The Dangers in My Heart Season 2

Episode 23

You almost had me there The Dangers in My Heart! For a second, I thought we would have a bad episode with a setup that felt very far removed from almost everything that happened. I'm not against the idea of having an episode that focuses on Kyotaro's relationship with the friends that he's made in school. If anything, I would argue that it is relevant to his character arc since it would be healthy for him to establish closer relationships with people outside of Anna so that there isn't any sense of codependency, but I didn't like the setup. Adachi is starting to catch on to their relationship, which is cute because it further establishes that they are getting progressively worse at hiding their feelings about each other from everybody else. But Adachi's whole challenge made me feel dumb, even if I eventually realized that was supposed to be the point.

If Kyotaro is supposed to be the insecure teenage boy who tries to hide behind a veneer of dark complexity, then Adachi is the type of teenage boy who tries to hide his insecurities with a lot of bravado and perverted antics. He's always chasing something or someone or deluding himself into thinking that things are more serious than they are. He is the joke character for the show and nothing more. Initially, the whole challenge to Kyotaro seems like another artificial circumstance where Kyotaro needs to come out of his shell and rise to the challenge. Still, it doesn't take much for him to engage in a competition despite admitting that it is stupid. There's this pretense that they're both fighting for Anna when they're actually just having a dumb boy rivalry.

I like the line that Kyotaro gives to Adachi during the cavalry battle where he calls him out on his bullshit. Adachi wants to pretend they're fighting over Anna, but Kyotaro says Adachi doesn't get to have a crush on her because he doesn't know her, and he's right! It is a very shallow affection, and that's how he treats all of his relationships. He spent almost this entire season pursuing Anna's friend and creating scenarios where she liked him. Adachi only sees what he likes on the surface and then fills in gaps to justify giving people all of that attention, but at no point does he try to understand any of the girls he has a crush on.

What saved this episode is the implication that Adachi knows he's being very shallow. He knows that Kyotaro has scored one of the prettiest girls in the entire school just by being himself, and Adachi is frustrated that he still can't bring himself to do that. Either because he knows he's shallow or too insecure to be anything more than that. He wants to feel like he's victorious in some way, shape, or form, and he gets that victory in the end by winning the cavalry battle, even though it's just another shallow victory.

What bothers me about this episode is its placement in the show. This feels like an arc that should've happened earlier, maybe before Kyotaro and Anna confessed to Anna's parents. Having this episode take place earlier in Kyotaro's character development would have felt more organic instead of feeling like a diversion. It's not a bad episode, but this is probably one of my least favorites, which is a little concerning when there are only about two more episodes left.

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The Dangers in My Heart is currently streaming on HIDIVE.