365 Days to the Wedding

Episode 6

This episode got way more real than I expected. I'm sure we all thought that after last week's episode, this week would be about Rika dealing with her conflicting feelings regarding Takuya's childhood friend. We were half right, as the childhood friend is absent for almost the whole episode, only coming in at the end to deliver another cliffhanger. This episode is about a dramatic fallout with a coworker in the background for most of these episodes. This show arguably likes to glorify the idea of marriage based on how everybody talks about it. Everyone made it seem like it was a big special thing or the pinnacle of what they get out of life. I think it's a little telling when one character comments on how jealous they are of someone else getting a divorce, because you can't get a divorce without getting married in the first place.

Divorce is at the center of this episode and there's a great emphasis placed on how sudden it can be. There is a comfort that comes with being married to somebody and sharing a life with them, and it's easy to take that comfort for granted. Shou is an absolute wreck throughout the episode to the point where he jokingly reverts to being a gorilla, which I thought was a bit much. Still, it makes sense when he explains that maybe his life would've been better if he didn't have to think about all that complicated stuff. From his perspective, he had his perfect life ripped out from under him, but that's only his side of the story. There is a chance he was the only one feeling happy in the situation and didn't notice what was going on. All relationships will require communication, and if both parties aren't mutually happy with the situation, then a divorce does seem like the right call. It's not fair if one person is benefiting from the happiness of another, but then you also need to deal with the fallout, which can get complicated when children are involved.

What shocked me about this episode was how it affected Rika. There were hints that her parents were also divorced, considering that we only saw the mom get brought up about her past. However, the dad could've been dead, and that's typically the route that a lot of shows take when they want to create a single-parent situation. Rika's parents did divorce, and this whole situation reminded her of that. What I like about this episode is how Rika dealt with it and what she kept repeating to herself throughout. When Rika doesn't want to deal with a stressful situation, she shuts down. That stoic face everybody knows her by is her coping with a situation that she does not want to deal with, and that is a fairly common thing. I like that the show almost recontextualizes how people have looked at her and how Riko looks at the world around her. She doesn't even realize that she is more or less shutting out Takuya the same way that she acted around her parents when they were initially getting divorced. That situation hasn't been resolved, and I hope that next week follows that up. This episode wasn't what I expected, but I'm very happy with what we got.

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