REVIEW: ‘Skip And Loafer,’ Episode 7 — “Hectic and Hot Stuff”

Skip and Loafer Episode 7 puts the finishing touches on establishing the core group of characters we have right now while continuing to explore all we don’t know about Shima (Akinori Egoshi). While Mitsumi (Tomoyo Kurosawa) is an open book, wearing her emotions endearingly clear on her face, Shima is much more secretive, be it about his emotions, his background, or his relation to others and what inspires him to befriend those around him. This week we watch as he turns down the advances of girls at the school as summer break approaches, remarking that he doesn’t believe any of them want to be friends with them when they ask for his number. 

It’s another introspective element for a character who grows increasingly charming with each episode. Having perfected an amicable mask where we rarely witness any true frustration or anger, the story maintains his public-facing reputation for being kind while also allowing peaks into his thought process, as Mitsumi wonders why she’s so concerned about girls asking for his contact number. As he grapples with prioritizing friendships that don’t use him for his social status, Mitsumi continues to ponder their relationship, especially late in the episode when a suggestion to go to the zoo leaves her reeling, wondering if it’s a date. 

Of course, this is all cut short in the episode’s final moments. Some of the best background work in recent episodes has been how the direction depicts the growing friendship between the girls. From Kurume (Megumi Han) wearing her hair in two braids following Murashige’s (Maaya Uchida) suggestion to Murashige draping herself over Mitsumi while they casually converse, Skip and Loafer have visualized how teenage girls interact with one another. We see it in “Hectic and Hotstuff,” from the group snacking out of a shared box of biscuits to them making plans for summer vacation, acknowledging that they make for an odd, hodgepodge group of friends. 

Some of the subtlest work has been done with Egashira (Yuka Terasaki), a character who increasingly grows reminiscent of Toradora’s Ami, with her social know-how and way of directing the more hapless Mitsumi in moments of need. She’s observant and friendly, if not overtly warm, and casts a cynical eye on the standard high school escapades. She has been diligent in her routine to ensure a place high enough on the popularity totem pole so as not to be ignored. It’s why it makes sense that she’s the one who overhears Mitsumi and Shima making plans. It’s also why it matters that she’s the one who can tell Mitsumi that the girl Shima just rushed out of the room to meet and then proceeded to shuffle out of the classroom isn’t just some random student from another school but a celebrity with whom Shima shares a history. 

Rather than settle in on the drama of miscommunication, the episode closes only with Mitsumi’s dawning realization of who the character is. While this moment will likely necessitate some sort of conversation between the two, the show has done a fabulous job so far with grounding its drama into simple hiccups that are resolved through transparency, a refreshing element in a show about teenagers. 

The writers both engage with the genuine emotions we feel in our teen years while reminding us that these moments are mere blips in our life story — even if the characters themselves don’t yet understand. We see this from the drama club president sharing an embarrassing video to laugh about and Takamine (Minami Tsuda) processing losing her bid to be student council president due to a late entry by a popular second-year student who’d never expressed interest in the club. The point of the drama of high school, captured beautifully in the anime, is to learn and develop, to discover ways in which we manage stress and loss that allows us to grow and become better than the person who experienced those lows in the first place. 

Skip and Loafer Episode 7 may not be the best episode of the series so far, spending too much time on certain side plots. But at this point, the show has set its bar for quality. And that bar is impossibly high. 

Skip and Loafer Season 1 is available to stream on Crunchyroll.