Kengo is the person Riki has to beat.
Compared to the last episode which had a lot of funny moments with Masato getting glued to a statue, I felt that this episode was very emotional for the fact that Kengo still remembers what happened in the loop. This realization really shocked me since he still can recall the moments where Kyousuke manipulated the baseball match in his favor while Riki and Rin did’t remember anything. He apparently wants them to lose at a baseball match because he doesn’t want them to experience a bad fate. To his surprise, a different outcome occurred.
In the baseball match, both Riki and Rin manage to surprise me and proved they aren’t weak. They beat Kengo by hitting a home run and even striking him out in the second round after several tries. While their victory is a good thing, it also shows that Riki and even Rin have grown up quite a lot. He is determined to set things right for the sake of his friends and persevere no matter how bad the situation is. From this match, I think Kengo finally realizes that not only Riki and Rin is strong enough, but he shouldn’t be afraid of losing and just go for it since one can still learn a valuable lesson from not winning.
As a whole, while there are some important details such as Lawrence, whom played a big part in the drama, which got omitted in this episode, I felt that this was the most emotionally powerful episode thus far. Even so, the secret already leaked out as it got revealed in a conversation between Kyousuke and Kengo. From this, I wonder what will happen after Riki recruits all the girls and how they will react? Also, what is the dark secret of the real world? With three episodes remaining, we will finally know in a few more weeks.
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Everything seems to imply that next week we’ll get more of the secret. I wonder if that’s true…
Considering that most of the important details are revealed and that three episodes remain, I think they will reveal it next time or the week after so we can finally see the happy ending, possibly with Riki and Rin together. :p
The ‘Lawrence’ scene that people have mentioned didn’t play a big part at all. It was just how Riki originally proved that Kengo had been faking his injury. He had Masato standing at the end of the hallway holding a giant piece of card to seem like a wall and there was a toy baby in front of it. Kengo comes along and Rin yells ‘The wall’s moving! LAWRENCE!!’ and Masato pushes the wall forward to make it seem like it’s closing in on the baby. Kengo rushes forward to grab the baby but gets caught by the wall so has to hold it off with his injured arm. When he successfully holds it back and returns the toy baby to Rin, Riki steps out and tells him that there’s no way he has an injured arm.
While it’s not that important for the fact the show left it out and have Kengo pick up an eraser with his right arm, at the same time, it looses some of the comedy when the others find out that he is faking it.
It just shows that I need to complete the visual novel someday.