My Clueless First Friend

Episode 13

As it turns out, we don't need a flash-forward or a time skip to reassure us that these two are going to be okay. That's a good thing because the title of the episode's a little deceptive; it refers to the ubiquitous elementary school assignment where you imagine yourself ten years in the future rather than an actual glimpse of Takada and Nishimura at twenty-one. But either way, we know that Takada is planning for them to remain together in perpetuity. He's also planning on finding the mystical spear Dark Dancer and Nishimura learning to manifest ectoplasm, something she's not entirely sure is a good thing, but between that and him finally calling her by her first name after the credits, these two are going to be just fine.

It's hard to say which is the more fitting finale for this show, the change in how Nishimura and Takada address each other or Kasahara asking Nishimura for her contact information. Both are strong indicators of how much has changed in Nishimura's life; before Takada burst onto the scene, no one called her “Akane” outside her family, and Kasahara was one of her chief bullies. All of that has done a 180 now – not only does she have friends, but she also has close friends, and Kasahara has become one of them is fantastic. It shows that Nishimura isn't the only person who has learned to turn things around, and arguably Kasahara had to make more deliberate changes in her life than Nishimura did. Nishimura was beaten down, so her journey was about realizing that she deserved friends. Kasahara had to admit that she was in the wrong and actively work to change her behavior in a much more public way. Both are absolutely difficult things to do – believe me, I still find myself struggling with my inner bullied child self. Nishimura had more outside support than Kasahara did, making the latter's transformation a more public ordeal.

The only person who doesn't grow throughout this series is Kitagawa. He ends the story as he began, a kid who gets off on picking on someone else to lift himself. It's fitting that his little Scorpion Gang loses their clubhouse when their “bomb” fails them; it's the sort of small disaster that has outsize importance at that age. And I'm still not entirely convinced that they didn't plant the bug bomb in Nishimura's locker on purpose and then freaked out. Asking Takada to retrieve it smacks of calculated desperation because everyone knows that he'd never do anything to harm his beloved friend, so the consequences would be significantly less for him. I don't think it's a coincidence that the incident comes after Takada has been proclaiming that Nishimura makes his chest feel funny to all and sundry.

This has one of the best inconclusive endings I've seen. We don't know for certain that years down the line Nishimura and Takada will be together, but we get enough closure to make that feel like a foregone conclusion. And after all, they're still just little kids, fifth graders having their first brush with love and, in Nishimura's case, friendship. What we do know is that their lives are going to keep on going from this point and that they've been made happier people by meeting each other. For a bullied kid, that's the best possible outcome, the very definition of a hopeful ending. We all deserve our own Taiyou Takadas, or to be one for someone else. I'm so glad that he and Nishimura found each other.

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My Clueless First Friend is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.