Skip and Loafer

Episode 12

It would be so, so easy to call Ririka a bitch and leave it at that. It's tempting, too, because she truly is awful, especially since we learn that she's known all along that she was tormenting Shima for her own twisted satisfaction. That he told her not to follow him to that infamous party squarely places the blame on Ririka herself, and her jealousy that Shima's at a good high school trying to live his best life while she languishes is, again, down to nothing more than her own poor choices. When she scares his mother off and has the temerity to be proud of herself, it's the outside of enough.

But writing her off like that would be ignoring the entire point of Skip and Loafer as a series. This is a story that not only loves its characters, it respects them and takes care to make sure that we see them as not just “characters,” but as people. Sure, there are unpleasant human beings who feel like cardboard cutout villains, but that's not what this story is about. Ririka's awful, but she has reasons to be that way. She's terrified of losing Shima, and the only way her unhappy self can think to hold on to him is to torment him. She's the kind of person Kasahara from My Clueless First Friend could have grown up to be if she hadn't learned her lesson. Ririka does learn it this week (or at least starts to) when Shima tells her that he's not going to punish himself for her misery anymore. But she's forced into the knowledge. Ririka's major problem is that she doesn't want to grow, because she's afraid of what will change and what (or who) she'll lose.

To a degree, that's been Shima's problem, too. When he marvels at Mitsumi's ability to pick herself back up, and the fact that she's perfectly aware of her own shortcomings, he's admiring something that he doesn't have the courage to do. Although he stops short of admitting that he wanted his mom to stay and watch his school play, he does finally realize that he's been hiding what he wants behind a shield of anxiety and a veneer of affability. It's not that he wants to be the guy who agrees to everything, it's that he's afraid not to be. I don't know if we can say that Mitsumi explicitly gave him the courage to really think about himself and what he wants, but she certainly showed him the way. When he runs off to meet up with his friends from class at the end, a true bounce in his step, for the first time he looks like what he is: a kid still figuring things out. Mitsumi has helped him to find that, and he knows it.

This final arc of the series, adapting volume four of the manga (there are currently eight books out, seven of which are in English), may have shifted the focus from Mitsumi to Shima, but she remains the heart and soul of the series. Her unrelenting ability to just be herself is her greatest strength, even if she doesn't realize it. She's like a reverse manic pixie dream girl – sure, she's a little weird, but she's not self-consciously quirky, and when you come right down to it, she's never been anyone other than herself. She does silly things and worries about how she comes across, but she's just Mitsumi, and that's good enough. Like the ending theme says, she's good at picking herself up and brushing herself off. That's an excellent recipe for moving forward.

Would it have been nice to see more closure here? Sure, but that would have sacrificed the faithful adaptation of the source material, and that would have been too bad. This ended in a good place, where we can be sure that the characters are going to keep moving ahead. They'll stumble of course, and Shima's still got a lot to sort through, but now he's got his faithful anteater to defend him from his monsters and a new understanding of who he is and what he wants to do. I can assure you that the manga is every bit as good as the anime, so definitely pick that up while we're hoping for a second season. And just keep moving ahead, brushing yourself off when you fall.

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Skip and Loafer is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.