Yahari Ore no Seishun Rabukome wa Machigatteiru - 5

"Once Again, He Turns His Back on the Path from Whence He Came"

Somehow I got a weird Hyouka-ish vibe off Yahari this week; just not in the beauty department.

I'm never really sure what this series intends to do with itself, and this (or rather, last) week's episode is no exception. I feel that it's too early for a romcom to set up a pairing like this one seems to want to do (though it'd be nice if it did), but it seems to have maneuvered itself into exactly the right place if it chooses to go that route. The whole mystery of Kawasaki Saki's (Koshimizu Ami) night time activities is also interestingly different. I was wholly expecting things to go the way Hachiman and the others first suspected; that she was up to no good and worrying her parents needlessly, but Yahari is strange in that it entertains those ideas and then tosses them aside. As Hikki often thinks, it seems that his life isn't quite as convenient as he'd like it to be.

I'm quite satisfied with the way Hikki and his sister have been depicted the last couple of episodes. Though she's a bit of a loli-sister trap, her affection for her brother is genuine, and he's not at all influenced by her in any way that's not sisterly. That in itself is nice, but it's also interesting to see that she trusts him enough to come for help despite the things she says about him, and there's some nice things going on with the Kawasaki otouto and his older sister as well. The concern between the family members is really apparent, and Kawasaki working as a barista for her tuition is pretty much her way of caring for her parents and siblings; she doesn't want to be an added burden, so she's working it off, albeit in a rather complicated form. All's well it ends well, though unfortunately not for Hikki.

The offhand comment about Hachiman's accident before entering high school turns out to be of much more import than originally thought; the dog he saved belonged to none other than Yui, which explains why she's been so interested in him and called him by nickname since the start. Her sense of obligation is what causes her to seek him out and befriend him; she feels guilty that it was her dog that caused him to miss out on the crucial bonding period at the start of the school year, but that unfortunately only makes Hikki feel worse. No one likes to be pitied, and finding out that your friend is only being kind to you as a way to pay you back for an accident isn't necessarily a pleasant experience. You could potentially argue that there's some romance here, but I'm not so sure that's the case; this series doesn't feel like it would go there so quickly, but it has proven me wrong before, so who knows?

N.B.: I apologize for the less than stellar quality post; I just got through a 3 hour written final earlier today and a ten page paper last night. I'm rather written out by this point. However, the good news is that starting next week I should be able to get up to speed on Yahari, assuming things go well from here on out.