Hi! Welcome back to ‘Looking Into’ where I…. well….. look into the sixth episode of Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata ♭!
This week’s episode skipped even more important source material than the last, gosh! I’ll still consider it justice for Eriri’s fans. However, it’s only the beginning of a wild ride with previous five episodes being the climb.
Not much actually happened in this episode (since massive plot skip), hence you’ll probably see a higher number of photos to words ratio than previous episodes.
In case you haven’t noticed, on last week’s post I’ve hidden some of the text in white because they are spoilers that make up this episode. The sixth episode ended exactly where I thought it would.
This episode starts with the much needed comedy, it also seems to be the only funny part in the entire episode. May you rest in peace.
Eriri finds out that her hard work (including her collapse) is in vain when Tomoya gives up the project for Winter Comiket. She notes that ‘never giving up’ is one of his few good qualities (LOL).
Woah, wait! I think I got ahead of myself here! Let me rewind to after the opening credits..
Selfishness
Iori reminds Tomoya that he isn’t being himself – prioritizing the girls over work. This is actually great since now I get to know what Tomoya used to be like before he hoons over each and every girls in his sight, which broke his own belief that he loves 2D girls.
Of course, dude got triggered.
Iori doesn’t end it there.
He later goes on to remind Tomoya that…
…to which Tomoya responds that he’s being serious about his project.
This immediately backfires when Iori asks of ‘what now’. Tomoya isn’t prioritizing work over workers.
Now we know that the old Tomoya cared less about his team, the now Tomoya refuses to have anyone else looking after Eriri, his teammate or what he forcefully calls a circle member.
Iori, who’s obviously selfish in a way…
Tomoya calls Iori out for being self centered. Still, who’s really being self centered here?
Not buying into anything, Iori concludes that all Tomoya wants is to keep Eriri to himself.
Dude is even more triggered this time.
Why wouldn’t he be? It’s like being caught red handed for stealing. It’s starting to bother me a little that this show is aware of everything and all. Tomoya is definitely aware that the girls love him but he is toying with their feelings.
Soon he will learn the hard way; there is definitely that one girl who won’t have her feelings played around.
Back to where she fell
Tomoya arrives at Sawamura’s summer house to find Eriri, which to his knowledge, has fell ill somewhere. Just like me, Tomoya’s attention is being directed to somewhere else as soon as he enters her room.
Holy shit man, help Eriri out! She’s lying literally next to those pictures!
Iori kindly(?!) asks ‘Ms. Enaka’ to carry out medicines and a change of clothes from the car. It’s fine since she only has one job but that wasn’t any of my concern….
Once Eriri’s issue is sorted, the two part ways when Iori gives Tomoya one last hope of actually completing the game, lending out his ‘business’ that handles publishing of the visual novel.
Ahead to where she stood strong
After making Eriri cry in pure disappointment, Tomoya shows his feeling regarding her work. Of course, praises will get any tsundere in their ovaries, fact. For the whole time I think Tomoya forgot that Eriri is still aiming to be his number one (her promise back in first season’s episode 8). I also think that for the entire time, Eriri has always been aiming to win one on one fights against other heroines. Like, she has a tunnel vision of romance. It’s hilarious.
Eriri, after listening to Tomoya sing praises, asks if she has finally become his number one.
“Yes.”
I beat Hashima Izumi. (Naturally)
I beat Hyodo Michiru. (The hell?)
I beat Kasumigaoka Utaha. (Right….)
*Insert a lot of missing heart throbbing moments between the two here*
No, seriously. That’s literally HALF THE POINT of volume 6 which spans from last episode to this one. And they chose to cut those out, leaving Eriri to look like an arrogant tsundere. You know, Eriri as a character is actually a tsundere well made; she has both sides of tsun and dere on equal display. Unlike Utaha who can pretty much sink Tomoya’s manhood with her body and Megumi who’s just down to Earth and obviously a real wife material, Eriri has to give in twice as much effort to even gain tiny bit of Tomoya’s attention. This is another reason why this episode feels trashy, probably the worst one yet.
Anyway, back to the story. Eriri decides to apologize when she gets back to Tokyo. Though, the first person she has to apologize to is already next to her – very convenient!
Ah, bring back the memories of her promise again, will ya~
“I’m going to become your number one. I’m never going to apologize until then.”
At Winter Comiket, Eriri does as she says – apologizing to other members of the circle. No one seemed to fault her for the delay after seeing her final piece of work.
The last person she apologizes to is no other than her best friend Megumi, whom also let her off easy. Tomoya on the other hand, still not taking a little hint of how he f*cked with Megumi’s trusting heart in the last episode, dares to join in the conversation. Katou quickly shuts off the conversation while acting indifferently. This is not something Katou is known for; she’s not the type of person to not talk to anyone! Even if she doesn’t want to then she’ll clearly say it since it is obvious now that she’s low-key savage. It is at this point that I begin to have a bad feeling something’s going to go down…
And of course, seeing an unnatural sight of Katou even has them in wonder mode.
The camera work is also hinting something bad about Katou too, it has been showing a lot of her backs and rarely of her face.
Tomoya and Eriri head over to Rogue en Rogue’s booth/corner where Iori is still trying to act like a devil he is despite having helped Tomoya in great amount.
Then Eriri soon ditches to quickly admit defeat to Izumi….
Though, this part is actually important for Eriri fans. She accepts defeat so that she can move forward. She’s also admitting that she’s scared the hell of Izumi and her rate of growth (I’m not talking about her tits).
After all of that defeat talk (akin to Vegeta admitting that Goku is clearly better than he is back in Dragon Ball Z), Izumi pulls the victor’s troll move.
Tomoya, who is left alone with Iori, follows up on admitting defeat. That didn’t last long however when Iori lets him in on what’s up.
The winner of the circle battle is Blessing Software!
Some truth has also been revealed…
‘Ms. Enaka’ comes to snatch his copy of Cherry Blessing from him because she’s interested in it.
It all ends here
The circle is heading to a celebration party but Katou, who is well suited (literally, with a wheelie bag), fares well to Tomoya and says that she’s heading home. Baffled by her course of action, Tomoya tries to get an answer out of her while also trying not to annoy her. It seems like he knows partly as to why she’s not happy.
Finally, Katou Megumi has had enough.
Sighs – check
Devil’s face – check
Purposely ignoring Tomoya – check
Ah, yes. Bring back the scenes I mentioned in the last week’s review – how she REALLY CARES about the circle and its members. Do it!
Yep, dead set. She’s really mad at him for not trusting her.
Run! She’s f*cking mad son! No, wait. Catch her you dipshit!
Back at it again with what’s missing!
Am I seriously doing a review when I’m filling out the blanks? I think that I’m basically doing what Re:Zero fans have been doing for the entire twenty something episodes – making up for the show’s biggest flaw of an adaptation.
Back inside the car, Iori isn’t even going all out in anime.
Iori tells Tomoya that if he doesn’t tell his group about him going to visit Eriri who fell ill alone without telling his circle members, in about 3 days after the fact, some of his members may actually leave the group. Tomoya takes it as humorous insult when Iori was actually giving him sound advice. It’s because Tomoya has lately been treating his members like his little minions with almost no full disclosure/trust when it comes to big issues like this.
Tomoya’s reaction to Iori’s suggestion of ‘getting someone else to go in his stead’ is harsher than the anime makes out to be.
Tomoya flat out says that he can’t trust anyone to do it but himself because Utaha and Eriri hate each other (when in reality, these two have that creator’s chivalry/respect on one another). Eriri dislikes Michiru (remember being a childhood knockoff?) and he can’t ask Katou to do it because he feels he uses her around too much. This volume/episode was supposed to show that Tomoya has no real trust in his group and that he almost costs his group the entire game project just because he can’t trust others to help out when it counts the most.
Eriri may have admitted her ‘change’ but what about Tomoya?
Tomoya tells Iori that he can have faith in the new Eriri. This shows that Tomoya has somewhat improved in his trust issues when it comes to leaving his creators to do what they can without constant supervision.
For the last few episodes, Tomoya has been letting us know how much he respect Utaha so there’s that. Which ultimately leaves…
Katou Megumi, she at this time happens to be the person Tomoya trusts the least. Ironic, right? After all the natural moments we’ve seen between the two. She has every right to be angry at Tomoya for not trusting her even a tiny bit.
What we got instead is Katou raging out in the last few minutes. While that part is genuine, they could really have build her up from somewhere…
I get it, this episode is ‘Eriri’s episode’ but damn, the missing cute moments do me in especially because she’s a freaking tsundere!
Tomoya eventually gets sick for being fixated on getting Eriri back on her feet. It’s basically a reverse role which is actually cute when Eriri is the one ‘caring’ for him! ❤
Doesn’t matter whose episode it is, Katou steals the show at the end, every damn time.
Looking forward to the next episode
This is supposed to be a hype build up for what’s about to come in the next episode, really. But since this episode has actually been disappointing (even more so than the Fanservice Episode 0!), I hope that I can keep the hype on high, flat.
Episode 7 will coincidentally cover the seventh volume. For anyone who has been reading the light novel, this is actually a big news because before the anime adaptation came out, the first 6 volumes have had every other girls on the covers.
It wasn’t until the seventh volume when the main heroine Katou Megumi appeared in the front for the first time, ever.
In short – Shit is going down in the next episode (or two) with Katou Megumi, my friends!
Haha. I think that the comedy of this anime lies in the episode previews…
Stay tuned for the next post of ‘Looking Into’! ^_^’
Shokamoka's Blog of Wonders 
Is the light novel translated to english?
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Full translations are being quickly taken out by DCMA!
There’s an official translation by Yen Press for volume 5 which covers from episode 2 to 4 of the second season.
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Is that so? Never heard, that yenpress released 5th vol
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I hope you can actually find it! Because this is aaaages ago. If you can’t, there is a fan translation left over by NanoDesu~
That’s actually the biggest reason why fan translations got taken down.
On other note, Yen Press is actually focusing much more on translating the manga, volume 7 which covers volume 7 novel (duh) will be out in September!
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In the preview, i see the scene that Katou reads Tomoya’s mail. Isn’t it a little bit too rush? They don’t manage to bring her back in 2 episodes, do they?
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It definitely will be rushed but hopefully they will not cut out important moments like they did in Eriri’s volume 6. Remember that most of it falls under an episode director’s decision. Fumiaki himself is somewhat altering the story to make it look more anime exclusive rather than being a mere ‘adaptation’.
They managed to span Utaha’s volume 5 into episodes 2 to 4. Volume 6 is actually the second most important part of the entire story, right after volume 7. Though, it’s subjective because if you’re really following Saekano for pure romance then volume 12 serves as the most important one.
I guess this is how much they really (not) love Eriri, haha!
Let’s assume that they are not cutting important stuff out; episode 7 will almost completely sink Utaha’s ship. We’ll get to hear more about ‘Ms. Enaka’ (hint – read that name backwards).
TL;DR Episode 7 will be a breath taker after the drama we just got. I’m most excited for episode 8 where Katou will… ah, can’t say it!
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thank for your reply, i’m going to read your episode 7’s review
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