Natsuo stumbles into Hina’s indecent boyfriend secret, and confronts her. Their relationship suddenly takes a dramatic and unexpected turn.
Overall Thoughts:
In previous episodes Hina was clearly troubled by her love life and her mysterious boyfriend. Natsuo wanted to intrude into her personal life, but Hina refused to say anything. And it turns out there’s a very good reason for this- Hina’s boyfriend is a married man. Until now, Hina had carefully built up an image as a wholesome role model. In reality, she is an impulsive lover and homewrecker.
Natsuo stumbles on this information by plot contrivance sheer chance outside the pub he likes to frequent. Perhaps it’s because Natsuo has longed for Hina that he senses her illegitimate relationship as an opportunity for him. There’s a good chance the married man is using Hina only for pleasure and will discard her and return to his wife eventually. If that happens, Natsuo would have a headstart on everyone else to be Hina’s rebound lover.
Natsuo also cites a knowledge of how affairs play out, I guess he watches a lot of dramas. (All the men in this show talk and act like women.) Natsuo generally views the women as being taken advantage of in them. In his mind, he can further justify his actions by thinking of himself as a knight in shining armor, ignoring the fact that Hina is arguably the villain in all this.
The confrontation scene doesn’t play out in a realistic way, IMO, not unless Hina were mentally unstable anyway. He goes in for a very cringy forced kiss, which should have probably ended his friendship with Hina on the spot, and she does slap him pretty good in response. However, for reasons that aren’t really explained or emotionally relatable, Hina kisses Natsuo back, and not just a boring, innocent kiss either. She then rips his shirt open and throws him on the bed. Their relationship goes from 0 to 60 in no time flat.
And then suddenly she comes to her senses and the moment of passion is over.
All we really get from this scene (which despite lacking skin was pretty hot), is basically that Hina is an unapologetic, impulsive slut. I guess both sisters are slutty in their own different kind of way. But either way, this is the first scene where Natsuo and Hina show romantic interest in each other. Many other shows would milk the tension for way too long, I like that this series just gets right into it. It’s just a bit contrived, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to see what happens next.
On a side note, the animation continues to look gorgeous. It makes you wonder how incredible this anime would be if it truly adapted the manga faithfully (which it probably won’t). Also, Yoko Hikasa has always been great in everything, and she showed again here that she is as good of an actress as she is a seductress.
I’ve heard that supposedly there’s going to be an extra BD scene added to each of the first three episodes. It’s possible that they might expand on the near-sex scene here with Natsuo and Hina, but the lack of a jarring cut in the action makes that feel unlikely. I guess we’ll see what they do, there are a lot of bathing and shower scenes in the manga, maybe it will be one of those inserted instead.
