When Will Ayumu Make His Move?

Episode 7

I know I have harped on the awkwardness of the pacing in When Will Ayumu Make His Move? before, but it bears repeating, especially since “I Can't Just Quit, Senpai” is one of those episodes that sounds quite excellent on paper, but loses a lot of its charm and effectiveness when translated to animation. Thankfully, its production woes are nowhere near as bad as they were last week; the show looks pretty okay this time, for the most part. Rather, it's the laconic direction and overall thinness of the story that drags this one down. It's far from terrible, but Ayumu continues to disappoint all the same.

More than anything, the biggest complaint that I have about “I Can't Just Quit, Senpai” is how long it takes to feel like the story has any point whatsoever. Admittedly, I've always struggled with the lowest of low-key iyashikei types of shows, but I don't think that is what is wrong with Ayumu. This is a case where the episode consists of maybe fifteen minutes' worth of story (and that's if we're being generous) that gets stretched out to over twenty minutes' worth of screentime. Now, an extra five minutes might sound like nothing to get hung up over, but when five minutes accounts for roughly twenty percent of your total runtime, it can feel like an hour. This is especially true when, as is the case here, all that extra time doesn't even feel like it is allocated to telling an interesting story, or any story for that matter. Instead, we just get so many single shots and cuts that feel just a frame too long, and superfluous dialogue exchanges that function as filler more than anything else.

Here is the complete breakdown of what happens in the first half of this episode: Ayumu and Urushi reminisce over the fact that another school year has passed, they join Takeru and Sakurako to check on the new class rosters, and then there's a flashback to when Ayumu first met Urushi and became so immediately smitten that he instantly joined the shogi club, sight unseen. There's also a random aside where Urushi's friends decide to tickle her, for no particular reason. And lest you think that I am exaggerating the simplicity of something so important as our main characters' meet-cute, no, there is no additional angle or special execution to make this scene stand out. Urushi loses some flyers, Ayumu picks them up, and they both blush for a bit. That's really all there is to it, aside from Takeru being there to make reaction faces.

None of this is bad, but my God does it feel like so much empty calories when you're sitting there, starving for even one morsel of substance, or even a couple of crumbs' worth of funny jokes. Thankfully, the episode does improve when we're introduced to the newest (and most begrudging) member of the shogi club: Rin Kagawa. Our gang has absolutely no luck recruiting fledgling shogi enthusiasts until Takeru and Ayumu's former schoolmate arrives, though as it turns out, she only signed up under the mistaken impression that the pair was still all about kendo, which is Rin's singular passion. This misunderstanding causes Rin to challenge Ayumu to a duel for the fate of his club membership: If he wins, Rin joins the shogi club, and if he loses, it's kendo all the way from here on out.

I won't pretend that this is an amazing development, since the threat of Ayumu leaving the club is completely perfunctory, and it isn't like this show is about to waste precious resources and time on actually showing us the exciting kendo match. Still, the ridiculously formal Rin is a solid addition to a cast that desperately needs fleshing out, and it's nice to learn a little bit more about Ayumu's life before he became consumed with winning the affections of the tiny little shogi gremlin who lives eternally in his brain, rent free.

I really don't love how much time I spend criticizing When Will Ayumu Make His Move? every week, but the show isn't giving me much to work with here; I couldn't very well just write “This show is kind of boring but otherwise innofensive” for each review. Hopefully Rin's presence in the show will kick the dynamics up a notch, but I won't get my hopes up too high.

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When Will Ayumu Make His Move? is currently streaming on HIDIVE.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.