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

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Time passes since the festival and Naoto slowly recovers from Satsuki once again suddenly disappearing from his life. But fate has other plans, as her new school happens to take a trip to the same place as Naoto’s.

OUR TAKE

We’re now in the fourth quarter of this anime (give or take a few episodes if this is twenty five episodes total) and it seems like we’re inching ever close to the end game. Naoto is healing mentally from Satsuki’s departure, something that she has now done to him twice in his life (three times if you want to count him stopping her), and while he seems not ready to date again, Ishihara quite eagerly is. Meanwhile, Tokui (Naoto and Ishihara’s mutual friend who I haven’t really felt the need to mention by name much until now) has his own confusing motives that somehow involves him both wingmanning for Ishihara AND Satsuki, and even asking Satsuki out last episode, which was so bass ackwards that it simply didn’t seem worth mentioning. So really, as things are currently, I can’t bring myself to side with anyone in this tangled mess of a love dodecahedron, including Makina who just sort of seems to pop up every now and then to remind us of how her efforts are completely wasted. I know it’s supposed to be wholesome or cute or funny but it’s ultimately none of those things. Best I can hope for her is that she gets a realization about her barking up the wrong tree here.

Speaking of things doomed to failure, Ishihara trying to make clear in blinding neon lights that she is D T F is even more like car crash in slow motion, because Naoto has made it quite clear that if he could get with Satsuki at this point, he would. Except, Satsuki doesn’t want to see him…or does she? Like she is cutting off contact because he’s rejected her so many times, and yet she also seems to hold out some hope, which I would bet real money is going to work out for her in the end. Anyway, they’re all on a school trip in the same place, including Satsuki’s class and her distinctly accented classmate, and now that Naoto knows she’s here, their reunion is basically inevitable, but we gotta spend another half a dozen episodes or so for them to just bang properly already, which I don’t think would be good for either of them, but it seems like what this show wants, so might as well get it over with. I am pretty much fully mentally checked out at this point, so I am quite ready for things to wrap it up. Although I would suggest they literally wrap it up too.