English Dub Review: Convenience Store Boy Friends “August”

Summer festival date… or not.

Spoilers Below:

Mami and Honda’s relationship deepens! Which is nice and all, except that it seems very rushed.

Mashiki mentions that Mami wants to trust Honda, but is hesitant to. She clearly appreciates him and his efforts a lot more after the last episode, when he helped her with the three-legged race, and is no longer afraid of him. His overbearing presence is still not something she’s entirely used to, but they’re no longer on bad terms. In fact, it seems like Mami is warming up to Honda, and they could potentially be really good friends. Somehow along the way, there’s a sudden leap to romance, but the show fails to provide substance for that leap.

We the audience are very aware of how Honda thinks and feels, and that his affection for Mami is real. On the other hand, aside from the typical blushing, we aren’t really given anything to believe that Mami made the leap to romantic somehow. Is she getting closer to Honda? Is she more comfortable around him? Absolutely. Does she like him romantically? That’s up in the air because we haven’t been given any sort of indication that her feelings have transitioned into romance. Mashiki claims that Mami is trying to act like a shoujo manga protagonist, but there’s really no backing for that, either. The show says that’s the way it is without giving us anything believable.

If anything this episode provides, it’s information about Mami’s home life. She has a strict family, and her parents are always pushing her to do studies. She has to turn down Honda’s request to go to see the fireworks because her parents are insistent on her starting a tough regime for cram school. All the strictness that surrounds her have made her hesitant to raise her voice, and she is not very confident in herself. She’s shy, uncomfortable when comparing herself to brighter, more vocal girls, and isn’t very assertive. Her discomfort with herself means that she thinks Honda is making fun of her whenever he says that he likes her, and she refuses to believe him- until the end of the episode. Her confidence issues are far more interesting since the series thinks that just because we know the tropes are coming, that they don’t need to bother with much setup.