English Dub Review: Makeine: Too Many Losing Heroines “The Other Side of a Happy Ending”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Lemon decides to lay all her cards on the table to Mitsuki and explain her long held feelings.

OUR TAKE

Okay, I think that wraps up what is now a Lemon related trilogy of episodes, and as much as I can certainly relate to her dealing with unrequited feelings to an extent, I really feel like this whole matter between her, Mitsuki, and Chihaya has really been drawn out enough. Like hey, I’ve been there, I’ve had crushes on longtime friends and then seen them go on to date someone else or simply not want to date me, and that kind of rejection really stings even if it’s not meant to be malicious or deliberately against me in any way. But we’ve kinda played up the dramatic angles of these feelings as much as we can at this point. And you know how I know that? Because Lemon’s issues here are similar in a lot of ways to Anna’s in the fifth episode, just dragged out a lot more because I guess there was a bit more ambiguity with whether Mitsuki actually ever felt the same as her at some point AND a little more development for Chihaya as a character than whoever Anna’s childhood friend crush is dating. And that’s fine, Chihaya is just another innocent person in this after all, so it makes sense to flesh her and her perspective just a bit, and I’m glad that she and Lemon are starting to become friends with no animosity.

Still, I think even highlighting the difference between Anna and Lemon’s situations didn’t quite need to take this long. Anna seems to want to stay away from her old friend and his new girlfriend so she can process and let go of her own feelings away from them while Lemon seems fine with being close to her equivalent people, at least for now. That already shows a major divergence between these two in how they go about handling these situations, and both methods require steady work. But we’ve got a third of the season, possibly the whole show, left to do…I dunno, something. I don’t really know WHAT is left to do besides cover things like this for Chika, who is seemingly ahead of both of her protagonist peers, but let’s hope it doesn’t take up the remaining four episodes. Oh yeah, and Kazuhiko is also there, he should probably get some moment or development milestone for blending into the background so much. My point is we should just move on from THIS part.