Amagami SS - Episode 5

Now that Haruka's arc is out of the way, episode five of Amagami SS brings us to a new story arc, allowing us to see what kind of crazy person is next on Tachibana's a la carte menu of femininity.

So, with the story effectively beginning again, we're reminded once more of how Tachibana was stood up by a girl a couple of years previously... although this time he has a saviour in the form of friend since middle school Kaoru Tanamachi, who seems him looking down on his way home and aims to cheer him up with the promise of Christmas cake.


Fast-forwarding back to the present day, we see that Tachibana and Kaoru are still close friends, with the latter seemingly having a penchant for nibbling on the ear of the former while he's caught unawares. Indeed, Kaoru's general nature seems to be both random and ultimately rather playful, although this can spill over into outright violence, as it seems that Tachibana has ended up in the school infirmary on her account on more than one occasion.

But is there more that simply playful friendship between these two? Well, obviously there is otherwise this would be a pointless story arc, but of course these two aren't exactly sure of that as of yet, at least until Tachibana things that Kaoru has called him to a quiet spot to confess to him; although that isn't the case, it does set what appears to be the beginning of a chain of events between them in motion.

As per the start of this show's first story arc, I really can't find much to say here - As episodes go, this instalment did reasonably well on the humour front overall, but it still feels oddly sterile and bland for a series about love and romance. Put simply, it feels a little too much like the major characters are just going through the motions in a decidedly predictable way, which tends to strip this effort of any kind of emotional impact or any thoughts towards the well-being or otherwise of the characters involved. This really mirrors what we saw in Haruka's arc, where only Morishima and Tachibana's oddball behaviour marked the story out as anything other than generic, and sadly I fear that this second arc is liable to go down the same route of trying to mask its inadequacies by shouting out "Hey look, weird stuff!" every now and again.