Another episode ofUzaki-Chan Wants to Hang out!starts with a walk during the holiday season. Uzaki walks with Ito, discussing Christmas plans. Ito’s boyfriend is taking her out for dinner with a reservation, whereas Uzaki and Sakurai don’t have anything planned. Uzaki is sure her senpai will do something. Why’s she so sure? That’s because they’re already a couple, even if they don’t realize it.
Thereafter, Uzaki prepares a meal at Sakurai’s home. She catches Sakurai staring daggers at her as she prepares the food and starts really feeling herself, feeling confident that she can read him like a book, and she assumes hemust want to spend Christmaswith her. Then, she thinks about how his being serious about her would actually look, and she gets a little nervous. It’s funny to see the fifty shades of Sakurai that she imagines. Sakurai interrupts Uzakias her internal devilsand angels battle over her own feelings, and he asks her to take her top off. No one will remain seated for the misunderstanding and hijinks that are about to ensue.
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One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
Uzaki hesitatingly removes her jacket, nervous, but secretly conflicted. With Uzaki’s jacket off and her heart pounding, Sakurai reaches around the back of her neck and checks the tag on her shirt. Don’t get it twisted, he’s not making a move, he’s just pointing out that she’s wearing his shirt. She attacks his raised palmswith a flurry of tiny punchesas he remains confused about her angry response. Sakurai’s inability to read a room is as strong as ever.
Uzaki mentions she’ll wash them all and bring them over the next day. They’re comfy, but since they don’t smell like him anymore she’s fine letting them go. WAIT, HOLD UP! That’s right, Sakurai catches that little off-hand comment just as the viewers must have. He asks if she’s been smelling them, calls it mortifying, and tells her to stop. Okay, everyone knows that Sakurai is the classic oblivious meathead, butthis is unprecedented levels of airheadedness. On the flip side, Uzaki still insists that Sakurai is the only one with feelings, but her feelings are clearer than ever before.
Sakurai apologizes after seeing Uzaki turn around with blushed cheeks and teary eyes. The next day, Uzakireturns for her revenge. He begs her for mercy and asks to know what he did wrong, but she refuses to let him know, calls him a perv, and tells him to take his lumps.
His “lumps” will come in theform of watching horror filmssince Sakurai is so deathly afraid of horror. Instead of scaring Sakurai, the film scares Uzaki, and she admits she’s never watched a horror film. Even though it’s scary, Sakurai enjoys the story, and seeing Uzaki scared at the film makes him calmer. The film continues scaring her more and more, enough to force her to hide under Sakurai’s shirt in fear.
Well, That Backfired
After the film, Sakurai offers to walk Uzaki home to the train station, but she’s too scared to go home alone. She asks to spend the night and go home in the morning. She wins him over by agreeing to make a bento box and breakfast in the morning. Sakurai pulls out a futon and Uzaki teases him about getting a futon for a guest knowing that she’s pretty much the only one who’d use it.He rebuffs her teasingand tells her to hit the showers.
As Uzaki showers, Sakurai thinks about how it’s not good that it’s becoming commonplace for her to spend the night. He hasn’t worked through his feelings yet. What feelings one may ask? Everyone knows, but they’re just waiting for him to catch up.
Sakurai checks Uzaki’s bag to verify there’s no food that needs to go in the fridge. He stumbles across her bra, and she’s able to hear him almost have a heart attack from the next room. He apologizes for going through her things, meanwhile thinking to himself about the generous size of her bra. She brushes it off and mentions that she’ll just hide it somewhere he can’t find it next time.
He notices her wearing his clothes and starts to question her about it. She mentions that she only had underthings, so she got a shirt and shorts from his dresser. Only, those aren’t shorts. Those are boxers and Sakurai mentions as much, a little flustered at the idea of a girl wearing his underwear. Uzaki apologizes and goes off to wash the underwear before Sakurai gets a call from a mystery caller. At leastit’s a mystery to the viewers. It turns out, it’s his father, who praises him for having a girl over and says he won’t tell Sakurai’s mother, but just not to go too far.
The Prodigal Son Returns
Sometime later, Asai, Sakaki, and Uzaki go out to drink. They expected Sakurai to come as well, but he went home after avoiding it for a couple of years. Back at home, Sakurai’s mother comments about him not visiting. Henotices a baby in her armsand asks if she’s babysitting. Nope, Sakurai meets his baby sister for the first time. Sakurai’s mother thought his father told him, but his father just mentioned that since college kids are busy, it’s alright for Sakurai not to go out of his way to visit home.
Sakurai’s father, Shiro, pops up and Sakurai glares at him. There’s clearly some baggage there. At the bar, Uzaki wonders why Sakurai doesn’t live at home with his parents, since they live within commuting distance from his college. Back at Sakurai’s family home, he answers that question for the viewers. His parents forced him to live alone as a kind of learning experience.
Sakurai’s father comments that it was also so he and Sakurai’s mother could get back to “grown folk business”. Not cool, Shiro, not cool. In a flashback, viewers see that Sakurai’s father lied to Sakurai’s mother about him not coming home for the holidays. Shiro just wanted even more time alone with her.
Shiro admits that he had to get Sakurai to visit after his mother wondered why Sakurai wasn’t coming to see the baby. When Sakurai tries to leave, his parents convince him to stay, and he gets to hold Nodoka,his little sister by 21 years. Uzaki, now in a slightly drunken stupor, berates Sakurai, in his absence, for jumping to his own conclusions and never sharing important details with her. Like the viewers, she isn’t happy with how slow things are going.
All in all, one of the best episodesUzaki-Chan Wants to Hang Out!has graced viewers with in a while. It was starting to get pretty stale there for a while, with the Uzaki family becoming the main focus for several episodes and the relationship between the two leads staying relatively stagnant or just retreading old territory. While Uzaki has been nervous about her feelings for Sakurai before, this was a big step in her being more open to acting on those feelings with him and considering pursuing him herself. But let’s be honest,the suggestive humor helped.
