English Dub Review: Aharen-san wa Hakarenai “A Work of Art, Isn’t It?”

Overview (Spoilers Below):
An absent-minded Aharen finds herself missing her lunch, and is forced to contend with the howling masses at the school counter, in addition to Raido’s competitive streak and Futaba’s one-sided romantic rivalry.

Our Take:
The episode has Aharen and Raido trying their hand at art since sports aren’t their specialty. But before that, they come across another series of embarrassing mishaps involving lunch and a competitive game of Old Maid. Then, Aharen gets numb legs after falling asleep in class and finds herself at odds yet again with a jealous Futaba, who asks her for help making a bento for Akkun. Unfortunately, a tiny mistake in Futaba’s cooking resulted in Akkun feeling ill.
I quickly noticed that this episode marks the third appearance of Futaba this season, tying with Oshiro. After Oshiro’s first appearance in episode two, I started to get used to her later on despite her timid personality, with enough humor and heart to overshadow her nerve-racking nuisance. On the other hand, Futaba is someone that may take me a bit longer to tolerate during the season. This episode continues Futaba’s obsession with blaming Aharen for going after Akkun, even though Aharen isn’t interested in him. While it’s funny during her first two appearances, the episode shows that the third time isn’t the charm for the bratty child.
Futaba’s one-sided personality in this episode gets on my nerves a bit, especially when she accuses Aharen of something that she forgot to do, mainly forgetting to refrigerate her bento overnight before giving it to Akkun. Fortunately, the brief scene involving Futaba feeling bad for not saying thanks to Aharen generated some tiny hints of development for the character. However, if this is the only time we see a different side of Futaba, then I’m not sure how much longer I can bear with her later on.
Aside from that, this episode delivers another amusing set of humiliating moments, with Raido being the victim of its shenanigans. Much of the humor I enjoyed involved Aharen struggling to get through a massive crowd at the school store and Raido losing to Aharen again at Old Maid. That poor guy still can’t catch a break. Additionally, the segment involving Aharen’s life-size doll of herself for art class was a real pleaser for Raido’s freakout alone. Like Raido, I probably won’t fall asleep again after staring at the doll’s thousand-yard stare for so long.