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I give this episode a 10/10 solely because it means there will not be any more of Sae's arc. I generally don't post about stuff I dislike, but this is the first time in a while I have been this annoyed by the content of an anime.
It's not that I dislike the concept. I never dislike concepts, as the value of an idea comes down to how someone executes it. I feel that Sae's arc was poorly executed. Partly, I blame this on the four-episode format which has so far caused more grief than good. I think the whole 'everybody wins' approach is interesting, but condensing entire romantic arcs down to this point? It has made the storytelling awkward, and in Sae's case, she is very in need of a well-constructed growth period, because her starting point is as a very weak character.
If this seems entirely out of left field to you, let's chalk that up to some fundamental differences of taste. Praise for Sae seems largely centered on her moe qualities: for starters, I don't factor that in to my appreciation of a character, and even if I did, Sae's qualities are anti-moe to me. The standard I do use when evaluating a character is how much depth they possess and how well their development is handled. Again, there is a fairly tight limit on how much could happen given that there are four episodes, but still, they managed to make it fairly believable in Kaoru's case. Sae's progression felt very artificial, and so there wasn't really any satisfaction to be had from it.
I also really disliked the version of Junichi we got in this arc. In Kaoru's arc, there were moments of relative wisdom and even some GAR from his end. In this arc, he seems to be driven by a mixture of pity and lust: the intention is obviously different, but we are never actually shown anything else, and thus that is what we have to judge on.
All in all, a very poor arc, and I'm glad that we'll be moving on to a fresh slate next week.
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