“Do you think of me as a child?”
The Fun of Groups
I had no idea episode 5 of Yano-kun’s Ordinary Days was going to be the first real group episode! I’ve been waiting for a group episode since I saw the OP. In this episode, Izumi asks Kiyoko for help in studying for the midterms. This turns into a group activity with Kiyoko, Mei, Tanaka, Yano, Izumi, and Hashiba.
As the study session is ongoing, we see everyone’s full potential on display. Izumi and Tanaka are complete airheads, but they add so much fun to the group. Izumi jokes that Kiyoko and Hashiba are like “parents” to Yano, but also pretty much to the group. Yano is like the baby of the group, since everyone wants to make him happy and make sure he’s enjoying himself. Mei is just being best girl Mei, as per usual.
Parenting Yano
There’s always a truth to jokes, and Izumi’s joke about Kiyoko and Hashiba being parents to Yano enlightens them to the ongoing dynamic. Hashiba is looking out for Yano out of care and wants to see him happy. Kiyoko likes Yano, but she is also genuinely worried about him. However, in those worries, it does come off as “mothering,” which she ends up wondering if that’s what she’s doing.
Yano, on the other hand, is seen paying special attention to Kiyoko and Hashiba and how they interact. I was spot on last week when I said that his reaction to Hashiba’s confession felt off. In this episode, we see that he is feeling something while watching them interact. When they’re leaving the burger spot, he asks Kiyoko, “Do you see me as a child?” but quickly changes the subject. He then acts cold towards Kiyoko for the rest of the time.
Making Sense of Emotions
By the end of episode 5, when my other ship, Mei and Tanaka, are singing their hearts out, Yano seems to be having an epiphany. The song they’re singing has lyrics that coincide with what Yano is seemingly going through. “I get embarrassed, I don’t know why / When I realized it was love.” Yano is clearly in shock and blushing! “L-love?”
This episode was so well done. There are so many different things happening at once, like a chain reaction, that it’s bound to reach a boiling point. I don’t think it’s happening just yet, but it is coming! Firstly, Kiyoko. We know she likes Yano a lot. And in her care for him and liking him, she definitely goes overboard with worrying about him. It also doesn’t help that she’s more nervous around him. When she interacts with Hashiba, she doesn’t like him, so she’s not on edge. To Yano, seeing this, he reads it differently. He’s feeling as if Kiyoko is looking at him through a “mothering lens” and sees her interacting with Hashiba as something else.
This episode also made me reflect on how easy it is to slip into going overboard when trying to help someone. Hashiba and Kiyoko, because they are older siblings, go full throttle when trying to help Yano. As Izumi called it out, it got to a point where they felt like parents. While they have good intentions, we can see that Yano didn’t appreciate feeling like a child they were looking after. I think there’s a lesson there about even with the best intentions, you can do too much.
Overall, this was such a great episode, and I love the little threads we see forming!
See you next episode!
Yano-kun’s Ordinary Days is streaming on Crunchyroll, with new episodes on Tuesdays.
