Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu - Episode 10

You know, I sometimes have to wonder if anyone has actually been caught in that typical anime dilemma - Late at night in the school building, sprawled on the floor with some cute girl for a totally innocuous reason, when your girlfriend or a girl you care deeply about walks in, sees it all and runs off in tears. I mean, it must have happened once at least surely, otherwise how would anyone have even thought of such a thing?


The finale of the last episode of Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu left us with just that scenario, and of course the start of episode ten shows us how it's all a big misunderstanding, with Yuuto saving Shiina from a falling blackboard, hence the reason for the whole sprawling on the floor thing. This being anime however, Yuuto can't just come out and explain it, and Haruka is too stubborn to listen to reason anyway, and thus we're left with the two of them in a state of fake happiness and generally awkward avoidance of one another for the majority of the duration of the episode.

Despite that cliched pedigree, this episode actually worked rather well - It wasn't too overblown, be it emotionally or otherwise, and the way it all ended was rather sweet, and even though I tend to cheer on the underdog, I was more than a little happy to see everything sort itself out between Haruka and Yuuto come the (arguably inevitable) conclusion of this instalment.

Once again, this series hasn't been about doing anything particularly new with the scenarios it covers, but it manages to do them well and with some likeable characters. This solid modus operandi won't make for an all-time memorable series, but as entertainment in the short-term it really hasn't done too badly for itself as we move towards the last couple of episodes.