©河原和音／集英社・「太陽よりも眩しい星」製作委員会

When I was a teenager, we had a cat, Calliope, who hated car rides with a burning passion. In an attempt to help her overcome this, my sisters and I would tell her, “You love car rides, Calliope!” Needless to say, this constant bombarding of her with positive thoughts did not work, and she detested the car till the end. This is, I feel, what Sae is doing to herself for most of this episode: flooding her mind with messages about how she and Koki are “just friends” and that’s “totally fine” while convincing absolutely no one – least of all herself.

I can understand why she’d try, though. As far as she’s concerned, she’s had years to get over him and hasn’t managed to do it because she always allowed herself a little hope that maybe he’d like her back. And even though all of us can see that he does, Sae’s too close to the situation to see clearly (and also unaware that she’s the protagonist of a shoujo romance). He said he liked someone, and she can’t imagine that it would be her. After years of being put down – or at least feeling like she’s being put down – because of her height, her self-esteem is well and truly in the garbage. There’s no reason why he would return her feelings.

It certainly doesn’t help that there are tone-deaf twits like Izawa around, either. No matter how many times Koki smacks or kicks him, Izawa can’t seem to stop picking on Sae or throwing backhanded compliments at her. According to outdated “wisdom,” that probably means that he likes her and either hasn’t figured it out yet or is too immature to do anything besides be mean to her. That’s possible; shoujo romances aren’t always great at leaving hoary old tropes in the dustbin of history. But it really doesn’t matter, because Sae’s unlikely to ever feel romantically towards Izawa. His character exists more to show what she’s been dealing with for most of her life: people who speak without thinking, casually inflicting wounds upon her without knowing or caring. He’s annoying, but he serves a very real purpose in this story as the voice of Sae’s past social issues.

That’s what makes her girl friends so great. Sui may be pushing for Sae to keep trying to nab Koki as her boyfriend, but she’s only doing it because she cares. She wants Sae to be happy, and if Kagawa has to keep reminding her that it’s Sae’s decision, not hers, that’s not because she’s trying to force anything on Sae. In fact, Kagawa and Sui asking Sae if she wants to have some girl talk after school shows that they’ve been paying attention to their friend and want to help in any way they can. They really do have her best interests at heart, and I think Koki does, too. In fact, the only person who may consistently be looking the other way when it comes to Sae’s happiness is Sae herself.

All of this good emotional work makes it particularly sad that the visuals this week are not great. The jump rope scenes are so clearly taking shortcuts by mostly showing the action from the ankles down just feels kind of lame (not that groups jumping rope makes for scintillating action, but still), and if I see one more shot of Koki’s and Sae’s faces sliding past each other on a bubbly pastel background, I won’t answer for what I’ll do. The animation has never been great in this show, but this week is particularly egregious. However, it’s not enough to put me off the story – which more than made up for its visual issues by having one kid in class say what I, at least, was thinking: doesn’t this school have way too many random events?

**Rating: **

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