English Dub Review: Watari-kun’s XX Is About to Collapse “Confession”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Ishihara works up the courage to finally tell Naoto that she likes him. It seems like he finally got everything he wanted…but Satsuki begins distancing herself from him, making him conflicted.

OUR TAKE

Well, we’ve managed to survive this show this long and make it to the halfway point of the season, but now we reach an important milestone for these romcom shows. We’ve had a few episodes for Satsuki’s return to Naoto’s life to be more part of the status quo now, but her involvement also helped to give Naoto the initiative to get to know Ishihara more. The two were clearly already eyeing each other for some time, but this and the whole Fujioka incident really helped to push them closer together. And now, Ishihara is going to try and take the plunge and ask him out, which, after the expected ecchi high school antics, finally comes out. Naoto should feel on top of the world right now! His clearly mentally troubled childhood friend is distancing herself from him and he can finally go out with his crush! Except that’s not how he feels. In fact, Satsuki deciding to back off seems to actually fill him with dread. It seems that he’s already gotten at least somewhat used to her presence in his life, to the point that being without her is something he wants to avoid. Or maybe he’s a pubescent teenage boy who got used to having a cute girl he has complicated feelings about be into him to the point of kissing him and pleasuring him several times and now he’s subconsciously drawn to her because she did that stuff.

Regardless of the reasons for this, this is kind of what I was expecting and fearing. The episode ends with Naoto getting ready to respond to Ishihara’s confession, and while I don’t think he’ll be totally running head first into her (phrasing), I don’t think he’s necessarily going to to turn her down either. The moments where the main character gets with one love interest only to realize he wants the other does happen quite a bit, but closer to the end of the story. We’re only six episodes in and we have six to go, so nothing’s getting decided quite yet, but if I know my genre convention, especially in regards to THIS genre, Satsuki is more than likely the endgame for Naoto, as much as that just makes me shake my damn head. Or I suppose I could end up completely wrong and be pleasantly surprised by what we end up doing in the next episodes.