I didn’t really get all that gung-ho about romance in high school but there was this one time where I did ask a girl to be my date for prom and without, going into too much detail, things got a little messy and I was declined. Even something as simple as that left me feeling pretty down and it took me a while to move on from that. I bring this up because I did find myself recalling to that moment in my life when was I watching this episode of Just Because!. Watching everyone groggily recover from their little disasters last episode really resonated with me.
For the most part, this episode was just as awkward as I hoped it’d be. You do find out that Mio and Hazuki are having some second thoughts about how they handled New Year’s Eve. The tricky part is how to best patch things up as Eita and Haruto keep some distance from them as anyone would after a fallout. It’s pretty fitting that as the boys hang out together, so does the girls. Consulting another person who got in a similar scenario seems like the best way to go about things before finally tackling the problem head-on.
No one really has the most ideal approach to things. Haruto seems to have completely given up as he throws away his baseball glove and seems completely committed to working at a factory. His future co-worker seem nice enough but it is a little sad that he has opted for this path as opposed to going to college. Hazuki, meanwhile, seems to regret how quickly she jumped to “No” when Haruto asked her out. I think it’s fair that she’d wish she had more time to think over and maybe even get to know Haruto first. But as Mio points out, the problem with asking Haruto if a do-over would be okay, is that things could very easily get worse if Hazuki’s answer still ends up being “No”. I’m glad that Hazuki seems compelled to go with her idea but I hope she is fully aware of the risk.
It takes a little while for Eita and Mio to reconcile. Now that I think about it, these two seem to have a tendency to avoid some of their problems. Eita had planned to live his final semester carefree and that clearly isn’t happening. Mio is taking her entrance exams seriously but, let’s face it, it does give her an excuse to avoid a lot of things, particularly Haruto. In this episode specifically, Eita lets the prospect of a reconciliation be Mio’s call and even then, Mio takes a while to get the ball rolling. Eventually, they do face each other and it is nice to see them apologize for how they each acted on New Year’s Eve. At the same time, Mio tries to figure out Eita’s feelings towards her while Eita also tries to gauge on how much Mio is aware. Sadly, their conversation gets cut short, another result of these two’s habit of avoiding things. I guess, this relationship still has a long way to go.
Other Thoughts:
- For real, where exactly does Ena fit in all of this? She seems to be encouraging Eita to confess to Mio but I don’t think we can discount the possibility that she’s going to make moves on Eita just yet. Already, there’s some mixed signals being thrown around as at one point, Mio catches Eita and Ena together in the hallway. It’s tricky since she hasn’t had as much screentime as the others.
- Boy, the animation took a hit this episode. It still has some strengths but when I was pausing the video for screencaps, I gasped at how rough some shots looked.
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