What They Say:
Ep. 7 “The God Asks A Boy Out On A Date”
Nanami experiments a little with her divine powers while she struggles to define exactly how she feels about Tomoe. And Kurama, being the yokai who has more experience with humans, offers some words of advice to Tomoe.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
So, Nanami is over her cold and back to school, though things are not going swimmingly for her. It’s near the end of the term, so she is studying hard for her exams. Academics, however, are not her strongest suit. Tomoe tells her to quit school again, since she’s not up to it. Nanami, of course, has no plans to quit, but Tomoe then reminds her of the weakness of her god powers. Perhaps if she could at least improve her divine powers, she might get some grudging praise from Tomoe?
In an attempt to be more useful to others, Nanami tries to help Nekota, the girl who was almost molested by the pervert monster in the previous episode, get into a situation where she can thank Kurama for his help to her when he and Tomoe (disguised as Nanami) saved her. Using her magic a bit, Nanami does help Nekota get closer to Kurama, though Tomoe brushes off Nanami’s meddling, asking if she thinks Nekota would be all that happy if she found out that Kurama is a tengu.
The bigger question, however, is the relationship between Nanami and Tomoe. While it’s clear as day to all of us that Nanami is in love with Tomoe, Tomoe disbelieves in the possibility, even when Kurama takes a moment to explain to Tomoe that Nanami is probably in love with him. Nanami is herself unsure, as she even tries to help a freshman in her school get closer to Tomoe, though Tomoe shoots her down quickly and tells Nanami to stop meddling. Nanami now looks deep inside herself and decides to ask Tomoe to make a detour from their usual trip straight back home together after school. She drags him to an aquarium and to see the cityscape from a tall building. This is most certainly a date. But Tomoe, oblivious, or rather, refusing to believe that this is a date, acts as if he is being punished. Near the end, in a fit of pique, Nanami almost dies because she does not want Tomoe to touch her when he has no feelings for her. Tomoe goes ahead and touches her (he has to hold her to stop her from falling to her death), but Nanami is clearly not happy with the results.
I guess it’s going to be a rocky road ahead for Nanami’s desire for romance. While Tomoe does not appear to hate humans, he does feel very strongly that there must be a firm wall between humankind and the supernatural. Never the twain shall meet, in his opinion. Nanami thinks differently, but events so far seem to support Tomoe’s side as being the more realistic. I’m not sure how long this issue is going to take to resolve, but it seems to be a major issue that will have to be tackled.
The problem is that it’s not a particularly interesting issue. If there is a problem that this show appears to be displaying at the moment, it is that it is doing very little to generate much interest either through plot or character development at the moment. The personalities of Nanami and Tomoe seem pretty much set, we really don’t need to see more examples of what they are like. There is no real plot to speak of, though that is not in itself a problem. But at this point, with the cast fairly well established, either a new personality or a new development in terms of setting or situation really needs to occur, otherwise, well, otherwise you’re going to have boring episodes like this one where it feels like the show is just treading water. We already knew several episodes ago that Nanami likes Tomoe. We have known for some time that Tomoe is against the idea of humans and yōkai being romantically involved. So we have nothing new to take away at the end of this episode, except that Nanami now knows that Tomoe does not reciprocate her feelings. Which changes just about nothing.
In Summary:
Nanami uses her divine powers and instincts a little bit to meddle in others’ possible love affairs, but she seems powerless to influence her own situation with Tomoe. When she takes him out on a date, he makes it clear that he does not share her feelings, and cannot imagine being romantically involved with a human. I sense trouble ahead. I also sense trouble ahead if this show doesn’t do something interesting soon.
Grade: B
Streamed by: Funimation
Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 4GB RAM, Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard
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