A trophy for not showing up. That’s a new one.
Impressions:
Even if I was on board with this stupid drama club arc, which I’m not, or if they had done any of the background work for why a supposed masterful actress jumping in to a… 5 minute high school play… would be a challenge, which they haven’t, this was dumb. But I guess also makes it kind of funny when he, with zero acting whatever has to step in and play the other part and does it likewise just as well. Good thing they figured out a way to involve Mashiro in some way… before she once again evaporated out of the show. Really using the top billing in the OP to good use.
And then the ending montage then has the drama club getting an entire goddamned trophy for… uh… great drama? Ya’ll didn’t even show up, literally. Two randos took over everything, again, literally. You… what? Made some props? Turned on the stage lights? But we need to show that the play was a success despite half of them not even being present for it, so here’s your trophy. Isn’t the point of art to do the art? Are you really a performer if you don’t perform? Here’s your trophy for getting someone else to do it.
I was hoping at least for something at the level of Sister is All You Need without the nonstop boardgame advertisements. Which is to say I at least enjoyed the teasing and back and forth at the start. It’s always nice to have more assertive and witty characters in a medium that is suffocated in insecurity and overreactions. Alas, Mashiro was always an abysmal character, nobody developed or evolved, and the shift at the middle into the drama arc was terrible and it stayed in that terrible holding pattern without any progress or good character beats to the very end.
