Go-Toubun no Hanayome S2 – 04

「七つのさよなら 第三章」 (Nanatsu no Sayonara: Daisanshou)
“Seven Goodbyes: Part 3”

For the final episode in the “Seven Goodbyes” arc, we see Nino making a breakthrough when she gets some surprisingly positive advice from Miku and Yotsuba finally getting the encouragement she needed to focus on her exams. With the end of the last arc in the rearview mirror, however, we’re given some juicier drama as Fuutarou is forced to quit being their tutor for the time being.

The last section of Nino’s redemption arc is given greater significance due to Miku’s intervention. It was impactful to see Miku notice how they’ve gone through beneficial changes with Fuutarou’s tutoring, and have opened themselves up to experiences they would’ve never known if he hadn’t gotten them more comfortable with hanging out with each other more often.

Even though she’s shy to a fault, she’s secretly very encouraging and knows exactly what it is about sisterhood that Nino values. It’s easy to see why Miku is beloved since you want to cheer for her to overcome the obstacles she has as an introvert, yet she’s in tune with her sisters enough so that she is willing to extend an olive branch to Nino and admit things like her cooking being the glue that holds everyone’s morale together.

Above all else, this was an important episode for Nino’s development because of how much animosity she has to let go of. It makes sense that a confrontational person like Nino would value the constructive words of her rival more than any of her other sisters or Fuutarou begging to have her back. Her budding feelings for Fuutarou feed into her upset reaction to knowing that Fuutarou tricked her into falling in love with a version of him that she knows is unobtainable.

But in the process, Nino aims to let her past go as she reflects on the new opportunities she has with her sisters now that they’re closer than they have been for the past few years. Funny enough, the inspiration that Fuutarou and Miku gave her also drove her to cut her hair short in a Haruno Sakura-esque development of trimming up to free herself from the limitations of her past. Her concern for strengthening her sisters’ bonds rather than preserving them is so strong that she thought of giving Itsuki a meaningful apology gift without knowing that Itsuki had a similar apology gift in mind. It shows real growth for Nino and it’s understandable why she is beloved for the instances where Nino is giving off a kinder side.

The Yotsuba resignation part is oddly wedged into the Nino redemption arc. It gives Yotsuba more to chew on storywise, but it also calls too much attention to Negi’s preferred storytelling method of using the manga’s weekly releases as a chance to tease out parts of the story slowly. If you have a dramatic beat in Chapter 46, you have to start Chapter 47 with a completely unrelated subplot and then end the chapter with a brief continuation of the cliffhanger from 46. It’s something that made the last couple arcs of the manga a miserable experience to follow weekly considering how you might only get hints of the information you were hoping to get from next week’s chapter or the week after.

Aside from all that, we lead into the next arc with the drama bomb that Fuutarou was pressured to quit being a tutor. This is also something that would rely on the next episode to give greater meaning because, at the moment, all we’re given to work with is that Fuutarou is deflecting and saying it’s because of grades in spite of their father forbidding him from entering the sisters’ condominium ever again. It comes off as far more suspicious knowing how much Fuutarou likes to lie about his feelings to protect others. It might come from the genuine disappointment of the sisters failing and it might be why he aimed to reach out to the dad about it, but the next episode would be a better way to confirm it.