Kimi to Boku. Episode 8--How to Draw Manga

While last week's episode had the romance factor down pat, this week's episode is all about the humor.




The storyline for this episode is broken into two parts (hence the double title) but still focus around the same general idea. It turns out that manga club isn't quite the "slacker" club that it was shown as in the first episode, as they actually do meet and have club activities, the current one revolving around creating a manga anthology of all the members' work. Of course, this includes Yuki, since he is technically a member, but, being Yuki, he doesn't want to do it an decides to shove most of the work off onto the group, deciding that they should draw the minimum five pages relay-style. The best way to summarize the first half would be "hilarity ensues." Everyone's take at what a manga should be like (and their respective drawing skills) made for a really amusing watch. Yuta draws like a pro, Yuki draws horribly and kills off characters because he doesn't feel like drawing them, Shun obviously reads a lot of shoujo manga, Chizuru is found of self-inserts, and Kaname wasn't kidding when he said he doesn't draw. The real icing on the cake was when Yuki decides to shred the thing behind their backs only to get caught and be forced to turn it in. I wished we could've seen the manga club's reaction after they turned that first page.




As much as I enjoyed the first half, the second part of the episode is easily my favorite. Still using the creating-a-manga-club-anthology setup, the second half follows the perspective of the freshman who approaches Yuki in the first half to ask him to draw a manga. Apparently he really looks up to Yuki as a "hero"(or he may be crushing on him. It was kinda ambiguous.) and wants to use him as the protagonist in his manga. From there, the second half quickly goes off into a series of parodies. You know you're in for a good time when they break out the Power Rangers! Everyone fit their respective colors pretty well (if Masaki had been involved in this, would she be Green?). Aside from that though, the highlight of the parodies was easily Shun playing all the girl roles. I was satisfied just seeing him as the Pink Ranger, but then they took it even further by making him the stereotypical damsel in distress in the samurai story and then put him in a schoolgirl uniform for the "bad boy" story. I approve of cross-dressing Shun. This needs to happen more. There was also the hilarity of seeing Yuki basically reject the main character role each time around because he simply can't be bothered. The best one was the last, when he runs away from a brewing gang fight because he was going to miss an anime at five. While there isn't as much to analyze as there was in the last episode, it looks like the show is settling back into its brand of comedy after proving that it can pull off serious episodes really well. I welcome both types with open arms, and can't wait to see them combine the two more, like how it was in the festival episode.
Images from Crunchyroll.com.