Hatsukoi Limited 5-6

I agree completely with Kabitzin that Episode 5 was the least enjoyable so far. Mainly because I had precious little sympathy for Meguru. It's just such a crying shame to waste her Olympic-level potential like that. And because I was kinda stumped by the contradiction between (P1) Meguru likes Takei-senpai because he doesn't ogle her breasts and (P2) Meguru wants Takei-senpai to see her as a woman (which would necessarily involve some ogling of her breasts at some point). I suppose the above could be resolved with path dependence theory but I'm just waiting for Takei-senpai to turn out to be a DFC connoisseur.

Thankfully there was some precious Saki-nee time and, just like how saying your favourite chara in MariMite is Sei is like saying that the sky is blue, Misaki Time is always good.

Though a towel-clad Kei rolling around in bed doing that Divinyls thing and getting caught in the act by her loli elder sister carrying a huge stuffed animal is fine too.

And erm... excuse me. AFK

/AFK Ok where was I?

Although Kei is a chara voiced by Shizu-sama, I didn't like her very much. Partly due to the Power Overwhelming of Saki-nee. But because she came across as arrogant. And the worst kind too - the types whose arrogance is actually justified, oh how the truth can hurt so much more than delusion or falsehood! But this episode really opened up my shallow view of her shallowness.

It was also really LOL how the reactions to the possibility / confirmation of Kei x Kusuda was quite evenly split along gender lines, based on the sample of Hatsukoi Limited Ep 6 posts aggregated on AnimeNano at the time of writing this post.

Male bloggers were generally incredulous:

Omni: 'I still find the pairing of Kei and Kusuda rather unrealistic (it’s too obvious of an appeal to the predominately male audience)'

Hanners: 'While the whole relationship between this pairing couldn't be a more blatant case of opposites attract, and arguably a ridiculous one...' [Hanners does qualify the above but hey I'm just going with the style of the news cycle]

The ladies, on the other hand, were generally supportive:

Katt: '...at the very least the two of them are friends again. They have gotten to see sides of each other that they hadn’t before; Kei isn’t only shallow and Kusuda isn’t only a pervert.'

felicity specifically argues against Omni: 'I’ve gotta disagree! As a female viewer, I find their relationship the most compelling of all Hatsukoi’s trillion pairings, primarily because it’s something I can see happening in real life.'

[Aside: I had a battalion mate in NS who was (self-description) a short, small, ugly little runt but was so witty and silver-tongued (in Chinese and dialects) that he could literally charm the panties of the average Ah Lian in one evening.]

Seinime [whom I am guessing is female]: '...tsundereXtsundere pair... They make a great pair <3'

Though I have to note that Kabitzin made the results a little less clear cut when he said:

I think Kusuda is very in tune with how Kei feels, in picking out the one pink piece of clothing she doesn’t have and also selecting a skimpy outfit that she was dying to try. I wonder if Kei will ever start to understand Kusuda better, of if Kusuda will end up doing most of the heavy work in their relationship.

On the one hand, he's not that incredulous about them getting together but he, possibly quite presciently, observes that one side will have to work harder than the other to make it work. I'm usually partial towards anime that manages to change my view of a chara or situation and this episode managed to do quite well. (Even if it did have a serious deficiency of Saki-nee.) While the ups and downs promise to be entertaining, still, I can't help but wish Kei x Kusuda well.

P.S. NovaJinx's Relationship Chart FTW.

Related posts:

1. Hatsukoi Limited – Wished every episode was like ep 9
2. Hatsukoi Limited 10-12
3. Hatsukoi Limited – Final thoughts