REVIEW: ‘Shikimori’s Not Just A Cutie,’ Episode 9 – “Innocence and Clumsiness”

Shikimori’s Not Just A Cutie is a romantic comedy anime produced by Doga Koba. After all the excitement at the cultural festival, it seems Yuu has come down with an illness. When Yuu asks Inuzuka to take notes for him, Shikimori wonders why Yuu would ask him and Inuzuka wonders why Shikimroi seems to hate him in Shikimori’s Not Just A Cutie Episode 9.

The front half of this episode explores why Shikimori has been shooting Inuzuka all those angry glances all season. While it’s been presumed that she simply feels jealousy towards anyone who garners Yuu’s attention other than her, as it turns out though, there is a bit more to it than that. When the duo heads to Yuu’s house after school to deliver his notes and check up on him, they have some time to interact without all the other personalities in their lives around. This gives the two friends a bit of time to better understand each other. What they discover about Shikimori and her fairly irrational anger towards Inuzuka is interesting, though the explanation is a bit lacking in one major way.

When the truth is revealed about Shikimori’s attitude towards Inuzuka, Shikimori’s Not Just A Cutie Episode 9 uses elements of the character that, as far as I can remember, have never been brought up before. This isn’t a fundamentally bad thing, but due to the element’s lack of a previous presence in the story, it makes it feel more like the reason was made up for this particular explanation, than being a planned element that no one had connected the dots to. It would’ve been nice if the story had seeded this reveal ahead of time so it would feel a bit more authentic.

The back half of Shikimori’s Not Just A Cutie Episode 9 sees Shikimori spending some time with Nekozaki when the two run into Kamiya. Not aware of what recently transpired between the two, Nekozaki asks the Kamiya to hang out with them. When this sequence first started, I was worried that it would devolve into a drawn-out string of awkward chuckles and sidelong glances as Nekozaki would continuously put her foot in her mouth while interacting with the other two. Happily, my worries were proven to be quite unfounded. Rather than that, we got a wonderful series of moments where the three girls bond and enjoy some unexpected events that string together to deliver some wonderful character-filled storytelling.

While the visual delivery of this show has always been solid, I feel like Shikimori’s Not Just A Cutie Episode 9 manages to come across even stronger thanks to the show’s doubling down on one of its strongest elements, the close-up. The show has always worked with close-ups to deliver some striking shifts in emotion. In previous episodes, this has mostly been limited to Shikimori’s transformations from cute to cool. Here we see the show delivering many of these stand-out visual moments for numerous characters.

I thoroughly enjoyed Shikimori’s Not Just A Cutie Episode 9. The change of dynamic it utilizes by removing Yuu from the episode allows the show to explore some of its secondary characters and some of the interactions that have been running in the background since episode one.

Shikimori’s Not Just A Cutie Episode 9 is streaming now on Crunchyroll.