Play It Cool, Guys – episodes 18 & 19

Posted on by Irina

I had a bit of a busy weekend last week and just didn’t get around to my Play it Cool, Guys post. I do feel a little bad about it.

Rest assured, I haven’t dropped the show or reviewed it, no matter how little I have to say about it. Since the show airs so early in the week, I figured the easiest thing would just be to combine two episodes and maybe get just about enough material for a short post. Here we go!

They have been dancing around Mima and Motoharu for a while. Mima is so absent-minded and impassive that it’s genuinely difficult to tell if he remembers Motoharu from when they were kids or not. Knowing Mima, I’m sure there’s a way where he could both remember him and not at the same time. In any case, we got some clarity in this episode.

I think we have been told in the past that Mima is good at his job. Despite everything else, he is a top-notch marketing exec and that’s why he gets to work on prestigious accounts such as Motoharu’s book adaptation. It is nice that the show doesn’t reduce the characters entirely to their goofy flaws. They can be clumsy dorks but that doesn’t take away from the fact that most of them are quite successful. Ok, maybe Shun has a way to go but the rest are doing great.

So now, Mima gets to meet his old friend Motoharu and just like when they were kids, he inspires him without even trying. Although this time around, it’s thanks to the new friendships that he’s forged. Isn’t that cute? When you write it out it really seems like the most saccharine sap you can imagine. And I am definitely all for saccharine sap. But honestly, when you actually watch this show, it somehow just plays out organically. Like a random Tuesday that could happen to anyone.

By the way, the book that is being adapted has to do with a diary and the add campaign Mima came up with is to have a giant board put up in a busy crosswalk with sticky notes and pens so that people could just write little messages and secrets as if bits of a diary were getting collected.

Because this is happening in Japan, it is somewhat believable that the board would not get instantly covered in lewd graffiti. I thought it was actually kind of a neat idea. It brings to mind Tanabata which I am a sucker for.

Despite being a Slice of Life (in fact I would call Play It Cool, Guys a quintessential Slice of Life), there was actually some follow-through, even plot progression between episodes 18 and 19. The movie which Mima was advertising in the last episode has now been released and the other 3 guys are going to go see it.

It was Hayate’s idea because he really liked the book. And there was a surprising amount of character development this week. Hayate is slowly coming out of his shell and you can see how desperate he is to find some point of commonality with the others. Hayate feels quite isolated and suddenly having all these new friends is exciting but also a little unsettling. Common ground would make things easier. In the meantime, Souma is slowly figuring out what he wants to do, at least for now. He’s rediscovering his passion for design and it was actually a little inspiring to watch. I get easily swayed by passion, and now I want to design! As for Shun…well he still has a ways to go.

Eventually, the guys catch up with Motoharu and there’s a cute moment when they all realize who he is. Hayate as a mega fan is surprisingly adorable. My favourite though remains Mima. His last line of the episode made me chuckle out loud and put me in a good mood for the rest of the day. This is saying something since I watched the episode at 5:30 a.m. on a Tuesday…

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