I’m officially starting a goal to make these reviews shorter. Not because they’re too long, but because I screencap, crop, and resize all these pictures myself and it’s really time-consuming.
Anyway, this is the episode dedicated to ALL THE GUY LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP and be damned if I don’t LOOOOOOVE it.
So we get to see more of Kuwabara’s virtue and honor when he saves Keiko from a random creep on the street. It’s interesting because we’ve seen nothing up until this point to indicate a relationship between the two, so it might indicate that Kuwabara feels it’s his duty to protect her now that Yusuke’s gone. Does this go back to the Atsuko’s Yakuza connection from the manga? Are Keiko and her family officially protected by the Yakuza? Am I going to find an excuse to reference that connection in every review? Maybe … Probably not.
In any case, this says miles about what a cool, awesome guy Kuwabara is. Especially when he goes the extra mile after getting in trouble with Bucky here. Yes, I know the teacher has an actual name but you know what? I hate the b*****d and I can’t be bothered to remember it as a result. Also, the fact that he was following Kuwabara around is creepy in more ways than I have time to type out.
So Yusuke follows Kuwabara and witnesses the poor guy be repeatedly beaten by people who are trying to imitate his hairstyle.
Seriously, are they all just beating on him because they think he’s a part of a rival pompadour gang?
I have this little headcanon that the only reason Yusuke was initially following Kuwabara was to find a way to repay him for protecting Keiko. Once he saw Kuwabara taking so many beatings in the name of keeping his friend out of trouble, he realized how tough the man was and started to respect him. That was when Yusuke decided to help him out. And that’s pretty cool considering how few people Yusuke respects. It shows that both of them will go the extra mile for their friends.
(also, in the spirit of this being one of the fandom’s favorite guy love scenes, insert your yaoi joke HERE)
We end the episode with Takenaka showing how awesome he is and some good ol’ flower symbolism. I already wrote a little quip about the flowers, you can read that here. As for Takenaka … I love you, man, but why didn’t you fire Bucky on the spot? I would have. I guess you’re a bigger man than me.
(no pun intended)
This episode didn’t top the last one in number of priceless screenshots, but it definitely topped it in quality of priceless screenshots. I can’t decide which of these three are my favorite.
