中二病でも恋がしたい！/ Chu-2 byo demo KOI ga shitai!
Chuunibyou Demo Koi ga Shitai! – 04

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Yuuta finds himself wondering why Nibutani would want to join Rikka’s club, briefly considering the possibility that she joined because she liked him, but he ultimately discards this notion. At the club room, Yuuta finds Rikka and Sanae pretending to have magically summoned the “Dark Flame Master” while Tsuyuri naps on a mandala on the floor. Rikka and Sanae pretend to cast famous spells, with Rikka adding a bag of flour for effect. Yuuta makes them clean the place up, after which Nibutani arrives in her cheerleader costume. She doesn’t understand Rikka’s talk of Unseen Horizon, but assumes they are researching magic. Sanae’s repeatedly addressing Yuuta as “Dark Flame Master” gets her put into a locker, where she discovers the Mabinogion isn’t there, as it was accidentally left in Yuuta’s room.

Nibutani tells Yuuta she wants to come by his place on Sunday, which makes him very happy. Since he can already foresee how Rikka and Sanae would ruin his time with Nibutani, he shows Rikka some of the notes he made as Dark Flame Master, so that the pair can get to another world. Having accomplished being rid of them, Yuuta welcomes Nibutani into his home on Sunday. As they chat in his room, he gets nervous and decides to make tea. He hears a ruckus from his room, whereupon he returns to find it in a trashed state, though Nibutani is trying to act innocent. He leaves, then sneaks to the balcony, where he discovers Nibutani going for his sealed, Dark Flame Master stuff, leading him to dive in through the window to stop her.

Nibutani drops the nice girl act and demands to know where the Mabinogion is. Yuuta produces the book, but as he reads it and sees Nibutani’s negative reaction to it, he realizes that the “Mori Summers” is in fact Nibutani. Nibutani destroys the book, then takes the remains outside to burn them, where she reveals that she’d once been a willing participant in chuunibyou, but like Yuuta, had changed to a high school to leave her embarrassing past behind. Although she’d deleted the blog where she’d posted all this stuff as Mori Summer, she hadn’t expected someone to print it out.

Rikka and Sanae show up, and upon learning that her book is destroyed, Sanae pretends to be upset, then reveals she has more copies. Nibutani is devastated by this, and becomes frantic when Sanae refuses to believe that she’s Mori Summer. Yuuta suggests that Nibutani participate in chuunibyou and be more powerful that Sanae in the fantasy. Nibutani does this, but ends up defeated when she succumbs to Sanae’s words of believe in Mori Summer.  Nibutani decides she has no choice but to stay in Rikka’s club until she can destroy the evidence of her past. So, the next day in the club room, she picks a verbal fight with Sanae to get this accomplished, but Sanae fights back. Rikka ends the fight with another back of flour.

Thoughts/Review:

While this series doesn’t give me serious belly laughs like some do, it does have its funny moments for me, which would be greater if I had an even greater knowledge of anime, manga, and Japanese games.

I know the series is full of parody references. The Dark Flame Master stuff is clearly a take on Hie from Yu Yu Hakusho. Nibutani could be a parody of a character like Ami from Toradora.  Most of the references I don’t get (not surprising since I’d need to watch anime and read manga as a full time occupation in order to absorb everything I’d need to get all of the references), but I did get one awesome one, namely when Sanae pretended to cast a Dragon Slave spell, which was Lina Inverse’s specialty in the Slayers franchise. ^_^

I was completely right about Nibutani being a former chuunibyou person. While she is a lot like Yuuta in that she’s trying to escape her past and be a different person, her sweet, cheerful, cheerleader and student leader persona are just as fake as her Mori Summer persona was. Thus, it is not surprising that when Sanae revealed that she had more copies of the Mabinogion, Nibutani reverted back to her Mori Summer’s persona to try to put a curse on Sanae. *lol*

Does Yuuta running possible encounter scenarios with Nibutani count as chuunibyou?  That gave me pause, since I think that a lot of guys do similar things in their mind when it comes to trying to hook up with the popular, pretty/hot babe. We play-act in our mind how the encounter could go, and I’m sure we usually feel the most negative outcome is the most likely outcome.  But is that chuunibyou, as seen in the series?  I don’t have an answer.

Sanae turned out to be a more interesting character with this episode. I loved her “battle” with Nibutani. There was something awesome in how Sanae trumped Nibutani, then turned around and addressed Rikka as “Master.”

Sadly, there wasn’t enough Tsuyuri in this episode, other than to see her constantly napping. After her introduction, I thought she’d be more into the nuttiness, but she’s only interested in naps.

With four episodes down, the table has finally been completely set.  I still don’t know what this series hopes to accomplish, but I’m enjoying going where ever it is we are going. ^_^