”

While we had some miscellaneous happenings here and there, there’s no doubt that the confrontation between Joro and Pansy was the climax of this episode. It gave us the question that needed to be addressed, as well as the subsequent tone and pace to which the story and characters approached any form of resolution. So where to begin? The fracas left me conflicted because I could sympathize with yet criticize both viewpoints. Joro is doing the right thing for the wrong reasons – using the incident as a pretext for avoiding reality. Why should Pansy be allowed to detract from Joro’s solid efforts, in seeking to rectify his own mistake?

Yet from her perspective, he’s being consumed by an inferiority complex. His attempts to avoid mingling with Sun-Chan, Himawari and Cosmos come from a place of feeling inadequate, with his part-time work being merely a pretext concealing the actual truth. Rather than wanting to enable these feelings, which will never fix the fundamental underlying issue, Pansy wanted Joro to take them head on and be honest about them. After all, he became so depressed after messing up at work. When you fuck up that bad, at the one thing you were getting pretty good at, of course it’s going to shatter your self-esteem. But there’s no use in moping over spilled milk so hard – what’s done is done, and you can only really look to the future.

The moment where Himawari gifted him the book illustrated Pansy’s perspective. He wasn’t doing it to compensate the damaged book, as opposed to doing it for himself. Himawari picked up that Joro was feeling down because of the tattered book, and acted extremely selflessly, skipping practice for the sake of acquiring the book for Joro. There’s no way you could construe such a sweet and lovely action in a negative way. However, Joro’s pride became wounded. He gave it his all, he had to be the one to fix his fuck-up, and the meaning was completely lost when someone else bailed him out. So his inferiority complex flared up – causing him to lash out at her in a cruel way.

Fortunately, Joro isn’t a total ass. He realises the error of his ways and quickly turns the situation around, thanking Himawari for being there for him and comes to accept that it’s fine to be run-of-the-mill among a group of outstanding people. I really enjoyed how Joro has been depicted throughout this arc, because his struggles and emotional fluctuation come across as being intensely human. Relatable, organic and fluid. His emotional shifts feel like natural progressions, with how he reads situations and adjusts accordingly, e.g. hesitating to call back Pansy after he told her to fuck off, and acquiescing after he snapped at Himawari. Ever since Hamlet, that mix of inner conflict and hesitancy has really proven to be a winning formula among audiences. And to me, Joro fits this bill to a tee. He might doubt himself, and he might have a load of personal issues, but he’s definitely won me over.

To wrap things off, you’d have thought that giving Pansy a new copy of her damaged book would have brought this arc to a nice and fitting close. But this is OreSuki. No one’s allowed to have nice things, apparently. Table-kun might have been a victim in another show. But Bench-kun is an active perpetrator, taking the characters in this series on extremely wild rides that they hate. And the bombshell dropped at the end of the episode proved to be no exception – the first year who flaked out of the dance festival requests Joro to assist her in getting Sun-chan and Pansy to date. Which sets up the next arc very nicely.

That bookmark from Pansy with the question ‘Would you help me if I was in trouble?’ is quite blatantly one of Chekhov’s guns with smoke billowing out of the nozzle. No way it won’t be relevant. Then there’s the matter of Tsubaki, who I’ll still continue to suspect, because anyone in this show is guilty of harbouring an ulterior motive until proven innocent. I still reckon the two people who helped Joro search for the book, were involved with damaging it and are related to Tsubaki in some way – perhaps they went to her old school. Also, I have my reservations about this Yasuo Hazuki. Though he may come across like a Prince Charming, even giving Joro some excellent advice that helped him reach the stage of acceptance, my trust isn’t so easily won over for reasons. First off, too many seemingly fine characters have turned out to have a moral defect. And if League of Legends taught me anything, any Yasuo almost always means bad news. With all these factors taken into consideration, aren’t you excited to see where and how this train is going to crash? Me too.

Anyway, that’s about everything I wanted to discuss. As always, thanks for reading my post and see you next week!