10 Second Anime - Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou - Episode 4

Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou - Episode 4

Sayaka's mindgames provide much fodder for misunderstandings, but also examination of friendship rules and narrow perspectives. Shiro can sound cool, sometimes.

Heh.

I realized that Sayaka could be a play on 災厄 (saiyaku), which means disaster, calamity, or accident. It's certainly true from what we've seen so far with how she wraps men around her little finger.

Usa deliberately narrowed his perspective so he would not take hints from Ritsu to leave her alone. Somehow he convinced himself it was okay to be "pushy." Oh boy, girls really don't like pushy guys, Usa-kun.

The show made it pretty clear we should watch out for this narrow perspective by showing us a frog in a well, and then by showing us one of the books Ritsu reads is titled "A Frog in a Deep Well." This is a Japanese idiom for illustrating that a frog in a deep well doesn't see much except for the small hole looking up at the sky.

Mayumi can't hide her disappointment and mean-spirited joy that her uppity friend broke up with her rich boyfriend, but this means the little party with all the rich boyfriend's friends won't be happening.

Schadenfreude and personal Schaden at the same time... complicated. Well, it means more fun for Sayaka because Mayumi can go back to eating more rice and gaining weight again. More to love!

With Usa running around trying to be "pushy," Mayumi got homesick for her pet hamster, Hamjirou. Running so hard, but not getting anywhere? Yup, that's what happened to Usa.

I wonder if Hamtaro is still in reruns in Japan.

Eh?!

Shiro can say cool things like "you'll find out you're fine the way you are, so have all the teenage angst while you can."?

Yeah, except he's not fine the way he is, right Ritsu? Putting that aside, the advice sounds good.

Geh.

Mayumi is mai waifu. That is all.

Also, this show is just so damn pretty.

Hmm.

This particular episode illustrated a nice point: just because someone is alone does not mean that they are lonely. We see most of the time that Ritsu is reading her books in a room full of people, so she's not avoiding them, she's just having fun in her own way and being sociable in her own way. But if you are too unique, you'll be like that frog in the well, only being sociable through that small hole in the sky. We see that Ritsu doesn't want to hurt people's feelings, but she doesn't want to be fake either, like she acted with her old friends from junior high school. But being part of regular society is learning all these "weird unspoken rules," just like Mayumi was complaining about.

The obvious frog in the well was Usa, but it was Sayaka who stuck him in that well. He learned to broaden his perspective too about being alone and loneliness. He made even more progress in becoming a close friend to Ritsu just by walking next to her and being her "crossing guard," but not putting any pressure on her to pull her out of her book. Look how appreciative she was that Usa shared a fleeting scene of the outside world as an afternoon rainbow. That's not something in a book, where you can close the cover, and pick it up again. It has to be appreciated in the moment, and it looked like Ritsu understood that too. A major step for her will be when she wants to share something with Usa from her inner world of whatever book she's reading. Do your best, Usa-kun!