Love Lab ep7: the Misadventures of Rentarou Kurahashi!

With the pressure quickly mounting for what I guess we can finally officially call the Love Lab, Natsuo seems to be getting more and more crazy as the show goes on. Then again, she’s also getting more and more funny, too. This though doesn’t help with the requests for love advice piling up, and some nosy Newspaper club members on their tail.

Regardless of the hassle and the intimidation factor of their combined tasks, the love research continues.  And by love research, I mean Natsuo acts like a complete moron!  It’s all fun and good, but no actual progress is actually being made.  Riko decides to have Natsuo come over and get some real life practice in with her little brother.  A little brother who could not care less about what girls are doing on a Sunday afternoon.

Though once the day roles around, the little punk seems to be taken back that some rude sweaty girl isn’t at the door when he opens it.  I dare say that with her arrival, he’s reached puberty.  Though things don’t get any better for him I’m afraid.  The next time he answers he meets the rest of the gang, and bad impressions are immediately exchanged.  I have to say, Sayori is even better at putting people down they on thought!  And yes, it is a compliment.  Rentarou is forced (why am I remembering his name now?) apologize to everyone, and I think he made a nice impression on Yuiko.

While Riko entertains everyone upstairs simultaneously giving them a tour while trying to hide her signs of unpopularity with the opposite sex, Rentarou is busy down stairs being a standard little brother.  His mother notices him drinking straight from the jug of juice that Riko had purchased for her friends, and she sends him straight to the store to replace it and pick up some snacks.  While picking up the items, his daydreaming about Natsuo causes him to miss out on a lottery drawing.  It’s ironic, because it was something that Suzune had said she wanted to happen to him in response to him picking on her tiny size.  When he returns and runs into her in the kitchen, he tells her about it.  But then he also ends up insulting her again, and her rebuttal this time is that he’ll be bald in twenty years.  That’s actually pretty mean!  Still, even as his mother beats his head in for being a rude, thoughtless jerk again, Suzune seems to see something good in him.

The day ends with Ren’s crush clearly exposed to his older sister, and his heart crushed when she tells him that Natsuo feels like a mother around kids his age.

PROFOUND SADNESS!

Their bitter sibling rivalry does yield some actual plot progress though.  The next week he exposes Riko’s sh*tty grades to her mother, causing the tomboy to be sent to cram school.  A cram school where we can expect her to meet a certain someone…

But don’t get your hopes up, when they meet the atmosphere turns to sh*t as usual…

End of episode.

Natsuo is just dynamite in this episode, even though Rentarou was featured prominently.  I would say she was an idiot savant, but she’s far from an idiot… intellectually anyway.  Just about every good joke or laugh out loud moment in this show involved her in some way.  She’s adorable, she’s charming and she’s just hilarious; she’s becoming a candidate for one of my favorite characters of the year.

As for the actual star of the episode, Riko’s little brother Rentarou, he’s proving to be a pretty good side character.  Though he’s a selfish, smart-mouthed, quick tempered little sawed-off brat, he’s not annoying and does show good qualities.  He’s already attractive to girls at his young age, he seems to know how to talk to women once he calms down for a moment and his new crush shows that he’s moving out of one immature stage… into another immature stage.  Though it’s one where he pays more attention to females.  It’s just too bad that he picked Natsuo of all people to be his crush.  She’s the kind of personality that would hardly notice him.  And I’m not trying to say it’s out of malice, it’s just that she has a very preoccupied mind.  He’d hardly register on her radar.

This episode was so entertaining that I hardly noticed that no progress had been made in regards to the Love Lab’s problems.  Perhaps Riko’s change of scenery will help move things along.  At the very least, she should make some progress with that guy she’s always arguing with.  I have a feeling that things are going to move forward quickly now.  This predicament may even lead all they up to the end of the show.  After all, there are a host of issues that have been brought up now, and just as many obstacles in the way.  And while they’re navigate this mind field this mine filed or ridiculous problems and obstacles, I just hope they don’t forget to do what this episode did and just be funny.

Further Reading:

• Episode 6