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

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Naoto meets Ishihara’s mother, who has some strong opinions on how her daughter spends her time.

OUR TAKE

We’re at our penultimate episode of this season…is what I WOULD have said yesterday before I found out, to my not so pleasant surprise, that it looks like this show will be extending into the next season. Sometimes I watch the subtitled versions if it looks like we’re getting close to the end, which it seemed like we were considering this would usually be a one “cour” show, but the thirteenth episode ended with no resolution so I guess we’ll be at this for a few more months! Though oddly enough, given what we’ll be covering in the next few episodes, that may not be as much of a bad thing as I initially expected, but we’ll get into all of that as we watch those following episodes. For now, we’re here for the eleventh episode, wherein Naoto is getting used to fully dating Ishihara, but now meets her mother. And with that, Ishihara’s continued insistence on moving to third base, and Naoto’s own usual anxieties, things are getting to be a lot for him all at once. Speaking from experience, first relationships, even ones that are just in high school, can feel like a lot if you get in your own head about it too much, even when it comes to doing simple things like simply spending time with that person.

For Naoto though, while he probably wouldn’t mind doing the horizontal scuba diving with his girlfriend, her mother seems to be pretty firm on her refusal to allow that. It’s natural for parents to see their kids as…well, kids, but teenage sex is also something that can be rather risky if not handled properly. Naoto knows this from experience, being the product of parents who had him in high school, which did some serious damage on his later relationship with his aunt and other extended family. In fact, his dream of talking to a version of Satsuki who verbalizes all of this to him (while also hitting on him) shows it’s a pretty big thought on his mind. So, you can see why he’s not exactly in a rush to replicate what his parents did, but he also doesn’t want to make his girlfriend feel clingy or unwanted, AND now he may be on bad terms with her mom already just by proxy of being Ishihara’s boyfriend. Heck of a way to kick off this part of the story, and we’ll see how it develops further next time.