Well what a surprise. Things going well so obviously something terrible has to happen. Though I’ll admit this development had me face-palming. I can get a lot of things and somewhat accept them. Ghost Banri was troublesome, but this was just stupid. Just randomly pre-injury Banri overrides current Banri and runs off? Please, take a few minutes to absorb the nonsense that was the end of this episode. I mean what the heck!?

We saw Ghost Banri kind of symbolically throwing in the towel. Banri was accepting his past. He was facing it and starting to move forward towards a complete Banri. So what the heck was up with this absolutely random reboot? Is he now weak to unusual lighting? And just hearing about Kouko snapped him back to reality? Either way I can’t exactly blame Banri for freaking out. This is the worst case scenario. Complete and total reboot. He’s gone and there is nothing left of what he’s been doing the past few years. I sure hope they don’t seriously run with this plot line as the final conflict of the series.

Not that things aren’t complicated enough. Chinami is clearly still pissed and not happy with Banri. Maybe she’s just all the more upset because she lost her chance with Mitsuo and sees Banri as practically throwing it away to spend time with the girl who Mitsuo is desperately going after. Still, I do think she’s getting a bit overly angry. If Kouko seemingly knows what’s up she should probably calm down a little. Still, if there wasn’t this complete insanity going on above I’d say Banri should gather everyone and explain his story. Though maybe that’s more important now than ever.

With Mitsuo I’m really not feeling the Linda thing. I’m not even sure why he’s so obsessed with this girl. Sure, she is plenty attractive and that summer job thing did put her into quite the costume. But still is it just based on that? I really feel like things are just going to circle right back to Chinami. She’s obviously focused on him and frankly I just see this Linda obsession as Mitsuo just running after anyone he can. Ran from Kouko (understandably), ran from Chinami and now running after Linda. Even his interest in Chinami seemed to come on fast.

In terms of the President blocking him I honestly think that guy needs to make up his mind. Either go for Linda yourself or back off. He’s not Linda’s keeper and being the club president only goes so far. He’s certainly not protecting the other girls in the club. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s interested in Linda, but seems a bit jerkish to just stand in the way while refusing to actually do anything. Linda can shut down Mitsuo all on her own.

The ring business was pretty funny. Those tea girls are insane, but they probably aren’t wrong in this case either. I mean I doubt his mother just gave him a ring to give to his girlfriend for no reason. Banri does need to find a good time to give that ring to Kouko, though good timing for those two is usually hard to actually find.

I did like the little moments with Banri and Kouko. It’s good to just focus on those two sometimes and see how their relationship is going. They certainly do care about each other and I think they are both improving. The jealousy about other people has started to die down and I just think things are going well. Of course that means that things have to start going badly, but oh well. I’m sure this couple will make it through any and all frustrating writing and survive to the end.

The episode was good…until the last couple minutes. Honestly I just don’t get why we need to do that. Have Ghost Banri pop back and create a chance for him and current Banri to work things out. But don’t do something like this…I get we need some drama in the remaining episodes, but was there really no other possible options? For now let’s be completely naive and assume this was just a weird one-off. Banri just…ate some weird mushrooms before the festival that’s all. That or run with a theory that it was a super rough method of Banri regaining his memories and he’ll shake it off pretty quickly. That’s at least a realistic possibility.
Score: B-