English Dub Review: My Senpai Is Annoying: “The Seasons Come and Go”

Overview: Futaba (Risa Mei) and Takeda (Patrick Seitz) spend New Year’s day together while Kazama (Mark Allen Jr.) and Sakurai (Jennifer AuBuchon) grow closer. 

Our Take: New Year’s Eve plans ensue as the entire workplace takes some time off to ring in the new year. Futaba and Natsumi hang out at her place and enjoy a nice dinner Futaba continues to put on a front that she cares little for Takeda or what his plans are, even if others, in this case, Natsumi can see right through her. 

Sakurai and Kazuma have dinner, alone, after Yuto has a last minute party that he forgets about. This, along with most of Kazama and Sakurai’s dates and sweet moments, although slowly, continues to push them closer with each other, showing just how much their feelings are growing. This is wonderfully shown with Kazama’s growth in how he would rather spend time with Sakurai than play video games at home alone (it’s Sakurai, who wouldn’t?). 

Both couples go to the shrine the next day where Futaba runs into Takeda. Natsumi, knowing to give them some space, makes up an excuse to leave. Futaba and Takeda both draw fortunes that foreshadow their romance with one another. Hopefully, this is not the sole way their feelings will progress as it is lazy in not actually giving them more key intimate moments and instead prophesying it through external means. At the very least it’s cute to watch both of them squirm at their awkwardness, especially Takeda as we’ve never seen that shyness from him. 

When Kazama shows a picture of Futaba and Takeda to the local news and gets his daylights knocked out, we get to see how he and Sakurai are that much closer to becoming a couple. Sakurai is able to sneak a kiss while his Kazama is unconscious. A fact that she obsessively hides when a little girl took a picture of it and wanted to show him. It is clear that she is smitten with him, but what about Kazama? Kazama being open and honest about his feelings is immensely satisfying, however with both of them reluctant to be upfront about it to each other, we’re probably in it for the long haul in regards to when they’ll reveal how they truly feel. Although, with romance anime, that’s generally par for the course with them being a slow burn. However, Sakurai and Kazama’s relationship always gets more meaningful developments than Futaba and Takeda with the latter feeling like it’s making baby steps at best and going in circles most of the time. If they can get on the same page as Kazama and Sakurai, the show will be all the better for it with simultaneous strong growth for each couple.