Recap

We’re nearing the end of the drama so it’s time for Christmas! The school holding an Illumination Festival and Aoki’s class doing a Christmas party with Potlock. Not surprisingly, legend has it that if you give your crush a cake during the festival your love will be fulfilled.

Aoki encourages Hashimoto to cake for the party and give a piece to Akkun. Akkun gets Hashimoto’s hopes up by picking cupcakes out of her recipe book. 

Later, Hashimoto checks with Aoki on his relationship. He’s still confused about what to do next and wondering what Ida is thinking. Hashimoto is as encouraging as always.

Aoki’s stress over the relationship doesn’t go away and Ida is way more relaxed. Seeing Aoki’s fear over their relationship being discovered, Ida suggests a date on the weekend together.

They go to Yokohama and are cute together, though Aoki is still shy about holding hands. Ida is impressed with Aoki’s enthusiasm and planning. They go to see a movie with a dog like Ida’s in it, only the dog dies and Aoki is brokenhearted.

To cheer him up, Ida invites him to his place to see his dog. Aoki gets stressed again when he realizes Ida’s parents are out. Ida tries to calm him down but when a spilled drink leads to Ida changing his top, Ida teases him and Aoki gets upset. He feels like he’s the only one taking the relationship seriously.

Hashimoto and Akkun argue over what happened and what Aoki should do. Hashimoto ends up bringing him to bake cakes with her and her friends. He’ll make one to give Ida.

Ida’s teammate notices his mood and seemingly already knows everything about him and Aoki’s relationship. The teammate points out Ida has a habit of rescuing those in trouble. Is he doing that with Aoki or does he really like him? 

Ida checks on Aoki in the home economics room, and their conversation is awkward. Ida is moody and indecisive as he stands alone in front of the shoe lockers. There he’s confronted by his other teammates who saw Aoki and Ida holding hands in Yokohama. 

Thoughts

This episode has the most cliffhanger ending to me, worse than when Akkun made Aoki recant his feelings to Ida. It’s the penultimate episode so gotta ramp up the tension.

At this point, the drama is staying true to a lot of the comic conflict and dialogue, but the order of events has been shifted and condensed. The comic books are 9 series, too much to fit in the drama. The result is their sweet date isn’t even over before we get to Aoki getting upset and Ida sent into deep self-reflection. 

This is one of the rare cases I wish a drama had another episode, so we could enjoy more cuteness before the climactic ending. It would be nice to see them getting to enjoy being a couple a little more. But the angst level is still in keeping with the overall tone of the show.

Aoki and Ida are both still struggling to work together on what relationship they want now that they’ve fallen into one together. I can hard relate to Aoki and how he’s a bundle of insecurities and neurosis. A new, first relationship, unexpectedly with a guy, is a lot for Aoki’s nervous system. Since Ida doesn’t have the same insecurities he can’t understand what runs through Aoki’s mind. Then again, Ida doesn’t even understand how Ida feels.

AND they’re teenagers. It’s a lot.

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