Recap
Ryuji and Amane tease each other and eat festival food together. Amane wishes time would stop.
Time doesn’t stop, and classmates in yukata show up. They obnoxiously tease them for being alone together. Amane lets one of the girls start to drag him away. Ryuji puts a stop to that, he wants to watch fireworks with just Amane.
Ryuji takes Amane’s hand and leads him towards his fireworks spot. A flustered Amane stops them to admit he didn’t want to be seen as weird for being two guys alone. He’s embarrassed and feels like he hasn’t changed.
Ryuji doesn’t see it as a big deal. He really did just want it to be the two of them, but he asks Amane if he’d be more comfortable in a group. Nope Ryuji, Amane is fine with how things are now.
They have a beach to themselves as fireworks explode overhead. Ryuji remarks that he hopes to be there next year with Amane. Amane wants to know if next year he’ll still be the one with one sided love.
We flashback to Ryuji’s time without Amane. The entire time they were apart he was thinking about Amane. He almost contacted him but wanted to have an answer first. Not until he talked to his mom about missing his dad and realized he was missing Amane did he have one.
Present day Amane can’t see Ryuji’s flashbacks and panics. He doesn’t want Ryuji to answer.
Ryuji wants to answer though. He admits he may not feel for Amane how Amane feels for him, but that he wants to meet with Amane just to meet with him. He wants to go out with him.
There’s some sweet awkward back and forth and kissing. Neither of them want to go home so they walk down to the lighthouse where their first ‘date’ happened. They talk about the future until the sun comes up.
They say ‘yoroshiku’ and walk home, hand in hand.
Thoughts
At the end there Ryuji says ‘yoroshikuna/よろしくな’ and Amane says ‘yoroshikune/よろしくね’ and they are both basically shortened/casual forms of ‘yoroshiku onegaishimasu/よろしくお願いします’. It’s one of those phrases we don’t have in English with a lot of meaning so it’s hard to translate. In this context the meaning is something like a ‘thank you for taking care of me in the future’. I like to see it as a bit of a promise for their future together.
I appreciated the reminder of the pressures that other people’s expectations can be. Those classmates in the yukata didn’t just invite Amane and Ryuji along, they had to first say it was lame for the two of them to be alone together. That kind of behavior is pretty gross, and I love Ryuji’s casual refusal and emphathize with Amane’s desire to just get along.
For a show that starts with one of the leads in a hotel room with an older man, it’s pretty chaste. That said — I’m really fine with that for two reasons.
One, while it’s perfectly healthy for teenagers to be curious about exploring sex, I don’t want to see it. Ew.
Two, I like that they’re going slow. Amane has been desperate for love and affection and taking a deep breath and slowing down seems good for him. This is all very new to Ryuji too, and I think it’s good for him to take his time getting comfortable.
Speaking of Ryuji, one flaw-not-flaw with the show is where it ends. Given the episode length/number of episodes I think it’s perfect. But while we watched Amane fall in love, we’re just at the beginning of Ryuji’s romantic journey. That’s a little unsatisfying.
I compare it to My Love Mix-Up, which had enough episodes for us to see Ida’s feelings for Aoki grow and deepen. It would have been nice to see that with Ryuji.
In the end though, they’re such a sweet, caring pair that I’m left feeling like whatever happens next, they’ll be okay. That’s the right kind of feeling to end on.
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If It’s With You is currently available in the US on GaGaOOLala