©河原和音／集英社・「太陽よりも眩しい星」製作委員会

If the course of true love did run smooth, we wouldn’t have romance stories. That’s because without rocks and bumps for the potential lovers to trip over, there wouldn’t be a story. While some series can pull it off – Toriko Chiya’s Tokyo Alice does a decent job, as does You and I Are Polar Opposites – most romance narratives need roadblocks on the route to love to move the story along. Otherwise the trip from point A to point B is less than an episode long.

But that doesn’t mean that it’s easy to reconcile with them. A Star Brighter Than the Sun, while an enjoyable story, does by this point feel like it might be chucking rocks at Sae and Koki with mad abandon. We’ve got two rivals, one obnoxious classmate, multiple students who don’t think it’s weird to be shipping first cousins, and a giant misunderstanding. Any one of those things would have been enough. All of them just feels a bit excessive, even if you aren’t personally bothered by the cousin thing. And for me, that boils down to Sae and Koki’s own insecurities carrying enough weight to do the job. These are two people who have so much trouble seeing the good in themselves that they can’t imagine that anyone else would spot it, either. Sae makes a big deal of Koki having “gotten popular” in middle school, but I think she overestimates how much of an impression that would have made on him. Just like she’s still aware of the elementary school girl inside of her, he’s equally cognizant of his younger self. “Popular” doesn’t mean anything when you come right down to it, especially if it’s not helping to bring you closer to the one person you want to be around.

While I don’t think that Subaru is an actual rival for Koki’s affections – that look she gives Sae notwithstanding – Ayukawa absolutely is a rival for Sae’s. He’s significant not just because in a different iteration of the shoujo romance he’d be the lead, but because Koki’s inability to speak his truth to him is what really compounds the issue. I’m not sure that Ayukawa would have backed off if Koki had said that he also likes Sae, but the fact that the most Koki seems to be able to do is glare balefully or snap like an irritable chihuahua does nothing to turn Ayukawa away. It’s not even a question of Ayukawa not realizing that Koki also likes Sae, because his reaction to why Koki thinks Sae likes milk feels very telling. When he calls the story “cute,” he’s really saying that it’s adorable how inept Koki is at this whole liking a girl thing. Actually hearing the story does nothing to dissuade him from pursuing the object of his affections.

It feels like a foregone conclusion that Ayukawa is the one who found Sae at the end of the episode, though I’d love to be wrong. But even if he confesses there and then, I doubt Sae would accept a substitute. Even if she were to try to get over Koki, she doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who would date someone on the rebound. She’d need time to mourn. And while it would be cruel to force Ayukawa to be the one to tell her that her flight from Koki was precipitous, he may be the only person who can do it…assuming it really is him outside the door, of course.

Oh, that old course of true love. Maybe just once you could run a bit smooth? Just to close this series out?

**Rating: **

• A Star Brighter Than the Sun is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. *