English Dub Review: The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity “Coolest Guy Ever”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Rintaro meets with Kaoruko and Subaru again to apologize, not knowing his friends from Chidori are sitting right next to them.

OUR TAKE

This week on “The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity” (god that is a wordy title and I still don’t quite know what it is meant to be referring to), we finally have the episode that confirms that friendship and love conquers all in the end! As now that Rintaro has won over Subaru with his genuine kindness and warmth, he must now get back his bros whomst he had formed a slight rift between, specifically Saku as the rest seem to be more or less fine with things as long as he’s open about it. Well, turns out he won’t need to convince them that hard either, as some random street toughs show up to harass Rintaro and the girls, leading to his boys coming in to save them and then make amends. Wow, so everyone’s more or less on the same page about being friends, no one is really forcing that stupid school imposed drama feud between them anymore, and hey, Rintaro even got a big win at the sports festival he really wanted to attend! And we’re only halfway through the show (apparently the season is thirteen episodes, not twelve as I had originally read, so now is the actual halfway point, if not slightly over).

So, what are they going to do with the remaining six episodes? Well, despite Kaoruko understanding she has strong romantic feelings for Rintaro now, she’s probably not going to go on confessing right away, and even though he clearly feels the same way about her, he hasn’t even really figured that out yet. I guess that could be a good use of the remainder of the show, with them eventually getting together, though it wouldn’t exactly be the most compelling, I have to admit. Well, we do know that the teachers at their two schools are more interested in imposing the feud between the students than any of the actual students, so if they catch wind of a Chidori student getting close to and even possibly dating a Kikyo student, I imagine they’ll have some harsh words to say. I’ll probably have to watch it a couple times since I’ll be rolling my eyes through the initial watch, but we’ll get to that when we get to it. For now, I’m just glad all the main characters are getting along for the moment.