Recap

Aoki and Hashimoto are in stressed out over their crushes as they arrive at the mountain for their camping trip.

To the entire class’s surprise, a scary man tells them they are taking an orienteering course. Aoki thinks this man might be the God of the Mountain. They have to pair up and use a map to find ingredients for their dinners, and can only use what they find.

They will be doing this both days of the trip and Aoki despairs that they will have no time to confess.

Everyone quickly devolves into panic, except Akkun and Ida who are relaxed and chill. Hashimoto and Aoki do the worst in the class and come back with a carrot. Hashimoto cooks it into a decent but sad-looking dinner. Ida and Akkun sneak over with their beef curries to share. Aoki cries and hugs him, overwhelming Ida. Akkun is moved by Hashimoto’s silent, grateful tears.

The mean instructor silently watches them.

The next day Aoki and Hashimoto do worse, finding only an onion. Ida suggests the entire class pool their resources together and make one big pot. Everyone eagerly joins in, only to have the mean instructor confront them. Ida calmly stands up to him.

But that was the real test! They win by being kind!

Aoki and Hashimoto do their part by doing the dishes and the mean instructor tells them they did so poorly because they were cowards. This doesn’t really make sense, except that of course it’s not about orienteering.

Aoki goes on a walk with Ida and struggles to make his confession. He ends up behind a tree, blurting it out. But then he’s startled to realize Ida is standing near him and sends them both tumbling down the mountain. 

Aoki thinks he’s killed Ida for a moment and apologizes for being so much trouble. He tells Ida to reject him and he’ll leave him alone.

But Ida wants to try dating. He’s happy to be confessed to so many times. 

As they leave the camp Aoki silently thanks the God of the Mountain.

Thoughts

This may be my favorite episode, in part because the main misunderstandings get cleared, but also because of the humor. I find the absurdity of the students getting frantic and desperate as they search for food pretty funny. Hashimoto and Aoki being sadly reduced to an onion for dinner also amuses me. That it is all a test put on by the school is also cruel in a funny way. Basically, the suffering is funny? Which sounds terrible?

But I also love a good challenge to authority. Watching it this time, I realized that Ida’s an interesting character because he looks like a conformist but isn’t. He’s a good student, athletic and quiet. He seems like he must be following all the rules.

As I mentioned last episode though, he doesn’t just accept what he’s told and take things at face value but considers what he’s shown or told. In that way, he’s an independent thinker and it makes sense that he’s the rebel who urges the class to go against authority and then stands up for all of them. 

Which is attractive.

The drama departs strongest from the comics here, I think with pretty good reasons. The biggest change is turning the ski trip into a camping trip, which they probably had any number of production reasons to do so. They also simplified the competition, which could not longer be based on skiing ability, and condensed down Ida’s injury from that fall, which is a bigger thing in the book. 

While I miss the angst of Ida having a real head injury and Aoki overcoming cowardice to ski to his aid, for the pacing of the drama it makes sense to shorten it into something that fits into a single episode. 

They also skipped Akkun having a girlfriend for about five minutes and Ida going to a gokon, group blind date. Both are cute, but again, considering the drama length and pacing, I think it makes sense to cut.

As I mentioned in my Old Fashioned Cupcake review, I don’t think adaptations have to follow their original source carefully, but most dramas that I like stay close to the heart of the original material. (I was not a big fan of ‘Senpai, This Can’t Be Love!’ which is quite different from the manga.)

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