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Impressions:

Well, the story is progressing quite well and it’s all very interesting, but the characters were drawn horribly. Satou and Yamazaki didn’t have nose for a lot of the time and at one point looked like old men. There was one part where they were drawn intentionally distorted, which was quite funny. The designers also cannot draw girls very well, I think. The flashbacks Satou had of Misaki were of good quality, but that’s because those scenes were taken from the past episodes. The Misaki done in this episode, when she was staring out the window, looked crap! Right now, the interesting plot is what’s keeping me watching, so if that goes down as well… Anyway, it looks like Satou is going to accept Misaki’s help next episode. I wonder how his encounter will go with Kashiwa-senpai. A quick talk before parting? A drink and a quick talk before parting? Or maybe she gets involved with Satou’s hikikomorii recovery. Nah, I’m not too big on that idea; don’t think she’s gonna find out until later. Whatever the case, I hope Satou gets decent time to catch up with his high school senpai and possibly only friend.

Brief Summary:

Satou is trying to come up with characters for the galge he is creating with Yamazaki, but his ideas are stupid and he gives up on all of them. He goes to Yamazaki’s place and starts marvelling at the talent that galge creators have for creating characters. He says that he doesn’t know anything about girls so he’d be hopeless at creating characters. Yamazaki, however, tells him that he’s clinging onto a common misconception, that to create such characters one must no them in real life. He explains that people play galge to escape from real life. The girls in galge – cute, obedient and passionately in love with the player – don’t exist in real life (this is probably not true though). Therefore, Satou doesn’t need an understanding of real girls to be able to create good characters. Yamazaki continues by giving him three themes that many galge characters follow: childhood friends, maids and cyborgs. After jotting all this information down, Satou’s thoughts wander to Misaki, who appears to match the generic galge girl, and he starts to believe that she might like him.

Before going to bed, Misaki crosses out the days on her calendar, counting down to the day when Satou had promised to show her his game. There are only 10 days left… She opens the windows and sits on the ledge, peering outside while encircled by a gentle breeze. She seems happy … probably because she wants to meet with Satou again.

In his own room now, Satou plays a few galge in hope that one might inspire him to create a character. His thoughts drift again, but this time to his high school senpai, Kashiwa.

Satou and Kashiwa-senpai are playing cards. Kashiwa-senpai stands up and approaches the window. As she is staring outside, she asks Satou if he really thinks that things are alright as they are. He mistakes the topic for cards, but in fact Kashiwa-senpai is talking about the people on the other side of the ocean … the atoms that block sunlight … the composition of mould in food … viridian disappearing from the map. Satou throws his head back, saying “Not that story again…” Kashiwa-senpai ignores this and adds one more item to the list – them (as in Satou and herself). She tells him that in this world, conspiracies really do exist.

Satou thinks that if what happened in his flashback was a game, he’d be able to replay those moments over and over again.

Two days later, Satou still hasn’t come up with anything. Yamazaki is scolding him for not being able to, even though he already gave him some hints. Satou argues that it’s easy to have a model to construct the character from, but he doesn’t have one to help him. Because of this, Yamazaki decides to take Satou out and show him some ‘models’. Of course, being a hikikomori, Satou refuses to leave the house in the middle of the day. The other day when he had gone to the school to take pictures of girls didn’t count as he was sightly disturbed in the head. Yamazaki threatens to call the police and report him for stealing food. Although this doesn’t convince him, a headlock and a few extra words do. Shortly after, Yamazaki and Satou leave the apartment block and head into the city.

When they arrive at the ’sacred land of galge’, Satou is amazed at the number of galge fans there, as well as the various shops. Yamazaki leads him into a café, but this café is no ordinary coffee shop. It’s a maid café, where people get to experience the life of having maids around the house. When the two enter, they are greeted by a group of maids working there. Yamazaki is in delight when he sees them (he probably comes here quite often) and Satou is just plain astounded at the number of cute girls.

After having a drink, Satou and Yamazaki visit the various adult shops in the area. Satou is shocked at the content the shops have. He gets sucked into it so much that he even pretends to tie his shoelace just to take a peek at a figurine’s panties. He ends up buying it after some persuasion from Yamazaki. He also buys a few other things with Yamazaki, before taking a break at another café and discussing the game. Yamazaki tells Satou that currently, most galge games are very similar due to gamers’ demands. He reasons that creating something that someone else already has won’t make them reach the top in the industry. What they have to do is use the basis of these galge to attract customers, but radically change other aspects of it. Suddenly, Satou comes up with the perfect character: a girl who is a childhood friend of the protagonist and in the same class, lives next door and is a maid, robot, were lovers with the protagonist from a previous life, feeble, dependent on the protagonist, sustains severe injuries to save him, is actually an apparition, alien and also the reincarnation of a fox from the future! Astonishingly, Yamazaki thinks the idea is perfect and draws a rough sketch of the girl. However, the drawing is absolutely terrible and Satou tears it up, before kicking the table over, knocking Yamazaki of his chair, making a ruckus and getting kicked out of the café.

In a smoking room elsewhere, when things have calmed down, Yamazaki tells Satou that he was only drawing the character by his descriptions. Satou replies saying that he was actually waiting for Yamazaki to tell him that his idea was stupid. However, it was him that kicked the table and got them thrown out of the café. Yamazaki then realises he had forgotten something at the café and runs back to retrieve it. As Satou rummages through his pockets to look for a lighter, he finds the contract that Misaki had given him, and starts to think about the idea of her helping him. Pondering about this, he does not notice someone stop outside the window until she taps the window. When he takes a look at her, he realises that she is none other than Kashiwa-senpai.

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