Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out! Season 2

Episode 13

You bastards were so close. On the one hand, I'm happy that the series ended with some genuinely lovely reflection and development, but on the other hand, I could see the writers on the other side of the screen getting cold feet at the very last minute. It is infuriating to have a romance series with little to no development. Still, it is downright criminal when a show teases or does an excellent job introducing dramatic conflicts and progression, only to back the hell out to maintain some lame status quo. Oh, and if you read ahead in the manga and know what's supposed to happen immediately after this finale, this feels like an extra strong kick in the teeth.

So we finally got a payoff to the teaser from the beginning of the season. Of course, it was the standard misunderstanding with Sakurai collapsing on top of Uzaki in a way that made it seem like something intimate was going to happen. I like that they kept it a little vague regarding what he would've done if he didn't pass out. But the fact that Uzaki's dad was just outside the apartment meant that no matter what happened, there wouldn't be any actual progression. The real meat of this episode is from Sakurai's perspective as he straight up admits that he remembers everything that happened the night before, including the realization that Uzaki is in love with him, and it is torturing him inside. He wants nothing more than to pretend it didn't happen because he doesn't want to be direct and confront anything that everybody calls him out on. The funniest part of this episode is when he tells his best friend what he discovered, only for said best friend to turn around and yell at him the way I'm sure every viewer of the show has wanted to yell at Sakurai up until this point.

It was a little bit frustrating that we had so many nice scenes in the last episode regarding Sakurai saying how he wants to do right by Uzaki and that he's going to think really hard about everything, only for him to just kind of dance around everything like he really wants to maintain the status quo. I understand his logic that it's not fair for him to have found out how he did because he has to now consider their relationship with information that Uzaki doesn't. It is a nice juxtaposition compared to how Uzaki has been thinking throughout most of the season when she kept convincing herself that Sakurai was in love with her this whole time, but that's just it; these are all well-written conversations. Still, they are happening 5 to 10 minutes before the final episode finishes.

It is so satisfying when Sakurai monologues about how deep down he's known all along, and he's just been running away from the obvious answer about his feelings towards Uzaki. He loves and cares about her. I know it's not that simple to confess to somebody, but narratively it only satisfies the bare minimum of fulfillment as a viewer. Considering the way this episode ends, it does make me think back to how this whole season has been paced and makes me believe that if we just cut out half an episode of the padding that was obviously placed here, then they definitely could've fleshed this out for more than one episode. This is especially difficult when you consider that we're probably not going to get a season three announcement for a while. Overall, Uzaki-chan Season Two had some of the highest highs of the season, but they ended up being bogged down with fluff that tested my patience instead of making that patience feel rewarded.

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Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out! Season 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.