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Originally Posted by ashlay
He knows Yoshida likes him, and wants to be friendly with her, but he can't really deal with such a possibility due to aformentioned being dead and leaving the city thing. Seems to me he basically views konoe in the same way he views her; it's just the Konoe is actually demanding, an Yuji is willing to oblige.
and as for Shana, its the same thing as always. In fact it's the exact same thing as Yuji trying to get a "present" from Shana back during the twins arc: Yuji makes advances to Shana and Shana rejects them, and so Yuji sits there unsure of what to do, since he's just a nice (read:selfless [read:stupid]) guy and can never really force his feelings onto other people, and instead just lets others force their feelings onto him. Shana acts weird, but it's mostly just Chigusa who see's the dere side, while Yuji is almost always stuck with the tsun.
Yuji hasn't changed at all, and Shana hasn't changed at all: its really inevitable, because for Yuji there's not another woman in the entire world other than Shana, because quite simply no one else is going to remember him and no one else is going to be safe around him. And for Shana, Yuji is the first man in hers, and with the life of a flame haze being what it is, that pretty much makes Yuji the only one. But at the end of the day it comes to same problem that both have had since episode 1: neither can just go ahead and admit they love the other, because Yuji isn't aggressive enough and because Shana isn't honest enough. So yeah, I can understand if people are unhappy with us watching the same situation until this story ends, but again, be clear about what's making you unhappy. Everything's the same as it was in season 1, and will probably continue to be so for the majority of this season as well.
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Very well said.
I think this was all highlighted by the resolution at the end of this ep. Only Yoshida got Margery's comments directly, because they only really applied to Yoshida--the whole business of unrequited love and all that. Then Shana gets the advice secondhand, and at the end of the ep., she says, in what's supremely ironic for the viewer, that she wants to truly understand Yuuji's feelings. Of course, we all know that Yuji likes her, but it's clear that Shana remains completely mystified, in the same way that Yuji doesn't know about Shana's feelings.
What I also noticed was how indifferent Yuji was to poor Kazumi. Yuji knows Shana's upset, and is concerned about it, even if he's rather lamely perplexed. But poor Yoshida's reaction is barely commented on, and when he does notice her unhappiness, he spectacularly misreads it. I also thought Margery's comments about unrequited love as especially telling--poor Yoshida, an interesting character and sweet girl, but she'll never win over the emotionally inept, occasionally abusive, but supremely competent in all things Flame Haze, Shana.
I also think you're right that no one should expect too much "resolution" and "progress" in Shana and Yuji's relationship, until the very end of the season. That being said, I do think there's been some progress, although nothing really touching on the core issues. Yuji, for example, actually figures out that Shana skipped out on practice to make a bento for him, without her telling him. I don't think he would have figured that out in S1. Furthermore, in the reboot on the confession from S1, the premise of S2 it seems is that Yuji couldn't hear the confession. Yet he seems to have some awareness of what Shana said. This can be explained by a mix of lip-reading, and some degree of intuition on Yuji's part of what Shana's true feelings are. It's not enough to erase doubt, and the conscious idea does after Shana's denial, but somewhere in Yuji's well-meaning and romantically oblivious skull, I think he knows what's going on.
Shana also does a better job encouraging Yuji in training and other matters--compare the post-Margery eps in S1 where Yuji becomes completely demoralized. And Shana *is* less pointlessly possessive and jealous; now she gets along okay with both Konoe and Yoshida. She's even friends with the latter now.
That makes me wonder how he's going to break the news to his mom if it does eventuate in him leaving the city (provided she doesn't become a torch herself 
).
