OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)Gaku mulls over what he now understands about Haru’s view of people as pawns for him to use, and decides to take drastic measures against Dragon Bank.OUR TAKEFinally getting a new opening, fully signifying we are in the second half of the season, and I am happy to say that, if things continue to build as they have been, I’m probably going to end this season liking this show a lot more than I did when it started. This episode, while titled “Haru VS. Gaku”, does not actually involve the two facing off in some sort of Pokemon style battle of money (though there is actually a show about that kind of thing called “[C] – The Money of Soul and Possibility Control”, only eleven episodes but certainly a…unique experience). Instead, the battle is purely on Gaku’s end as he thinks about how to proceed in opposition to Haru’s idea of seeing people as disposable tools. Given that he is one of our two main protagonists, I’m guessing there is a bit more logic to Haru’s methods than just that, but Gaku’s dilemma is wanting to stay in the corner of Shingo and the rest of the former Sakusaku Lab team when Haru seemingly has dismissed them as incapable of making anything profitable. And it’s probably pretty hard for them to not feel like they’ve been left out in the cold when Rinrin tries to use the company account to buy something and finds ALL TWO MILLION YEN IS GONE.But what’s most interesting is what comes next. In his desperation to give the team an edge again, he hacks into Dragon Bank’s servers to find out their plans for future games, which would help his team give them some payback for copying their flower shop model a few episodes back. However, Gaku’s main difference to Haru is his conscience, so even though he could easily break in and take something, he decides not to. There will, of course, be signs that he did this anyway, so he decides to leave them with info about how to boost their security and tries to keep it anonymous. This doesn’t fool Kirika though, as she remembers from Gaku’s interviews how adept he is with security systems and his pesky moral compass, and pegs him as the culprit right away, leading to her asking him out on a business date. Well, he’s probably in the shit now, but there are very likely some ways out here that will facilitate the next dozen episodes to get us to the end of the season. But I think the main takeaway is that I have a bit more of an understanding why Haru and Gaku might have a falling out somewhere along the line.