Imagine this. You’re a child. 9 or 10 years old. You don’t know how to talk to people or make friends. You feel lonely so you ask your parents to get you a pet. A puppy. Puppies are really loyal so he’d never leave your side. Your parents tell you wait to wait for some time. Wait you do. Time passes. Years. Everyone else who was a little like you has learned to fit into society. But you wait. Patiently. Diligently. Then, one day your parents tell you that you can have your pet now. But they can’t get you a puppy. Those require too much maintenance. They can maybe get you a hamster or something small. But you don’t want that. You want a dog. It’s your choice now. You can either wait for a puppy or you can be alone.
Hello, everyone. Good to have you back for week 4 of O Maidens in Your Savage Season. Apologies for the late post. I’ve been a bit busy with life stuff. Anyway, getting back on track, this time around, our side characters are fleshed out further and everyone in the cast now really feels believeable and well, real. There’s quite A LOT that happens in this episode. Let’s get to it!
We resume with Sonezaki-san having gone through a drastic makeover which makes her look like Erika, though Amagi could see the resemblance without it. The rest of the kids in class too catch on to that detail and start teasing the two of them. Hearing that, Sonezaki-san gets all flustered and ridicules the notion entirely by calling Amagi superficial and unlovable. Now, I know that on today’s day and age the meaning of liking or loving someone has changed significantly. So much so, that we don’t even know what it means. Sure, we say those three important words people want to hear but we don’t even know if we mean them. Some even refrain to say them altogether. Sometimes because the words carry a weight with them. We can’t say them out loud if we aren’t sure that we do. But mostly, it’s because we are afraid. Of the possible rejection, of putting down our defenses and of the vulnerability that saying those words brings with it. It takes courage. You need to be brave. And not everyone is. But the ones who are, don’t deserve to be ridiculed or made fun of. Amagi didn’t deserve that. The sweet kid still takes it on the chin and says that Sonezaki-san is right as the only people who have ever liked him are dogs and street vendors (He needs a nice long hug, goddammit).
Elsewhere, Sudo finally gets her screen time! She is trying to come to terms with her inability to help out Kazusa in this situation. But she has no idea what to say to her as she has herself never experienced the same feelings for any boy. To which Sugawara-san, cool as ever just says that it’s okay to not feel like everyone else. There are other things far more important than falling head over heels over some guy. She cherishes the literature club and Sudo and Kazusa far more than that. Upon hearing that, Sudo is back to her happy, cheerful self again. But I can’t help but feel that there is some Yuri subtext here. It’s just a hunch and I might be wrong, but I feel fairly positive that Sudo likes girls. Either Sugawara-san or Kazusa, to be precise. Guess we will know in time.
Meanwhile, Sonezaki-san has tasked Amagi to write a 50 page report on why he likes her and he does so (The boy’s gold, I tell you). Well, it isn’t exactly 50 pages long, and has mostly just one word written over and over. ‘Cute’. He also asks her out on the last page. And no matter how much Sonezaki-san tries to ridicule his lack of effort and points out how he misspells ‘cute’ on some occasions, she cannot help but deny how happy it makes her. If you’ve been told all your life what you are: a disgrace, bad luck, ugly; any of those things… as you grow older, you start to believe that maybe you are. Children don’t grow up to be what you tell them to be but what you tell them they are.
The next day, Sudo gets asked out to go to Karaoke with her friends but it’s really just a setup so that this guy in class who likes her can be with her. He actually turn out to be Sudo’s childhood friend who always admired as even though back then, she was always by herself, always alone, she never seemed… lonely. And that is a quality very few people have. He tells her that he likes her and even though Sudo is unsure about it all, she doesn’t outright reject him. Because what else can you do? How long can you wait for the puppy to come along? How long can you be alone?
The episode ends with a cliffhanger of sorts, as Kazusa sees Izumi talking to Sugawara-san on the subway. Though, I am fairly certain it’s actually got to do with him handling the enigma that is sex. But teenagers being teenagers, they can easily misunderstand anything. Let’s see how it all plays out next week!
