Ore wo Suki na no wa Omae Dake ka yo – 10

「俺だってたまには活躍する」 (Ore datte tama ni wa katsuyaku suru)
“Even I’m Useful Once in a While”

For once, a newly introduced girl doesn’t have some kind of crush on Joro. Surely that should be a source of relief for our beleaguered boy? Alas, the notorious bench strikes yet again – with misfortune being its natural accomplice. And so she approaches him with an ulterior motive of bringing together Pansy and Sun-chan. As such, Tampopo still finds a way to bring him trouble, bribing him into assisting her with some sketchy bunny girl photos. To begin with, he goes along with her schemes and Asunaro becomes involved as well. A viewer’s expectations would probably have been heightened, given all the high level mind games that have played out up until this point. But that… was her first and arguably final act of manipulation in this episode.

As it turns out, her skills are absolutely garbage compared to some of the more nefarious masterminds we’ve had so far. Tampopo’s ineptitude becomes fairly evident as she vastly overestimates her capabilities. Joro goes as far as calling her moronic, a description I’d be hard-pressed to disagree with. That said, I actually didn’t find it annoying in the slightest. For the most part, it was pretty hilarious seeing her delusional antics, and it definitely felt like the voice actress was having a lot of fun spouting self-serious nonsense. In the end, Joro completely shuts her down and explains that Pansy is not interested in Sun-chan – with Tampopo becoming steeped in denial. However, Pansy confronts her and put her qualms to rest – casually reaffirming her love towards Joro.

And that should be it. However, I… actually find it hard to buy Tampopo’s story at face value. At first, I thought she may have been altruistically seeking to unite Pansy and Sun-chan out of the goodness in her heart. Perhaps she possessed unrequited feelings for Sun-chan, and wanted to support him as best as she could. But that’s certainly not the impression I’ve gotten at all throughout this episode, and now I’m not convinced that her motive was to make Sun-chan reach a higher level of performance as the baseball club’s manager.

Crucially, she lied about a couple of things, leaving some sizable holes in her story. Those lies should have been inconsequential, as far as achieving her end goal was concerned. So why? Then it means that the motives she claims are probably pretexts to her real ones. She wanted to conceal her connection to the other high school. Therefore, I’d garner that her true ulterior motive must have something to do with the school she really wanted to attend – and although there’s been no direct confirmation we’ve had three tangentially plot relevant characters from another school that have recently appeared. The two mysterious girls and Yasuo. My guess is as good as anyone’s, regarding where this can go. So I guess we’ll have to see if my intuition is on the money, assuming that everything is resolved before the season concludes.

In other news, the interaction between Cosmos and the teacher was ominously telling, in which she protested to no avail at the prospective library closure plans. In all fairness, it has been commented upon many times throughout the series that barely anyone uses the library. So it isn’t an unrealistic curveball designed to manufacture drama. However, it’s Pansy’s place. Conflict is unavoidable and I don’t expect Joro and Co to go down without putting up a fight. It will be interesting to see why the decision has been made, whether Joro and Co can have the decision reversed, and how they’ll go about achieving it. With only two episodes left, I’m quite sure this will be OreSuki’s focus down the final stretch and I will be excited to see how everything pans out. Anyway, that’s about everything I wanted to discuss. As always, thanks for reading my post and see you next week!