Wow. So, episode 8 was pretty much perfect. It’s for episodes like this that I still watch anime. I was going to combine episodes 8 though 10 but I only watched 8 and it’s already gotten pretty long.

The script, visual choices and timing were amazing. My favorite example of this was Kato’s confession scene:

I love how she first offers him some takoyaki, he asks how the tuba is going, and she interrupts him to tell him this. It’s great. Such uncertainty, excitement, and fear. You can really tell that it’s her first love.

And then his response is in the same vein. Flustered, embarrassed, doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t even respond until she again pressures him to.

And then he has the longest pause, as he folds his hand and stares at the ground.

She waits. And waits. A single blink.

In my opinion that blink was the best part of the entire episode. Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

And then afterwards, she covers her tears and promises to support his crush on his childhood friend. Like a tuba player. *breaks down in tears again*

The relationship between Trombone and Euphonium was good too. I like how she realizes he’s interested in her and doesn’t know what to do. Talk about stuck in an awkward place. Yet somehow, completely by accident, she turns the whole thing around and manages to ask out her own crush while turning him down. Way to go!

The trip up the mountain was also beautiful.

And kind of hot.

Yeah, pretty damn hot.

I loved the mountain scenes as well. Unlike Kato’s, which is a puppy love for a boy who was nice to her a couple times, these two actually have a lot of chemistry. Which is unusual in anime, a medium where the justification for most romances boils down to “I love you because you’re you, you!”. But Kousaka has some interesting reasons with how Oumae is actually a terrible person behind a facade, which has some truth to it, although she’s definitely not as bad as Kousaka makes it sound. And of course Oumae has her own reasons for her attraction to Kousaka, and she’s been thinking about her and skirting shyly around her for years.

Also… yeah. This is so hot.

A couple other things I enjoyed about this episode: first, how it starts things off by establishing Gotoh’s secret love affair which wasn’t so secret. That was cute, and really set the mood for the rest of the episode.

Also, everything going on during the credits was superb. Definitely the best imouto ever.

And one final though:

Of course my waifu Asuka doesn’t have a boyfriend.