Skip and Loafer

Episode 5

It's official – this show cured my migraine, or at least finished the job; either way, I feel better. It's also fitting because this week's episode is largely the characters musing about their relationships with each other and how they ultimately help them, with mean girl Egashira taking center stage. The chapter this episode is adapting is one of my favorites from the source manga because it does what many works don't bother to do: give the mean girl a reason for her behavior.

Strictly speaking, Egashira has never been horrifically cruel. She's kept things more in the realm of “snide.” This episode tells us that she's fully aware that she hasn't been all that kind to Mitsumi. She's Mitsumi's polar opposite in one significant way, which informs their relationship: Mitsumi is always her true self, while Egashira presents a fully curated persona. As is often the case, this stems from bad experiences in her earlier life; it's implied that Egashira was overlooked and ignored as the chubby kid, which can be just as damaging as other kinds of bullying, and to put her past behind her, Egashira set out to change everything about herself. We learned that she combs through magazines to craft the perfect, trend-focused look, and her appearance is still a major part of the act. She also strictly monitors what she eats and forces herself to join popular clubs to complete the image. What comes to Mitsumi and Yuzu is something she has to force herself to become.

She's more like Kurume than she'd probably be comfortable admitting. Kurume is also leaning hard into the self she wants to be recognized as, perhaps going even further in her “smart girl” persona than she is in reality. Egashira's reaction to Mitsumi mirrors Kurume's to Yuzu; both see their opposites as almost foreign and unattainable. Yuzu helps Kurume see herself as a regular person, but Mitsumi may not be as socially adept. Instead, she's unapologetically herself, and it's up to Egashira to put the pieces together. This week she muses that Mitsumi must have something that Shima wants, something in her personality or treatment of him that he either feels he lacks or makes him comfortable. It's almost certainly true, but more importantly, for Egashira, when she makes that connection, she allows herself to like Mitsumi and maybe see her as less of a rival.

This week is a bit of a wake-up call for Mitsumi, too – it's the first time (or maybe the second) that she's faced with the reality that Shima isn't just her closest Tokyo friend, he's also “the hot guy.” She's always been at least tangentially aware that he's good-looking, but it's mattered less to her than that he's nice and she enjoys spending time with him. During the inevitable school sports event, though, she realizes that if she charges ahead to give him the pickles she made, it might put her in the crosshairs of every other girl present. She eventually realizes that her friendship with him is more important than that. The impact on him is plain to see: we may not get inside his head this week, but his face when he sees her turning away from him is utterly blank, whereas when she comes back later, loudly cheering, he makes a basket himself, rather than letting another classmate shine. She's the one he wants to share his victory with because, as far as they're both concerned, they're close friends, and that's what matters.

Is there more brewing between them? Possibly, maybe even probably. But what's more important for Mitsumi and Shima is how much they enjoy spending time together and how well they get along. If a romance plot comes along later, I like knowing it will be because they both want things to go that way.

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Skip and Loafer is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.