中二病でも恋がしたい！/ Chu-2 byo demo KOI ga shitai!
Episode 09

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

With Nibutani having quit being a cheerleader, she takes it upon herself to get the club into gear for the upcoming school festival. Sanae demands to know who put Nibutani in charge, and Rikka backs her up by stating that the club can’t be doing things that would reveal themselves to the public, despite the fact that Rikka did just that to get the club going. That evening at a park, Nibutani reveals she wants there to be a staged battle between the Dark Flame Master (Yuuta) and the Tyrant’s Eye (Rikka). Rikka ends up going home alone, which Makoto notes has been happening a lot. Yuuta says Rikka has been like this since their trip to the beach, leading the others to wonder what happened between Rikka and Yuuta.

That night, Tōka sneaks into Yuuta’s room, scaring him. She wants to know if Rikka has talked any further about things, since she’s not eating much lately. Since Rikka hasn’t been talking much to Yuuta, he knows nothing, frustrating Tōka, who says it would be embarrassing for her to ask her little sister to open up. The following day at school during lunch, Yuuta makes a point of seeing Rikka, but she ends up fleeing. Rikka has a chat with Kurin, stating that Yuuta has a singularity within him that is causing her to react badly. She and Kurin pay Sanae a visit at the middle school, where Sanae splits her time between her Master and tutoring some students in need, an act that impresses Kurin.

That night, Rikka sends Yuuta a message to meet her at the shrine during the full moon. There, she and Sanae stage an event to try to remove the singularity from Yuuta, but he brings that to a halt by stopping Rikka and kindly holding out his hand to her. She ends up fleeing again, to Sanae’s surprise. At Nibutani’s house, Kurin pays a visit, where Nibutani has figured out that Rikka loves Yuuta but doesn’t know how to express it. So, she has a chat with Rikka at school, where she gets the confirmation of Rikka’s feelings by Rikka’s actions. Rikka initially flees, but then returns, giving Nibutani a chance to play match maker.

The club meets with Nanase-sensei, where Nibutani has the club do festival-related work for her. To Sanae’s amazement, Rikka goes along with this. Nibutani has Rikka and Yuuta set up the bonfire pyre. Rikka breaks from the script in the shoujo manga Nibutani has, leading to a flubbed attempt to find out how Yuuta feels about her. Nibutani tries another method that would allow Rikka to score an easy kiss, but she ends up head-butting Yuuta instead. Nibutani arranges a third setting for the two on the sloped roof of the school. Yuuta talks with Rikka, saying he was glad to have learned more about her. Seeing he understands her, Rikka gets up to walk to him, but ends up slipping and nearly falls off the building. Yuuta races to the third floor, where he grabs her and brings her to safety, after which she falls into his arms crying and saying his name.

Thoughts/Review:

While this series may not have had a purpose when it started, other than to look at this notion of allowing one’s fantasy life to override reality, it has most certainly become a full-blown romance title now.

Rikka’s rationalization of her feelings for Yuuta as being a singularity made me laugh. Hiding from reality is how she deals with reality, so it is understandable that she’d transpose her romantic feelings for Yuuta into something else completely. Her solution to the problem, by working with Sanae at the shrine, was also humorous to me, though she’s obviously having a harder time running from reality.

Enter Nibutani. Her actions were pretty much trope material, using a shoujo manga to try to get Rikka closer to Yuuta. I couldn’t help but think of my introduction to this type of thing, via Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-ohki where Ryoko and Aeka raid Tenchi’s father’s shoujo manga collection to set up scenarios by which they could get closer to Tenchi.

Despite knowing that her actions would likely fail, I liked how Nibutani tried to set up Yuuta and Rikka to become an actual couple. Even in failure, it was sweet at the end when Yuuta grabbed Rikka, and she held him close and cried. I wonder if this is the start of Rikka’s coming out of the whole chuunibyou thing and back into reality. Rikka and Yuuta do make a very cute couple.

Back in episode 7, I stated that Makoto should just join Oriental Magic Napping Club in Summer and have done. Well, it appears he’s done just that, and for the reasons I’d hoped — Kurin-senpai. ^_~  Too bad she doesn’t understand he has a crush on her.