天下制覇

You give it to her good, Ryuuji.

Impressions:

Ami takes central stage for the most part in this episode and I’m actually starting to really like her. While Kitamura and Minori are screwing around and being doofuses, she sits on the sideline with Ryuuji and sighs about the stupidity. She’s really doing a rather good job of transferring from arrogant to simply aloof and they’re selling her growing attraction to Ryuuji rather well. I particularly enjoyed her shift from happily teasing Ryuuji about Minori back to general pissed off mode when he refused to talk to her. For as deceptive as she is with the random strangers of the world and all the teasing she does, she’s easily the most upfront and direct of all the main characters in their relationships with each other. Speaking of her… she was especially bouncy this episode. I think JC Staff plundered the shading budget to give her some extra wiggle.

Most of the rest was about Minori, but it wasn’t really anything that I found particularly interesting. As predicted, she and doofus were behind all the ghost prank stuff. Even her ghost talk last episode was only half true since she was just trying to prime Taiga and Ryuuji for screwing around with them. I suppose it’s karmic backlash for them harassing her last episode, but it did feel like it undermined her big speech last episode a little bit. Ryuuji tried to salvage it by thanking her for the fun, but let’s be clear here… the best thing that happened to him during that little excursion was being trapped alone in a dark and cramped place with Ami… and he did nothing about it. Oh well. Nobody’s fooling themselves into thinking that Ami or Minori are real contenders anyway. C’est la vie.

Preview: 

 Ascots R Us.