Review: Ore Monogatari!! (My Love Story!!) - Episode 12, "My Grades"

Episode spoilers ahead...you've been warned.

With episode 12--"My Grades"--Ore Monogatari!! has reached the halfway point of its season and I'm happy to say it's still going strong, delivering its best episode yet. I started worrying about Ore Monogatari!! a few episodes ago, unsure of how it would be able to keep the lovey-dovey romance alive for 24 episodes without getting stale, but, if the show can recapture the vibe sprinkled throughout "My Grades," Ore Monogatari!! will be just fine.

What is it about "My Grades" that works so well? It's that the episode is not just about Takeo and Yamato, but the wonderful cast of characters that are a part of their lives--like Suna and Takeo's parents. When Ore Monogatari!! focuses solely on Takeo and Yamato, the show becomes exhausting real fast because young, idealistic first love is exhausting with its excessive optimism and innocence, so, when the show is nothing but that, it's a bit too much; however, when we get to see the way everyone else reacts to their love story, it's pure bliss.

I mentioned Takeo's parents earlier and they really stole the show this week, reacting to the discovery of Takeo's first girlfriend with such glee that I couldn't help but smile whenever they were on-screen--Side note: when so many shows rarely show parents, it's nice to actually see a character's parents and not just as background fodder. Takeo's mother obsessed over making their home as spotless as a doctor's office, even buying new dinnerware and fancy tea so Yamato wouldn't think they're a plain and boring family--which Takeo noticed and pointed out with subtle internal dialogue; though, didn't know why she was going to all the trouble because, after all, he is quite dense. And then there's Takeo's father, who just couldn't help but try and be a part of the nonsense by bringing up golf of all things, as if Yamato would go home and tell her father all about it and then both fathers would start playing golf together and a new love story would be born! Watching Takeo's parents react to Yamato was as joyful for me as finding out Takeo had a girlfriend was for them and I enjoyed every second of it.

All this talk so far and I haven't even mentioned the plot of this episode, which revolved around Takeo studying in hopes of being accepted into the same college as Yamato. As one would expect, Takeo went to Suna for help, providing Suna with many opportunities to shine in his own special way--I love how indifferent Suna is to seemingly everything and his lack of outward expression that occasionally breaks when he chuckles at Takeo's obliviousness to certain things. So, how did things go? Takeo and Suna studied feverishly, Takeo took the benchmark exam and, because of user error, ended up with just an average score; though, there's no guarantee his score would have been much better if he didn't screw up initially by accidentally skipping a question. But, no need to fret because not even Yamato scored high enough to make it into her first choice, which, in the end, we find out was never a real possibility for Takeo because her first choice was an all-girls school, something Suna knew all along and chose to omit--'tis moments like this that remind me of why I love Suna so much.

Ore Monogatari!! has been one of the best shows of the Spring 2015 season and, if it can keep doing what it did in "My Grades," not forgetting there's more to this love story than just Takeo and Yamato, it will probably be one of the best shows during the Summer season too.

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