Science Fell in Love, So I Tried to Prove it

Episode 5

Episode 5 sees the introduction of the last prominently-placed character in the show's opening, Professor Ikeda. As the faculty leader of the lab that our five student scientists are all apart of, it's his job to make sure that they all graduate. While Yukimura, Himuro, and Ibarada are all in the early-ish part of the master's program, Inukai and Kanade are both in their final year of undergraduate and have a thesis they need to get done.

This setup allows us to see the two sides of Ikeda. Normally, he is all smiles—supportive and understanding. He's a flower child, lured into sleep by the warm sun on a spring day—well, until you piss him off, anyway. Then he takes on the shape of a roided-out rage monster thanks to his muscle training hobby. And that's the basic joke setup involving him: you never know what he's going to kindly relate to and what will make him hulk out.

The first half of the episode has our characters recap the events of the previous four episodes to Ikeda—forcing Yukimura and Himuro to report their most intimate thoughts and feelings to a room full of people. The cringe-factor not only slams them hard but the others in the room as well. But for us, it gives us a bit of humor and shows how our romantic pair views their blooming relationship in retrospect—even if they'd hesitate to call it one.

The back half of the episode is centered around a simple scientific procedural fact: good science means doing the same experiment again and again before reaching a conclusion. Back in episode one, they tried the “wall pound” move 100 times—which messed up their data as both parties became used to the stimuli. Now, they've decided to recreate their past experiments using all the possible different pairings of the six people in the lab.

It is here that Ibarada takes center stage. She realizes she can twist this to her own entertainment. As we saw a few episodes back, she's a big fan of yaoi and seeing Yukimura press Inukai up against a wall is the perfect material for her creative imagination.

Of course, Inukai, who she's been teasing/taking care of since childhood, doesn't enjoy being the butt of the joke and challenges her to a proximity battle where the two wear heart monitors and cuddle. Whoever keeps their heart rate the nearest to normal wins. As expected, Inukai has no chance with Ibarada first spiking his heart rate by repeating verbatim the love confession of his video game waifu and then doing so again by recounting his most embarrassing moments from childhood. It's funny enough (and an interesting peek into their shared history) but no more humorous than what we've come to expect of the series so far.

And that's the long and the short of this episode. Despite the introduction of a new character and focusing on our two least developed ones, nothing particularly stands out. It's not bad, just average. By this point, if you're enjoying the show, you'll probably be enjoying it till the end. If not, I suspect that, going forward, nothing will change your mind.

Though that doesn't mean it won't be funny as hell watching the pair try to have their first kiss next week.

Rating:

Random Thoughts

• There's an inordinate amount of beer around the conference room—bottles and cans on the back table with the entire top of the shelf behind the whiteboard lined with more. So, who's the alcoholic?

• The best joke of the episode is the cold opening with the schoolgirl pulling out every anime cliche in the book in the hopes of catching a man—including running with toast in her mouth.

• I was genuinely surprised that Ibarada has no fluctuations in her own heart rate. I thought the series implied she styled herself to look like Inukai's waifu. But maybe it's the opposite. Maybe Inukai likes his waifu on a subconscious level because she resembles Ibarada physically.

• Himuro is not only learning about love but jealousy as well, it seems.

• That shocked look on the faces of Yukimura and Himuro when it's suggested they kiss is priceless.

Science Fell in Love, So I Tried to Prove It is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Richard is an anime and video game journalist with over a decade of experience living and working in Japan. For more of his writings, check out his Twitter and blog.