Inari, Konkon, Koi Iroha Ep. 7: What is love?

Baby, don’t hurt me! Seriously, you have to stop. It’s illegal.

Episode summary: Inari and Kouji are supposed to be lovers in some play, but when Inari finds out she had accidentally used her divine powers to get the coveted part, she decides to quit the play. Momoyama, some girl we haven’t seen before this week’s episode (I think), then asks Inari to deliver her love letter to Kouji, which Inari initially agrees to do, but our heroine then loses the letter to the wind. Must have been her divine powers again. Anyway, she uses her divine powers once more to turn into Momoyama so that she can confess Momoyama’s feelings to Kouji in person, but Kouji rejects them. Shh, he’s really in love with Inari. Meanwhile, Uka is being forced by her mother to go on some arranged dates and neither she nor Touka are happy about it, but they’re both too socially awkward to admit that they like each other. Oh well, Touka would probably punch her if she tried to.

Notes:

• Look at this nonsense right here. It turns out that Uka’s mother wants our goddess to start going on arranged dates unless she has someone in mind that she intends to marry.

Naturally, Uka freaks out about this, so Miya goes, “If you already have a particular god in mind… …someone you enjoy being with, even if there’s no love involved?” First off, why even bother getting married if there’s no love involved? But anyway, Uka replies, “You know we don’t–…” All of a sudden, she starts thinking about the time she’s spent with Touka. Oh my, could it be? Is she in love with Inari’s older brother?!

So here’s my problem with this. That ‘time’ we’re talking about, i.e. the ‘time’ she’s spent with Touka, honestly amounts to what? Seriously, try to answer this question: how much ‘time’ has Uka actually spent with Touka? Even if you want to say, “Hey, maybe they’ve spent more time together than what we actually get to see in the anime” there’s still the matter of how A) he abuses and yells at her every time they see each other and B) all they’ve done together is play video games until Touka pitches a fit ’cause he’s a whiny manchild. But I guess that’s love in anime for you. Be right back… gonna go give my girlfriend of noogie to show her how much I love her!

• Inari: “If there’s something bothering you, you can tell me, okay?” Gee, how should Uka break the news to her friend delicately… “I want to bone your asshole brother just because we’ve played the Wii together a couple times” seems a little crude if you ask me.

• Uh, what kind of play is this gonna be again?

• Inari predictably freaks out about adding kissing scene to the play, but I mean, she’s supposed to be Kouji’s lover so I don’t know what she expected. Plus, she’s in middle school. Don’t tell me she hasn’t thought about kissing a boy before. C’mon, I was in middle school once. I know how kids think at that age.

• W-what’s going on in the upper left-hand corner of this screenshot?

Is that a dog?

• Toshi: “We were bored and came to play. Plenty of pure girls here.” Ugh, creeps everywhere.

• So somehow, Kouji’s friends see Inari arguing with Toshi and come to the brilliant conclusion that the two of them are a couple. Wow, really? No wonder Uka thinks she’s in love with Touka. Anime characters apparently mistake abusive behavior for romance. This actually reminds me of a very real problem in South Korea. Oftentimes, couples will get into a fight — and by couples getting into a fight, it usually means domestic violence — and bystanders will just ignore it because they don’t want to get involved in what they consider to be “personal matters.” Even if you bring your concerns to the police, they’ll most likely say, “Eh, we’ll check up on them, but unless the victim files an official complaint, there’s nothing we can do about it.” Yeah, it’s pretty ridiculous.

• Turns out Touka is actually missing Uka’s company. I guess he must’ve noticed his knuckles have been a little too underused lately.

• This exchange:

Uka: “We are telling you, they only love us for our rank!”
Touka: “That might just be your own hangup. Women are so damn self-conscious!”

So she’s basically saying that no one actually loves her for her, and he replies with, “Well, like, that’s just your problem, man!” Why on earth is he the love interest for Uka again? Oh that right, ’cause he’s a bishounen who will play Wii games with her.

• Touka: “Because women treat men’s hearts with contempt!” What is he even talking about? She tells him that no one actually loves her for her, and he comes back with this? It doesn’t even make sense. No shit someone would treat your heart with contempt when you reduce them to nothing more than their rank.

• Touka: “The only womanly things about you are your boobs. Should I squeeze them?” Rest in peace, my friend. Oh wait, my bad… abuse is actually love in anime, i.e. these two are practically married. Move along, folks. Nothing to see here.

• On the one hand, Touka pulls back when Uka flinches, so gold star for doing the bare minimum of what’s required to be a decent human being. On the other hand, he doesn’t even apologize for his suddenly brazen behavior: “This is ridiculous.” Then he throws in this little jab: “Go on and have your little arranged dates or whatever. Maybe they’ll teach a gamer nerd like you a thing or two about being a woman.” What a shithead. Again, this is supposed to be her love interest.

• Meanwhile, Inari learns that she subconsciously used her powers to luck herself into drawing the coveted role in the play, and this depresses our heroine for some reason. I guess she thinks it’s cheating, but shrug, it seems pretty harmless to me.

• And because Kouji thinks Inari has a boyfriend, he gives her an out: “We don’t have to do [the kissing scene] if you don’t want to, you know.” Oh, the drama~

• And now girls are relying on Inari to deliver their confessions of love to Kouji. Hey, at some point you just gotta learn that one very important lesson in life the hard way: “Shit or get off the pot.” If you’re not going to confess your feelings, don’t be surprised if someone else swoops in and gets the job done. Ain’t like Inari’s name is on Kouji or anything.

• And to make matters worse, Inari’s quitting the play. It’s not like she’s quitting the play early on in its production though. She’s quitting the play after all that work has been done, which is actually quite selfish of her. Yes, she might have “cheated” her way into the coveted role opposite of Kouji, but it’s too late now. You can’t just quit something everyone’s worked so hard on because you feel bad. Ugh, I’m losing my patience with this story. This is what I get for watching an anime about children.

• Oh hey, Momoyama, i.e. the girl who has a crush on Kouji, immediately volunteers to replace Inari. Good. I don’t even feel sorry for Inari. Not one bit. She’s just getting what she deserves.

• Then she goes and loses the poor girl’s letter. Tsk. So lemme guess… to fix this problem, Inari’ll turn herself into Momoyama, and try to confess Momoyama’s feelings to Kouji, but really, she’ll be confessing her actual feelings instead. Kouji will then turn Inari down, thinking that it’s really Momoyama, and this revelation will perk Inari right back up!

• Well, I’m right so far…

• Inari: “…maybe being in love is like an obsession!” Eh…

• Momoyama: “I wasn’t putting much effort into making him love me back, for one.” Making someone love you back?

• So it turns out Kouji now likes Inari. Ho-hum.

• Then Touka finds out Uka gave Inari her divine powers and he’s all, “Uguu! You tricked me! How could you!” Bah. Then the poor goddess gets whisked away to Izumo for those arranged dates. Gosh, I wonder if Touka will somehow manage to find his way there in order to play her knight in shining armor. Guess I’ll just have to tune in next week!