Ano Natsu de Matteru - Episode 4

There are a fair number of things you wouldn't want a girl you liked to do to you, whether it's suddenly starting to ignore you seemingly at random one day or walking off to catch the nearest train after you've made a half-baked confession of sorts to her one evening.

It's the latter problem which confronts both Kaito and Ichika as this fourth episode of Ano Natsu de Matteru begins, and neither of them knows how to handle the situation, leading to a decidedly awkward morning greeting between them.  While Kaito knows how he feels about Ichika, our leading lady seems a little less certain - she likes Kaito well enough, but the problem of what is likely to be a fleeting stay in the area weights heavily on her mind.

As both parties come to a decision in their respective heads about how to handle things, so a spanner is thrown into the works courtesy of Tetsurou's older sister Manami - her decision to "kidnap" Kaito for a binge of shopping and leisure is totally misunderstood by Ichika as she sees the couple drive by, and her stalking of them does nothing to dissuade her mistake to the point where she sets about trying to forcibly drag Kaito out of the house before finally learning the error of her ways.  Although her behaviour proves a point about her feelings for Kaito, the situation between them is ultimately put to the back of their minds as they focus on other things - studying, primarily, as the group build up and then break up for the summer holiday which, it seems, is where the real fun is going to begin.

Following a pretty decent past couple of episodes, this week's Ano Natsu de Matteru felt a little weak - for the second instalment in a row we had a main story based on a misunderstanding, only this time around there was no real novelty to it, instead taking on the clichéd old idea of "girl sees guy with another female, girl stalks couple, girl gets wrong idea until misunderstanding is resolved".  It was all a little bit dull really, and spiced up only marginally by Ichika's extra-terrestrial powers and Remon's... well, similarly impressive powers.  At least with the summer break upon its characters, it seems that we're about to reach the meat of this particular series - it has everything in place to deliver, so I can only hope it has something more innovative in mind than the fare delivered here.