Before that however, there's some excitement for Sawako in the form of her first ever sleepover with Yano and Yoshida, although this excitement is tempered a little by Chizuru's mood on account of some ill-thought words by Ryuu, who tells her to "stay away from his place" for a couple of days - An attempt to save her from the upset of what is to come, but expressed in the worst possible fashion.
Eventually Yano, Yoshida and Sawako go to pay Ryuu a visit, only to find that there's already a small party in full swing which includes the presence of Kazehaya. The party is soon halted however as Ryuu's brother Tohru puts in an appearance a day early... Along with his fiancée. So, the reason for Ryuu's concerns for Chizuru become clear (if they weren't hinted at heavily enough already), yet outwardly she appears to recover from the shock incredibly quickly and remains largely her normal quirky self. On the inside of course, things aren't quite so simple, although it's from Sawako that the first tears of sadness actually flow as she gets to see the pitfalls of unrequited love in front of her own eyes.
While this episode was handled pretty well, perhaps the revelation of Tohru having either a girlfriend or wife-to-be was made a little too obvious last time around, which only served to make this particular instalment overly predictable as we could see what was coming a mile off. This rendered a lot of this episode as somewhat moot, although it did still have some great moments of comedy and interplay between various characters (with Yano in particular standing out), and Chizuru's reactions throughout had a genuine feeling of realism to them against the sometimes overly dramatic stuff that anime can get dragged into on occasion. Still, it appears that the Chizuru and Ryuu story arc isn't quite over yet, so we'll have to wait and see what the next episode holds - At least we can be pretty certain that it'll be less predictable than this one proved to be.
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