OreShura Episode 13: The End of Ore no Kanojo to Osananajimi ga Shuraba Sugiru

It’s over. It’s been a ride. I’d peg it on level with a bus ride. There’s better rides out there. It wasn’t a good episode let alone a good ending.

The ending tries to cover all the bases; all the girls confess, he gives a reply. He picks a girl, he tries letting down the others gently. His girl becomes elated with his choice, the others still aren’t going down without a fight. It’s a rather methodical approach it takes to finishing it yet it tries doing so much that it doesn’t have enough time to cover all the bases well. I found the very end shocking — shocking because it ended just as it felt it was starting another scene. There wasn’t a great deal of closure because of that.

So let’s go back to the start. The contest. It was all overblown and rather duff. It was just a place for the girls to give a stereotypical love confession/life story. The only part of it I liked was how Ai was loving the attention. She didn’t face the audience, she faced the camera. She’s a diva through and through, for all my complaints about her, she’s one of the few characters that actually makes an effort to make the show more entertaining, she just has a habit of hogging screen time.

Masuzu let the side down for once, giving off a stoic yet melodramatic speech. OreShura is at its best when being playful. I don’t mind some drama, in-fact it can actually enhance it if done well but here it’s just mundane drivel. It’s awfully clichéd how worked up Eita got about it, barging his way to his front with great scorn. I like scenes where the guy can set the girl straight with something other than being preachy (I guess they were right about him after all) something like Bakemonogatari. That thing knows how to handle a script. I loved how much it echoed when he yelled too. It’s been some years since I did the physics, but as far as I’m aware of, echoes work in enclosed spaces where the sound can bounce of the walls. They’re at a beach — vast expanse.

Man, I should insert another picture around about here. This episode was plain though, so let’s pretend the one I put up the top has some deep significance to it. ‘Cos it’s pretty dark and there’s a moon. Ahem, I mean: an engulfing tenebrous welkin delicately illuminated by the resplendent orb of the night, casting radiance upon the sea.

Right, so now Masuzu’s fawning all over him real, spewing out as much random crap as her new-found dementia will allow, Eita is off to see the other girls. To try to get them to stop loving him of course, of course. Which backfires. Welp. His ‘Imma bastard’ act was so well-intentioned, it’s as if he planned to get a harem out of it. That’s his problem here, he’s just too damn ‘nice’. ‘Nice’ isn’t good, ‘nice’ is boring, it’s a boring word too yet utterly appropriate.

The grand finale, meeting with chiwa. The one who he was morally meant to be with. They couldn’t very well let the girl who encouraged Eita to do something with his life go without a bit of intimacy could they? She stealths a kiss that Eita didn’t go to great efforts to evade or break off. As we’re seeing here shaking feet, trying to reach up to Eita, what are they wanting us to think? “Oh she’s kind of short but she can still reach, that’s so touching, my life is forever changed.”? WELL TOO BAD, AUDIENCE APATHY. I don’t even know why Masuzu even bothered showing up. She wasn’t angry. She wasn’t even disappointed. She was strangely happy to see her boyfriend cheating so soon.

With a smile of mutual acknowledgement of some kind, it just ends. Queue credits. It’s all so abrupt. Is the fake relationship faking that it’s a fake? We’re all left with these desperate questions but no burning desire to pursue them. All of us. I know. It was a subtle touch, but I did like how in the credits it displayed a bit of recap but mid-way it started switching around which girl it was who did the act. Makes me wonder if it was subtle satire on the director’s part insinuating the characters were bland enough to be substituted around with each other.

Tags: Ore no Kanojo to Osananajimi ga Shuraba Sugiru

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