Random Curiosity

Summary:

Taiga and Ryuuji don’t get any sleep because of how they were scared by the strange occurrences, and they’re unsure of what to do to scare Minori now. When Yuusaku happens to overhear them talking about this, Taiga claims that it was a present for Minori because she loves being scared. Convinced, Yuusaku insists on joining in and getting Am’s help as well. Later that morning, Minori gets up and finds breakfast already made thanks to Ryuuji. He’s now working on lunch, so she volunteers to help him, and she turns out to be pretty good at food preparation. Minori reveals that since both her parents worked, she made lunch for her brother when he was home. She also compliments Ryuuji on his cooking ability and notes that the girl who marries him will be very happy. That gets him worked up enough to re-raise the topic from the previous night, but Minori wants to keep that a secret. The two continue working together until they’re done and it’s time to head down to the beach.

Minori goes on ahead, but since Ami hasn’t shown up, Ryuuji heads back inside to get her. He walks in on her in her swimsuit, and since he’s not too keen to look at her cleavage, she threatens not to help with Minori. On that note, she asks why he wants to entertain Minori and gives him five seconds to answer. When he doesn’t say anything, she decides not to help. This leaves Yuusaku and Ryuuji to check out the cave that they were going to use, and Yuusaku decides to go alone so that Minori doesn’t get suspicious. He returns at lunchtime, and to his and Ryuuji’s surprise, Ami is the one who proposes to Minori that they go to the cave. Though the cave turns out to be scary looking, Yuusaku urges them all in, and he had earlier set up a bunch of scary things inside. One is a piece of fried tofu that swings down after being activated by stepping on a wire, but this misses Minori and hits Taiga in the face instead. Another is a bloody-looking message written in ketchup on the walls, but Ryuuji is more concerned about the slimy hair that he accidents gets on his hand. Minori panics after seeing the hair, and Yuusaku thinks that Ryuuji had set this up even though he hadn’t.

Ami, however, is bored by all this and decides to turn back, and Ryuuji decides to go after her. Ami claims to know the way out and questions Ryuuji’s uneasiness with being separated from everyone else, so he admits that he’s not good with dark places. This prompts Ami to question what he’d do if she left him there and if he’d be scared and lonely. She suggests that he doesn’t want to part with her and that he needs her, and she wonders if he wants to go back to where Minori is. Ami feels that Minori isn’t suitable for Ryuuji and starts to say who she thinks is suitable, but she then notices that she doesn’t know where they are. She starts to panic about being lost, so Ryuuji tries to make her calm down by saying reassuring things, however Ami soon reveals that she was just joking. She comments on how he was helpless, but she doesn’t hate that part of him. Going back to what she was saying earlier about Minori not suiting him, Ami compares Ryuuji to the moon and Minori to the sun. She feels that he can’t become equal just by admiring and that it could only happen with someone like her.

Their conversation is interrupted by Minori’s scream, so the two rush further into the cave. Ami trips in the process, but Ryuuji manages to catch her, and the two eventually reach Yuusaku and Taiga. Yuusaku isn’t quite sure what happened to Minori, and since his own flashlight dies, he borrows Ryuuji’s. After hearing some strange sounds, Yuusaku then runs forward with that flashlight and disappears, leaving Ryuuji, Taiga, and Ami in the dark. Panicking, Taiga rushes ahead by herself as well, and she ends up falling. When Ryuuji and Ami move forward, they find Yuusaku helping Taiga up and realize that everything had been set up by him and Minori. Once back at the house, Yuusaku and Minori reveal that all the scary things - including what happened in Ryuuji and Taiga’s room the previous night - was all their doing. Minori had known that Taiga and Ryuuji were trying to scare her, and this was to get them back. She actually loves horror.

With it now dark outside, the group heads back to the beach to play with some fireworks. When he gets a moment alone with Ami, Ryuuji answers her questions from earlier and admits that he’d be lonely without her around. However, he points out that it’s not a question of whether or not he’d be lonely but whether or not she’d be. Ami feels that thinking about that would be painful, so Ryuuji suggests expressing it in a straightforward way since they’re equals. Walking away, Ami notes that Ryuuji is sometimes quite nice. Ryuuji then has a conversation with Minori in which he thanks her because even though he was really scared, being with her was fun. Minori also confesses to having a lot of fun, and she feels that Ryuuji understands her. She had scared him because she wanted to show him a ghost, and she’s curious why he wanted to scare her. Minori doesn’t believe that he just wanted to make fun of her because he’s not that kind of person, so Ryuuji eventually claims that he wanted to show her a ghost as well. He wanted her to believe that ghosts exist and feels that it’s too early for her to give up. In light of this, Minori proposes that they go looking for UFOs and then tsuchinoko. She starts to say something about what would happen if they can find everything she wants to see and change her world, but she’s distracted by some large fireworks going off in the distance.

The group returns home the next day, and Ryuuji suggests to Taiga that they go to the supermarket. Taiga doesn’t want to because she’s too tired, but when Ryuuji starts walking off on his own, she runs to catch up with him. She still doesn’t want to hear about going shopping though.

Preview

There’s not much funny stuff this week, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good episode. It certainly put the focus on Ryuuji, and it feels like all of the girls are more interested in him, even Taiga who looked a bit sad at the end of the episode after spending most of it apart from him. Ami’s the one who ends up being most flirty with him (along with being probably the most honest she’s ever been) and seems genuinely interested, but he seems to have the best connection/understanding with Minori after the continuation of their ghost conversation from last week. It even sounded like Minori was ready to admit that there could be something between them if he could help change her world. One of the things I continue to like about this series is that there actually appears to be some progress in the relationships, and they’re not just resetting after every arc. As I’ve noted in the past, that’s something I’m always concerned about for romance comedies like this.

As for next week, it looks to be the start of a three-part arc about the school’s culture festival. It’s been a while since we’ve had some new characters, and I wonder who this guy is.