Overview: Jiro (Ben Balmaceda) helps Watanabe (Lindsay Sheppard) make a delicious bento box in the hopes of wooing her crush, Minami (Mike Haimoto), but instead creates issues of his own.
Our Take: Akira wants to make a special meal for her crush Minami and asks Jiro for advice with all of her dishes. It is a great scene in how Watanabe being Watanabe, ridicules his criticisms of her food with it being more good ol’ goading between them. It also makes for more of Sadaharu’s amusing angst that is most enjoyable with his fourth wall breaking cognizance of the harem situation his friend is in along with his teasing of the sexual abstinence passed down through generations of shaggy haired protagonist that he suffers from.
When her confidence is shot, she turns to him for physical support which he declines out of respect for her. It is a shot to the heart with how dumb he can be in deflating her faith in their relationship with their rank suffering as a result but Shiori and Minami’s rising on account of them getting closer. With Jiro down on his luck, Shiori acts as a considerate support system for him, a nice juxtaposition from the role that Akira usually fills. The amount of faith she has in him is an endearing note to leave him on as he moves forward with apologizing to Akira.
Jiro’s sincerity is his most heartwarming aspect in being plain about his attraction towards her. However, what solidifies him as more than just a goody two shoes is how he would want to meaningfully advance with her and not merely have spur of the moment sex not to mention wouldn’t want to when she still has some feelings Minami. With him wanting to be a proper married couple, no matter how much reluctant he is to properly admit it, and Watanabe finally admitting that she feelings for him, how they face their growing feelings relies on the bread and butter of the romcom genre that, while it does not do anything astonishingly different, does it’s job in making you hungry for more developments between them.