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Now in Japan
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Written by maehara
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Saturday, 29 October 2005 00:00 |
 When we last saw Densha Otoko, Saori had
misunderstood Yamada's interest in "surfing" to mean the type with a
board and waves, instead of the type with a keyboard & internet
connection. That little misunderstanding is now coming back to
bite Yamada big time, as Saori has decided she wants to go to the beach
and see him in action...
Yamada's in living hell having to deal with Kaho - of all the people
for Saori to bring along, it had to be her, and the poor guy's left as
a nervous wreck throughout dinner. While she fortunately doesn't
remember their last meeting, she's not beyond taking advantage of his
innocent nature. His little misunderstanding
about being a surfer comes back to haunt him, too, when it turns out
Kaho has a friend at the surf school he claims to be attending (you
know, the one he's never even laid eyes on?). Fortunately, Saori
doesn't seem
to be phased by his panicked reactions. After the date, Kaho has
more than a few words for Saori and seems determined to find
out just what she thinks of Yamada - is she interested, or is he just a
plaything to help her get over her ex?
Undaunted, Yamada arranges their next meeting - but when Saori insists
he take her surfing, Yamada realises he's in trouble. Time for a
crash course in hanging ten. Which of course leads to lots of crashes - and that's
just during the image training. It's true, otakus just can handle
anything that requires co-ordination. Densha-pinchy! But
Yamada's not about to give up without a fight...
Come the beach trip, Yamada should have been saved by the bell - or
rather the thunderstorm - except
that his conscience got the better of him. Somehow, though, he
still
ended up impressing the girl, as Saori appreciates the effort he's been
going to to impress her more than being lied to seems to have bothered
her. That was a bit surprising, given the particularly emotional
scenes earlier in the episode where she let go of her feelings of
betrayal over her breakup with her ex - a lot of which revolved around
him having lied to her. Fickle women, huh? The scene were
Saori spills her guts about her ex is probably the nearest
thing there's been to a totally serious scene so far in the series -
quite touching in its own way, and a big indicator to where she's
coming from.
Moving onwards... why does part of me see Jinkama-san becoming another potential love
interest? She's featured often enough so far that I feel she's got to be there for more than just comic relief,
and now that she's discovered the BBS thread and figured out Yamada is
Densha - and confronted him about it - it seems she's about to become something more that a bit-part.
There's a certain irony in that one of the BBS posters is Saori's ex,
and he's
the one encouraging Yamada the most, unaware of who he's chasing
after - and
that Yamada's successes could be just what pushes him into
making contact with Saori again. The tangled webs we weave, and
that spell trouble ahead. This episode was one of the slower ones
so far, but still very enjoyable - looking forward to seeing more,
although it looks like Yamada's pursuit of Yamada is about to become
much harder...
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