Twilight Out of Focus

Episode 8

It's so easy to get poisoned by genre fiction that we've probably all been there. Whether it's jumping off a shed roof with an umbrella and expecting to float, chasing the barest glimpse of a white stag into the woods, or continually walking into closets looking for fantasy lands, the pull of our favorite fiction is hard to resist. For Yoshino, the protagonist of the third cycle of Twilight Out of Focus, the genre that got him is shoujo romance. The first openly queer character (Hisashi is in the closet for the most part, while the other three aren't hiding it, but also not advertising their sexuality), Yoshino is eager to make his high school debut at an all-boys school to land a hot boyfriend he can show off to his middle school gal pals. But he doesn't just want any guy; Yoshino's dreams are scripted by the shoujo romances he spent middle school consuming, and he's running up against the uncomfortable reality that things rarely work like that in real life.

He's probably the most open character we've seen so far. While Ichikawa doesn't necessarily hide his passions, he also has two distinct personas, but Yoshino puts everything out there all the time. Or at least, he learns to – his first three attempts to find a boyfriend land him in sports clubs, all of which he's ludicrously talented at, but none of the members like him in a romantic light; they're more interested in his amazing athletic skills than his waifish good looks. Finally, after complaining about his failed efforts to his roommate, the Goth boy suggests he give the film club a go. After all, it's just crawling with attractive young men.

The fun of this arc is in how different it is from the previous two. Yoshino is unapologetically himself, and by the time he hits the film club, he's done with hiding his desires. He and Rei (the third year with the glasses and “Things” hat) start dating quickly because Rei is morbidly fascinated by Yoshino and he's hot enough for Yoshino's tastes. But their drama comes from their disparate personalities; Rei's third-year friends all unabashedly call him trash to his face because he has the people skills of a block of cheese, while Yoshino is putting himself out there, all the time. If we had friends-to-lovers followed by enemies-to-lovers, this new relationship is probably best classified as opposites attract. Rei starts by telling Yoshino that he'll never find a boyfriend, then shifts to kissing him like it's nothing after a sobbing Yoshino outlines his shoujo manga dream scenario. He's detached from the entire situation, while Yoshino is immediately invested, eager to call his middle school friends, and not at all aware of what he's let himself in for.

In some ways, this dynamic makes this the most interesting of all of the romances. There's more surface-level tension, and if Yoshino is a hot mess, he's the right kind of hot mess, and he plays off of Rei very well. The scene where Yoshino pulls off Rei's glasses to discover he's shoujo manga hot is fantastic – Yoshino gushes, while Rei quietly asks for his glasses back because he can't see a damn thing. This is their relationship in a nutshell, and not only is it distinctly different from the other two (a real strength of this pseudo-anthology series), but it also brings a much more manic energy. Even their unnatural hair colors show us that this is a very different flavor of story than we've had before. Yoshino can be annoying and Rei risks being even more of a nonconsensual player than Hisashi. Still, there's nothing wrong with a series trying something new, and this third romance shows us that Twilight Out of Focus is committed to that angle.

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Twilight Out of Focus is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.