English Dub Review: Tomo-chan Is a Girl! “Goodbye, Best Friend”

Overview (Spoilers Ahead):

The school festival takes place and feelings are revealed.

Our Take:

It’s time for the school festival and we get to see the class’s rendition of Cinderella. The play doesn’t completely follow the script, but it still goes over well. After the performance, Tomo and Jun enjoy the festival together. They have a good time together and Tomo still fears that confessing her feelings to Jun will ruin their friendship. When it’s time for the dance at the end of the festival, Tomo gets bombarded by tons of girls wanting to dance with her. Jun comes in for the save and he ends up confessing his feelings to Tomo. He’s not direct, but Tomo understands what he means and runs away.

Tomo avoids Jun afterwards for a while, but Jun finally directly confesses to her. Not only that, but he also said that he played off her first confession even though he really knew what she meant. The two eventually reach an understanding and it’s clear that they want to start going out, but they don’t want their friendship to change either. Thankfully, it doesn’t have to. They can still have their friendly competitions and be in a romantic relationship.

In my opinion, this is a near perfect episode. It has a couple of lulls, but I think it’s fantastic otherwise. Jun, surprisingly enough, isn’t as oblivious as he led on. Plus, his reasoning for acting that way makes sense. Tomo understands it as well, even though she’s not really happy about it.

There are also plenty of meaningful conversations that take place throughout the episode. Kousuke gives Jun some sound advice, Carol has a nice heart-to-heart with Misuzu, and Misuzu shows more emotion than she ever has when she apologizes to Tomo. That’s only scratching the surface, but just these conversations alone are full of emotion. Plus, we see sides of a lot of these characters that we haven’t seen before. This episode is a rollercoaster of emotions, but it still manages to maintain his upbeat nature, which has always been one of the show’s strong points.

I have been waiting 12 episodes for either Tomo or Jun to make a move. Honestly, I can’t believe it actually happened. I was worried that this season would end without them confessing their feelings to one another. I’m glad they did and the confessions were fantastic. I’m happy for both characters and I’m glad this relationship is finally happening. The best part is there’s still one more episode to go, so we have a chance to see them on their first real date or maybe even have their first kiss. Whatever ends up happening in the season finale, I’m here for it.