Blue Box Episode 12: The Love Triangle Intensifies

Warning: The following contains spoilers for Blue Box, Episode 11, “Girls…”, now streaming on Netflix.

The previous episode of Blue Box ended with the start of Taiki and Hina’s summer festival date, and now, episode 11, “Girls…” throws viewers right back in. And boy, they wasted no time at all with spicing things up because the pre-opening theme scene immediately showed Chinatsu spotting Taiki and Hina on their date. The two of them don’t see Chinatsu though, which led to a series of misconceptions that just pushed Blue Box‘s love triangle dynamic to new levels.

This episode of Blue Box also introduces a new character: Karen Moriya, a pretty purple-haired girl who was Chinatsu’s best friend in kindergarten and grade school. Karen also just so happens to be Haryu’s girlfriend, who he talked about in Blue Box episode 3, “Chii”. She bumped into Taiki and Chinatsu, and it quickly became obvious that Haryu had been telling her a lot about the two in the way she reacted. It’s good worldbuilding to find out that Haryu talks about Taiki to his girlfriend, which might lead to them being the wingmen for Taiki and Chinatsu in the same way Kyo is for Taiki and Hina.

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The Festival Date Goes On

It’s Both Sweeter and More Painful than You Could Have Imagined

The rest of Taiki and Hina’s date, which takes up more than half the episode, is a wild rollercoaster of emotions. They did a really good job of portraying both sides of the love triangle, so, depending on who you’re rooting for, the date either went amazingly or horribly.

For the Hina fans out there, this episode was mostly a disaster. Sure, you could say that Taiki and Hina did grow closer, but not really in a way that bodes well for their future, especially for Hina. Throughout the date, Hina just got her hopes unreasonably high, thinking that a romantic relationship with Taiki might be in the cards now. Little did she know, he practically spent half of his time at the festival with her rival. Also, while Taiki was gone, Ito, a guy with a crush on Hina, saw her alone and asked to sit next to her, which she turned down. Hina turning down advances from other guys because she liked Taiki would have been cute, but it was like adding insult to injury, knowing that the guy she was saving a seat for was then hanging out with his crush.

The only bit of silver lining for Hina happened at the end of the episode, where Chinatsu finally came to terms with the fact that she has feelings for Taiki, but said that she would back down if it turned out that Taiki and Hina are dating. Sure, the situation is easily resolvable, but this is a romance anime; the protagonist being too dense to correct something simple like this happens all the time.

Chinatsu fans had it good for the first half of the episode. Taiki encountered Chinatsu at the festival looking after a lost little girl and helped her find her parents. Taiki and Chinatsu holding the little girls’ hands between them felt like two parents enjoying the festival with their kid. After returning the girl, they spend some more time and even get to watch some fireworks together. Also, it’s been heavily implied in the last few episodes that Chinatsu is finally developing feelings for Taiki, but fans get to actually hear her say it in this one. In a flashback conversation, Karen asked Chinatsu if she ever sees her housemate as a man, rather than a friend. Chinatsu answered with a clear yes, which probably melted the heart of every Taiki x Chinatsu fan everywhere.

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Misconceptions Galore

The Fog of Love and War Thickens

Even though it’s a romance anime, Blue Box hasn’t really been leaning into the trope of characters having misconceptions about each other every two seconds, but that all changed in this episode. Almost everyone had some sort of misunderstanding about one or more characters here, which can make it infuriating for the viewer, but it was done in ways that made sense, so it could have been worse. Here are some of the biggest misconceptions that came about throughout the episode.

• As mentioned above, Hina has fallen into the misconception of her and Taiki growing closer in a romantic sense. Taiki might have a better understanding of Hina now, but he still just views her as a close friend, so the feelings are definitely not mutual.
• Ito, the guy who has a crush on Hina is now probably under the assumption that Hina and Taiki are dating, which might come into play in a future episode.
• Taiki, the dense protagonist that he is, is completely clueless about how the two girls around him are now falling for him and thinks that they both still just see him as a friend.
• The biggest misconception is the one the episode ends on. Chinatsu is now also under the impression that Taiki and Hina might be dating, but she’s too embarrassed to confront him about it. Chinatsu now clearly likes him and is considering acting on her feelings, but seeing him with Hina has just messed everything up.

Despite it being frustrating to watch these misunderstandings happen, they’ll definitely make the next episodes of Blue Box more interesting. They give the audience a lot to look forward to, as a lot of viewers probably can’t wait for the confrontations and resolutions these misconceptions will inevitably cause.

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Blue Box is now available to stream on Netflix. The release date for Blue Box, episode 13, is set to be December 26, 2024 at 8:30 AM PT.

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Release Date

October 3, 2024

Studio

Telecom Animation Film, TMS Entertainment

Japanese Title

Ao no Hako

Creator

Kouji Miura

MyAnimeList Score

8.33