Ore wo Suki nano wa Omae dake ka yo’s 4th episode was a buffet of emotions. We witnessed Kisaragi once more with Pansy realizing that he’s avoiding something by coming to the library daily. Even though his name has been cleared, Kisaragi still hasn’t reconciled with his friends and has been avoiding them as much as possible. Pansy pushes Kisaragi to apologize and rekindle his past friendships and thus the episode begins truly. Throughout the entire 4th episode we see Kisaragi deal with each friend--Hinata, Sun and Cosmos--trying to befriend them and after various issues with each--Cosmos by far the funniest--Kisaragi is once more friends with all of his pals. Sun even apologizes to Pansy knowing his actions were wrong and got her involved in this whole mess. Our episode ends with a shady background character ready to release what looks like a newspaper article that could endanger our main character in a new problem! Despite this though, Ore wo Suki nano wa Omae dake ka yo truly was the perfect way to reunite our characters and even introduce a few new ones in the process. We are excited to see where the series goes from here with this new looming threat and how our main man will deal with it accordingly.

In yet another brief episode, Null finally gets tricked into going to school via jetpack, but she manages to maneuver it on her own, going on a trip through town instead. When the jetpack goes out of control, she finds herself stranded in space. Peta flies out to give her a couple of important school items, but things begin to get dire when Peta’s battery runs out, leaving both Null and Peta floating in empty space!

Despite this being a short comedy series, Null & Peta has more substance than I would have ever thought! Null’s interactions with Peta are sweet and funny. Yet there are plenty of times we see a glimpse of the underlying tension of the world, or witness some of the trauma Null goes through. Sure, she is incredibly smart, but we saw in Episode 3 how her intelligence makes her feel alienated and has caused her anxiety around going to school. With this episode ending the way it has, I’m a bit nervous for what is to come for Null. I’m sure that she will find some way out of this situation, but being truly alone in the vastness of space would certainly be a challenge. And it seems like this empty loneliness is simply a metaphor for the feelings Null has been holding in her heart all along..

With the addition of Hanako, Carmilla, and countless more animals to the house, Shigure is running herself ragged trying to make enough money to keep everyone fed. Meanwhile, Genzo is completely oblivious, showering love and expensive food upon all of his beloved pets. But when the banker comes to collect the down payment for their loan and they can’t give him anything, Genzo realizes that it’s time to get serious. Shigure delivers drinks to adventurers in increasingly far away locales, Hanako eats so much at an eating contest that the restaurant starts charging her for the food, Carmilla accepts money from strangers asking for a “roll in the hay” with her and runs off, and Genzo gets distracted from his manual labor job by playing with animals instead. Now they have even less money than when they started!

Desperate, the group accepts a dangerous quest to take down some griffons nearby. Carmilla attempts to fight the monsters and Genzo just wants to be friends, but both strategies fail so badly that the griffons beat them unconscious. In the end, all they could do was save an abandoned baby griffon and hightail it back home. Shigure did find a solid way of making money, though – pawning off all of those legendary weapons that keep falling into her lap after Genzo suplexes his naysayers!

After training hard in preparation for their upcoming game, the Kuzuryu boys finally begin their practice match against Shinmaruko. With some trickery, Sora and Momoharu are able to get the team off to a fast start as they finish up the first quarter up 12 to 9. Despite the members of Shinmaruko trying to turn the game around, Momoharu shows off his defensive prowess by blocking back to back shots. Watching as Sora scores another basket, Tokiwa and Chiba discuss how they are going to stop him. Chiba suggests they should put a second defender on Sora, but Tokiwa declines stating he has found Sora's weakness and vows to not let him score another basket the rest of the game.

This was such a fantastic moment. We've waited for weeks to finally get to see Sora get to play in his first game and it was not disappointing. The whole match is made better by knowing everything Sora has had to go through to get to this moment. Seeing how excited Sora is about playing in his first game just puts a smile on your face. As far as the game itself, it gives you everything you want out of an anime sports match with some exciting plays and some light-hearted comedic moments. It will be interesting to see what Tokiwa has planned and how Sora and the rest of the team react if things aren't going their way.