English Dub Review: Tamon’s B-Side “I’m the One Who’s Gonna Win”
OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
Still shaken by possibly seeing Tamon and Utage kiss, Ouri tries putting the moves on Utage himself and learns what he really wants.
OUR TAKE
Yep, after last week’s ending, it was clear we were heading in this direction: Ouri has feelings for Utage too. That was probably obvious enough for those who have seen enough of these shows and tropes to see the trajectory here, but now we have direct confirmation. Looking back, when Ouri first entered the scene a few episodes ago as a full fledged character, it was clear he was perplexed, dare I say befuddled, but how much Utage genuinely cared for Tamon. And as we learned then, Ouri’s upbringing with two famous parents and then quickly moving into public life as a famous idol inadvertently made him pretty disconnected from actual connections. This is similar to Tamon who also felt isolated from life outside of his work, only Ouri did it by putting up walls instead of simply crawling into a ball and sulking. We get further elaboration on Ouri’s upbringing when, as a child, his parents basically told him that he would need to become more famous than them for him to feel worthy. So yeah, bad parents who were taught the wrong lessons because of their own respective fame and pushed that onto their son. As such, Ouri sees his envy about Tamon and Utage as a challenge for him to overcome, and if he’s the best then he should be able to win her over no problem, right?
Well, actually, yes problem. Yes MANY problems, in fact. Because it was obvious to anyone with eyes and ears watching this show this long that Utage only has eyes for Tamon. We’ve gotten into her strange but also reasonable mental barrier of supporting him as a fan while he is also clearly pushing for something more, but if HE can’t break through that then there’s no way in hell that Ouri is going to make that leap. And when that becomes obvious even to him, he reaches the conclusion that he is actually in love with Utage, which…is definitely a step forward since it’s not him trying to see it as a competition to win. What it seems more like to me is that he is just really needs genuine friends and love (not necessarily romantic) that his parents either didn’t vie him or were really bad at showing him as a child. I don’t know if this show is nuanced enough to get into that but I can hope. I can also hope that we get some development on the other two F/ACE boys, since Keito got a small but crucial amount, but we’ve only got like four episodes left and it looks like this Tamon and Ouri stuff is going to be front and center, so who knows. Still, I remain sufficiently entertained with what’s happened so far so I look forward to whatever this show has left for the remainder of its season.
