Love is hard… TAKE IT FLOM KOTOKO

Rundown

This week, Kotoko becomes horribly obsessed with the notion that she’s a curse on Naoki. Not that, you know, he wouldn’t deserve a curse.

Incident the first: Young Bastard Irie goes to take a final, but before he leaves the house, he mentions a headache. Kotoko gives him some headache pills, but oh no — extreme drowsiness is a side effect.

The upside: Irie passes anyway.

Incident the second: Kotoko makes some chocolates for Irie, with the help of Meddling Ma Irie, who manages to sum up Young Bastard pretty well. She’s frustrated that he doesn’t seem to care about anything because he’s never had to try. This is a great revelation of insight for Kotoko, but she finds it hard to give him the chocolates. After she eats one and gets a horrible stomachache, she can’t manage to do it at all.

The upside: Turns out, the chocolates are fine. It’s her appendix that’s the problem! Oh, ok… wait, is that the upside?

Incident the third: Kotoko makes a good luck charm for Naoki’s bag on his way to the Todai entrance exams, and even insists on accompanying him, because his mother is worried he’s going to skip out. Her good luck charm, however, gets caught in the train doors and they almost miss their stop.

The upside: They get out of the train. However…

Incident the fourth: Kotoko’s stomach pains return, and they’re back for the kill! Though she nobly insists she’s fine, Naoki carries her to the hospital where the appendicitis is revealed. He misses his entrance exam.

At this point, we have the benefit of distance. We can see that things aren’t that bad, but in Kotoko’s eyes, everything has all gone to hell — and it’s all her fault. So she writes a note, packs her things, and decides to leave the Irie house.

The upside: Well, well. This is perhaps the biggest upside of all for our spunky little heroine. As she’s heading down the street, Naoki pokes his head out the window and… well, he may insist he’s not trying to stop her, but he does a damn fine job of stopping her. And he reveals that he purposefully missed the Todai entrance exam. After all, life has been interesting for the first time ever since Kotoko’s been around, so why not possibly go to university with her instead? Wow.

The final stroke, Kotoko makes chocolate again, this time a big one with a giant “Love from Kotoko” on it in tasty looking English.

Or not. In fact, it’s in Engrish, which he’s keen to point out.

Now what?

Well, Naoki gave his usual parting shot, but it was a cute one, and after all she did make the spelling error. And the obligatory “moment” this week? What a fine one. “Persistence is all,” someone once said, and Kotoko’s got it in spades, not to mention a willingness to make Irie a long-term project. High school will be over soon, but her pursuit is still going strong. I’ve said this, but I just love Kotoko. If there’s anyone this season worth rooting for, it’s her.

Note: Something I’m sure you’ve all heard about, some raw providers were recently arrested in Japan. That includes the one who was providing this show, but Baka-Wolf is promising episode 7 coming up soon.