Kotoura-san 11 – And The Culprit Is…

Yes you did just watch a rather bad episode of Kotoura-san.

Well, after being able to get by for 10 episodes without anything extremely silly, Kotoura-san went where I hoped it wouldn’t. As it ventured into the land of excessive (and not very good) drama, a fury of face-palms ensued.

In short, the drama was bad. Plot-wise I was questioning almost every detail of the episode that involved Kotoura and the detective culprit. Putting aside that it was obvious since the last episode who the attacker was, the scenes with her and Kotoura did not make sense. What high schooler just forgets about their phone? Split-personality to explain the attacks? A resolution that simple and cheesy? We did witness all of those things. Just going through them was a little painful.

Since I don’t like to dwell too much on the negative, I’ll move onto the positive. Yes there was indeed something good about this episode and it happened to involve everyone but Kotoura. It was in fact all the romantic moments we had, that made the episode far better than it could have been.

Maybe it’s because I’m still angry at the latest episode of Haganai – rage against Kodaka – but I really enjoyed the Manabe-Moritani and Muroto-Yuriko scenes in this episode. It was a matter of time before Moritani was officially reject by Manabe, and we had it in writing that he really does love Kotoura. Luckily, Manabe continued his streak as a good male lead and dealt with it honestly and in a straight-forward manner. As for Moritani, she’s suffered enough so I didn’t mind feeling a little sorry for her.

Whilst the Manabe-Moritani scenario was inevitable, the Muroto-Yuriko scene was something of an unexpected treat. I never did expected much to come in terms of romance, from this pairing and that made it a little sad. The scene itself may not have been a concrete confession, nevertheless it was enough to make for a lovely romantic moment and possibly enough to end the series with.

Now that Kotoura-san has finished this arc, we are left with just one episode. Presumably the series will return to a lighter tone to end with, given all the development Kotoura herself. Not to mention, there’s still the question of her and Manabe getting together officially and that part is non-negotiable as far as I’m concerned. Let’s hope the series end things on a better note than this episode.