The Pendulum Swung Back: A Brief Check-in on Fake Fact Lips Episode 8 (Spoiler Alert)
I really liked the episode. I think it's a massive improvement from the last episode, because the competition plot line has been almost eliminated in this episode.
I greatly appreciate the fact that Futami, the "new bombshell" of Fake Fact Lips, is written away from trying to compete against Shido, so that he can compete against Yotsuya...[?], and that he's now more like the character Rokkaku Yuta, from Cherry Magic, as in Futami is now the overly clingy annoying fan of Shido. The reason of this change of heart was not that well explained... Futami found out that the reason why he wanted to be Yotsuya's competitor was because he once was consoled by him and it turns out the words that Yotsuya said were Shido's. Setting aside the confusion of why you would compete against someone who built you up, setting aside the confusion of why when that, seemingly, gratitude feeling was transferred from Yotsuya to Shido, it didn't manifest into a competition but into some weird clingy fan behaviors, imo <side note> maybe Futami becomes a fan instead of competitor to Shido because Shido talked something about being on the same level in order to compete against someone? </side note>, regardless, I'm just so happy NOT to see this weird competition.
However, the reason of why I liked the episode was because how good they have written Yotsuya in the series. In this episode, he begged, <context> while he was standing on a lower stair steps btw </context> for Futami to just compete against him, and not Shido. When he got that nightmare about Shido being bored of him and walking off (lol) with Futami, after he woke up, he didn't cage himself with fear, he picked up his phone and called Shido who was on a business trip with Futami. When Yotsuya saw Shido and Futami on a street as he was in a taxi going home, he didn't just keep it to himself, he stopped the taxi, and ran to Shido and asked him to stay over. These actions are (mostly) consistent with how the character is portrayed over the episodes, that Yotsuya has been the pacifist one, making him easier to be the bigger person in a relationship, that he has been in competition just for Shido, showing how far he would do a lot of things for Shido, and the most important of them all, when he finally let down his walls to simply confess to Shido. Props to the writer for not using the overly used trope of paranoid bf, props to them for not breaking up the couple in the pen-finale episode.
There's going to only be one more episode of the show, I really hope that in the finale, we can at least know more about Shido, and what's happening behind his need of always to compete, beside his older stellar brother, and how he can set aside this insecurity so that he can settle down with his boyfriend, Yotsuya.
I think the finale will be about how Shido sees himself hierarchically against Yotsuya, something about Shido not seeing himself on the same level with him. idk, I'm just glad not to see a competition of who can work for a company for free the longest lol
here's to hoping for a great finale
