Captivated By You Episode 2 Review - The Bookworm And The Artist
This story is mainly about people being captivated by someone. In the first half of the story, the captivating person is Hayashi who collects people who become captivated by him. In the previous episode, it was Ema and this episode, Hayashi collects two more people for his bisexual harem that even he doesn’t know he has.
The first half of the episode revolves around bookworm Megumi Matsuya who loves reading books and shares what she reads on social media, but she doesn’t really have friends, let alone someone to talk about books with. That’s until a mysterious person comments on her post, saying that he also enjoys the book she had read. It turns out to be Hayashi who’s Twitter page is full of phrases and words complied by letters he finds on signs and takes a picture of. The two form a weird friendship where they don’t stare at each other as they sit on the benches next to each other and have a very awkward conversation about why Matsuya’s username is “Three Potato Brothers” and other trivial stuff. While Matsuya is desperate for a friend, she misunderstands Hayashi’s words when she asks to be friends, but realized that they were from the book they both read. Fortunately, the two become friends afterwards.
This might be a surprise, but Matsuya is actually my favorite character in this story! Sure, she only appears for this part of the story, but there’s something captivating about her. Heck, all the characters in this story are captivating, but she stands out to me. Maybe it’s because she’s the first one who doesn’t see Hayashi as odd but as a kindred spirit of sorts. They are quite similar in that both prefer to be alone, but Matsuya sees it as a detriment while Hayashi likes his solitary lifestyle. Still, both are still able to become friends.
To be honest, I love how Doga Kobo animated the first half of the story, with the little storybook-esque illustrations of the novel Matsuya was reading. I really love that inclusion as it helps expand the story and show off the parallelisms between Yuriko and the robot with Matsuya and Hayashi. Matusya is voiced by Yume Miyamoto who I know as Rouge Redstar from Metallic Rouge, which is an anime I hated, but the voice acting was great. Miyamoto was great as Matsuya and I especially liked how her voice sounded when she was reading the excerpts from the book. She has a voice perfect for audiobooks—though, I don’t know how Japanese audiobooks sound like…
The second half of the story revolves around a third-year middle school student named Yutaka Komatsu who is trying to find a model for a painting he wants to do for a local competition and seems to be captivated by Hayashi who he sketches as Hayashi dries sweet potatoes on the back of a canvas. Realizing the canvas belonged to him, he decided to confront him and requests that he’d be his model in exchange for letting him have the canvas.
All I can say about this part is that Ema should watch out because Komatsu is gonna steal his man if he doesn’t do anything about it. Komatsu is just a giant golden retriever in the form of a person. He’s so cute with how captivated he is by Hayashi and the fact that he doesn’t really care about what the upperclassmen around him think about him barging into the high school division every day and dragging Hayashi to the art room to draw him. To be honest, Komatsu is actually a good artist! Too bad that he didn’t win, but he’s still happy with the result of the drawing—it seems that drawing isn’t Hayashi’s forte. Komatsu is voiced by Kouki Ohsuzu, who voiced Draht from Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End. He’s a rookie, but I do like how loud he is when it comes to voicing Komatsu—he brought in the necessary energy.
I am normally not a dancer, but the little dance the ending song has is so cute and catchy that I can’t help to follow along. Fortunately, there is a tutorial on the official Twitter page, so you can follow along to that like I do! I feel like I could master this dance if I know how to coordinate my legs better. Let me know your thoughts on this episode!
Captivated By You Episode 3 Review - Yamada's Bento Delivery Service
The shortest chapter of the Captivated By You stories got an extension for the anime. It’s crazy how a lot of anime-exclusive content had been added in to expand the Yamada story and see how Hayashi fit into all of it. In the manga, this story only focused on Yamada and his bully Masahiro, so it’s interesting to see more of Hayashi content as this is his story and also the last episode to feature him before moving onto the MedaNika portion next week.
Yamada is a first-year who gets entangled with a bully named Masahiro Sena who keeps pestering him to buy him bento boxes for lunch since the day they met. Yamada eventually learns that the whole bullying thing is like pineapples in sweet and sour pork—it’s either inessential or the best thing ever. In a way, the reason why the whole Hayashi plot line got extended for the anime is to show off the symbolism between Yamada and pineapples. Masahiro likes having pineapples in his sweet and sour pork, meaning that he likes having Yamada around when and bringing him bento. Yamada hates the pineapple, meaning that he hates being seen as the bento delivery guy. Though, I could be wrong about this as it’s just my interpretation. I'm glad that he was able to stand up for himself at the end.
The Hayashi portions of the story explain a lot of things that the manga didn’t like how he got the name Parole, which was due to him being terrible at baseball, got put in “jail” and got out in parole due to giving his former teammates a coupon to his family’s restaurant, and how his family life is with his parents having on-going debates about pineapples in sweet and sour pork and him also having a younger brother. I think that these sorts of details were needed. On top of that, EmaHaya finally got some more moments together. While the story is mainly about people being captivated by Hayashi, Ema has always been noticeable as the main person in Hayashi’s circle, so I did feel that it was unfortunate that he got sidelined—yes, I know that he’s technically one of the many “side characters” that are supposed to be captivated by Hayashi.
There’s also a post-credit scene that’s sort of concluding the whole Hayashi side of things with all of the characters popping up. It also seems that Komatsu is also a regular at Hayashi’s family restaurant and also helps Hayashi out with things like spreading and collecting surveys regarding pineapples in sweet and sour pork. I think it was a nice way to conclude everything—even giving Ema more screen time. It’s not something super grand, but I do wish that the other side characters like Matsuya got some sort of closure like her getting friends in school or something since she gave off loner vibes.
Yamada is voiced by Anan Furuya, who voiced Nagato from Wind Breaker, who also happened to be a bullying victim… Masahiro is voiced by Masaya Fukunishi who voiced Kafka from Kaiju No. 8. It’s nice that they’re getting voice actors who aren’t too well-known for these roles as it can boost up their career.
I think my only gripe for this episode is that for a topic about bullying, the vibes are a bit too chipper and happy, which makes it kind of hard to take seriously. Regardless, I do like that the end credits imply that Yamada has started making his own bentos and trying to give one to Masahiro who probably doesn’t vegetables or Yamada trying to mother him. Let me know your thoughts on this episode!
