And now, for this week’s weather report: during the rainy season, it rains.  Thanks for your stunning insight, Kaname.

——

Our episode starts out, oddly enough, with a mixer.  I’ve not heard the word “mixer” used unless referring to a sorority, which the cast of Kimi to Boku certainly isn’t, but apparently Chizuru is trying to simulate a situation which girls are meeting with guys to see who is a potential mate.

Of course, this was a rather silly thing to try and do when there’s only one girl in their group of friends, although Chizuru seems to have a bad habit of lumping Shun in as a girl as well (but really, can you blame him?).

We find out early on that this is going to be a Kaname episode when we start going in to his attraction for older women again.  I find his preoccupation with his kindergarden teacher a bit creepy, and I feel like it’s being recycled a bit too much for us only being four episodes in so far.

However, this plot device is used to flush out some of Kaname’s character, as well as another minor character.  Much to my surprise, we find out that the boy’s teacher (seen in the first episode) was actually a helper at their kindergarden when he was in high school.  The boys seem to have mostly forgotten about him, even though Kaname made it his goal to be a strong man like the teacher’s helper.

The flashbacks this time around, like the last episode, served more of a purpose, and made me feel more connected to Kaname. I’m very like him in that he wants to be a strong enough person to not depend on anyone, and wants to take of everything on his own and not trouble anyone. You can see it affects his relationships, both in his childhood and even now, and it resonated strongly with me.

As the episode progresses, we get to see more of how important the arrival of Chizuru is.  The original group of four (Shun, Kaname, Yuki, and Yuta) have been friends for so long that they know when not to push and how to act not to annoy each other.  It’s an easy kind of friendship, but none of them are growing as people; Kaname even says they’re no different from how they were as children.

But Chizuru hasn’t known them for so long, and he pushes and is sometimes rude and annoying and provokes reactions out of them that they normally wouldn’t have.  We see him bringing the twins out of their shells; although they have a penchant for mischief, in the earlier episodes, neither of them really acted on it. But with Chizuru around, they get caught up in his energy and eagerly join in his antics.

Kaname is also being forced to grow, and although it’s going to be hard for him to learn to depend on others, Chizuru is somewhat forcing him to be less stern, and it’s obviously something Kaname needs.  Kimi to Boku has implemented an interesting method of showing how we have grow as people during our school years, and using Chizuru as a catalyst for these stagnated characters is an absolutely brilliant idea.

GO Rating: 4.5/5