Tonikaku Kawaii | Episode 10 and 11

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Episode 10

My favourite episodes of Tonikaku Kawaii are when we get to see Tsukasa and Nasa be all gushy, cute and when they spend time together. I don’t know why I am into that, but I am. This also means that my overall enjoyment of this anime has been great. Episode ten does precisely that. As in all episodes, our two protagonists spend a lot of time together. You can sense the comfortability they have whenever they’re together. If we were to compare episode ten to episode one, they’re a lot more animated in their emotions and know how to express their feelings towards one another better. Nasa is a lot more direct and more open about his feelings too, we see less of him speaking to himself about what he feels when he’s around Tsukasa. Instead, we see Nasa express his thoughts towards Tsukasa, even if they seem a little prevented.

Now, time to move onto something that bothered me, just a little bit, which is this episode’s art design. While the art style is something I like because of how different it is to what we usually see, one thing that has bothered me is that this episode felt kind of sloppy. We had different character designs for both Nasa and Tsukasa throughout the episode; this is, of course, disregarding all the funny facial expressions. Whenever they talked to each other, there were times when Nasa’s character design didn’t look consistent with the previous episodes. The same could be said about Tsukasa. Given the nature of the art style, our characters are very ‘cartoonish’ in nature. Which is fine most of the time; it’s worked after all. However, for some reason, it didn’t work for episode ten. To me, the ‘cartoonish’ against a rather realist-esk background made them stick out like a sore thumb. That part I didn’t like.

Episode 11

What did I just watch?! Who would have thought watching anime characters play Street Fighter would be so enjoyable. Episode eleven reminded me a little bit of my childhood growing up. You know what I mean, you’d go over to a party, a cousin’s, or friend’s house and all you’d do is play games until you grew tired. That’s what this episode reminded me a ton about. It was a bunch of ‘friends’ having fun, playing videos games and most importantly allowing their competitive side show. I think that’s something everyone can relate to.

It is because of this reason that I absolutely adored this episode. It really connected with me on a personal level, back when I used to play video games like Naruto Ultimate Clash of Ninja 3, Brother Smash Brawl, all them Pokémon games with my cousins and friends. You’d play and play and eventually lose track of time, which is something that also happened this episode; they were having too much fun they forgot about the party. For the sentimental aspect, this episode is an A+.

Overall, watching anime characters play a real video game the whole time was outright awesome. I loved it and how competitive it all felt. It was like I was also there in person experiencing two highly competitive friends go at each other on a video game, it was a fun time.