"Movie Theater Double Dates Are A Battlefield"
I don't think these girls realize that Masuzu is more or less dominating by the divide and conquer tactic...
It didn't really strike me until just now how much like a battlefield this series
really is. Considering the series and episode titles, you'd think that would be blatantly obvious to figure out, but it's so repeated that it starts to feel like a joke. Then there's the fact that
none of the girls are usually outright confrontational about their intentions; most of the time they get along like good friends or like a master and her servants (I suppose Masuzu would be the equivalent to the mistress of the household with the legitimate claim, whereas the other two are her gullible maids, or in Chiwa's case, attack dog) rather than rivals. But really, there's definitely some fighting going on beneath the romcom situation surface, and it's not necessarily
Ai and her actual confrontations with Chiwa that demonstrates this. What they're doing is just normal harem arguments around an oblivious male lead, but there's something a bit more subtle going on; so subtle, in fact, that I doubt any of them, even Masuzu, really notices it's happening.
Well, I'll retract that last statement back a bit. Masuzu definitely knows what she's doing to some extent, and what she's doing is creating puppets from her rivals and using them to keep each other at bay. In other words, while
Chiwa and Ai are busily fighting over Eita, Masuzu doesn't have to lift a finger to
keep him on a leash, though that doesn't mean she doesn't get involved. After all, isn't it important to keep your friends close and your enemies closer? By having Hime and Chiwa take part in her club, she can always keep tabs on them and make sure they do as she pleases, whereas Ai is a
bigger threat as a loose agent. Of course, it's completely possible that Masuzu is ignorant of Ai's real feelings (seeing as she wants Eita to seduce her, without cheating on her, of course), but she's the type to like things under her control, and she doesn't appreciate Ai's meddling in her club. Thus in attempting to blackmail her, she's trying get Ai to submit, with the added bonus that with her and Chiwa going at it, Masuzu can move forward in taking Eita almost without impediment. A war strategy if I ever saw one.
Still, things don't get less cringe-worthy for Ai or the rest of the cast this episode. Not only is Eita further tortured by his
chuunibyou notebook, we also get an actual look at the
real truth of what happened when he wrote about his middle school love; that was pretty harsh to watch. On top of that, Ai's tsundere nature continues to entangle her in her own web of lies mercilessly, and Eita is fully convinced that she has a boyfriend, so much so that he assures Masuzu that it's true. Of course, he continues to be as oblivious as a stone wall even after
Ai accidentally bursts out with expressions like "Ai-chan wins!" or the truly painful (and convenient) scene at the theater in which she and Chiwa have a shouting match over the movie (which is really them identifying with the love triangle on screen). I'm not really a fan of Ai, so it'd be nice if this whole arc would finish up quickly, though we seem to have at least one episode left in which Ai probably tells Eita about their much-alluded to past connection.
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