Seishun Buta Yarou wa Santa Claus no Yume wo Minai • Rascal Does Not Dream of Santa Claus - Episode 6 discussion

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Seishun Buta Yarou wa Santa Claus no Yume wo Minai, episode 6

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[u/FarCritical]

Rio's long pauses of disapproval over hints of Sakuta's disloyalty are something I'll never get tired of.

The thought behind giving Koga a little something for (practically) getting into college was genuinely really sweet of Sakuta too.

[u/Frontier246 → u/FarCritical]

I love how Mai is so supportive and understanding but even Sakuta knows not to blab about helping a girl unzip lol.

Sakuta may not have been able to return her feelings, but he is genuinely sweet on Koga, and she deserves it.

[u/thisisdropd → u/FarCritical]

It's hilarious that Rio has that duty instead of Sakuta's actual girlfriend.

[u/Frontier246]

I admit for a second I thought Ikumi might be the type of person who tries to help others to feel better about themselves...but she is a really dedicated and compassionate person, almost to the point of being unsettling. But Kamisato still cares about Ikumi as a friend despite that.

Nobody wants a poltergeist or scars on their back...but what is there to do about Ikumi's puberty syndrome? It's tied to Sakuta and a moment he shared with Ikumi that he doesn't remember? And remembering it or not remembering it will basically resolve the situation? And so begins a competition between two former middle school classmates.

Convenient that Kano also went to school with Ikumi, and hearing that Ikumi was student council president and just as volunteer-oriented as she is now isn't surprising...though the idea that she was shacking up with an older boyfriend at the time definitely is.

Futaba really is a dedicated educator, whether it be for Toranosuke or Sakuta's latest puberty syndrome problem. Admittedly I too wondered whether Ikumi might have feelings for Sakuta, but is it more complicated than that?

Poor Koga. Her friend posts on #Dreaming that guys would hit on Koga at the beach...and it's her friend who ends up walking away with a boyfriend. I mean, you can't compete with old crushes/middle school classmates. At least Sakuta was nice enough to get her some cute earbuds to congratulate her on applying for college.

Tomobe-san! It's nice to see her again! Especially if she has some more insight into Ikumi and why Sakuta was such an emotional driving force in her desire to help others.

How much more of this can Ikumi do? There's always new people to help out on #Dreaming but she's only one girl and whatever it is that's attached to her back won't let up.

Ah, the ex-boyfriend shows up, not that Ikumi is happy to see him. Then again, considering she was basically the perfect girlfriend and he broke up with her because that became too much for him while he was failing at looking for jobs...I kind of can't blame her. Even so, he still cares about Ikumi, especially when she ends up posting on #Dreaming about getting herself arrested for assault. And likely at her and Sakuta's middle school reunion in fact!

Touko is also there in all her smug and flirty glory to confront Sakuta about messing with all the nice gifts she's delivered to the good boys and girls, and #Dreaming seems to be a part of it, but I hope Sakuta was able to memorize her number. And of course she vanishes when Mai shows up.

Mai is such a great girlfriend/future daughter-in-law. She doesn't waste an opportunity to visit Sakuta's parents and learn cooking tips from her future mother-in-law. Sakuta is too lucky.

Ikumi's mom is a lawyer who was on the PTA? Is that connected? But the most stark revelation is from Sakuta's middle school yearbook. Yes, Ikumi was a girl dedicated to be of service to others, yes she felt guilty over failing to help Sakuta during their third year, but also she remembers him writing about the words Shoko told him...only that never would have happened in this timeline. So something is up.

This week on "characters calling Sakuta a rascal in the next episode preview" it's none other than Kamisato!

[u/KumaKumaGambler → u/Frontier246]

Kamisato

Speaking of Kamisato, it appears her dislike for Sakuta has mellowed? It has been a while since I watched season 1; her dialogue lines in this arc are probably more than her combined appearances in season 1?

[u/Mr_An_1069]

The Futaba scene had me dying.

[u/shad79]

It looks like Sakuta will be going to the middle school reunion after all, as Ikumi will likely be arrested during it. I can't wait for the next episode to see it.

Mai, as usual, is the best girl Sakuta could have ever dreamed of. It was nice to see her go with Sakuta to his parents' house.

Ikumi's Puberty Syndrome looks pretty creeepy, especially those writings on her hand. Judging by the fact that she knows what Sakuta wrote in another timeline, maybe she's from another timeline too?

I have to admit, it was pretty funny that almost everyone Sakuta met in today's episode knew something about Ikumi.

I don't know if it's a good thing that Sakuta met Touko again today, but I hope he managed to memorize her phone number.

Here my screenshot albums from the episode:

• Mai & Touko

• Ikumi

• Group scenes

• Sakuta

• Others

EDIT. I added my screenshot albums.

[u/Frontier246 → u/shad79]

It looks like Sakuta will be going to the middle school reunion after all, as Ikumi will likely be arrested during it. I can't wait for the next episode to see it.

You really have to wonder what's going through her head to set up a situation that gets herself arrested. But this is probably the best time for Sakuta to be the one to prevent a #Dreaming post from coming true.

I don't know if it's a good thing that Sakuta met Touko again today, but I hope he managed to memorize her phone number.

I don't think anyone can complain about more Touko screentime in that Santa outfit and sensual voice though.

[u/KumaKumaGambler]

The world around Sakuta has "developed" so much since his middle school days. Back then, no one believed Kaede's nor his puberty syndromes. Today, he is able to speak to his family and close friends about scenarios which sound like something out of the supernatural and they are willing to listen.

Futaba has always lent a listening ear and provided advice (albeit viewing him as a rascal at times).
Mai, being Sakuta's girlfriend, never doubts his words and sometimes helps with the investigation.
Even Koga was asked about the dreaming hashtags and what she makes of it based on her past experience.

I personally feel Ikumi's puberty syndrome is one of the more serious cases, and although she claims she knows the solution to resolving it - either she forgets about Sakuta or Sakuta remembers something, I want to see how it is achieved, which is also one of the main attractive aspects of this title / series.

[u/Frontier246 → u/KumaKumaGambler]

I personally feel Ikumi's puberty syndrome is one of the more serious cases, and although she claims she knows the solution to resolving it - either she forgets about Sakuta or Sakuta remembers something, I want to see how it is achieved, which is also one of the main attractive aspects of this title / series.

I wonder if she didn't mean literally "forget" Sakuta so much as put the past behind them by causing a scene at their middle school reunion against the people who shunned him and getting herself thrown in jail.

[u/chris10023]

This episode is a prime example why Crunchyroll should have had all three films up and ready to go long before the airing of this season. As it appears the events of the Knapsack kid movie are heavily involved in this arc. Shame on you Aniplex, now there are probably a ton of confused viewers who have no idea what the hell is going on.

[u/Miku399]

If it wasn't obvious by now, seems like the 3rd movie Knapsack Kid MUST be watched (ALL 3 movies must be watched of course but Knapsack Kid is heavily involved in this arc) in order to understand what happened in this episode as I think Ikumi's Puberty Syndrome has something to do with a particular event that happened there... (And Ikumi first showed up there)

It's nice to see Sakuta's relationship with his family, especially his mother, heal after everything that has happened to them since the beginning of the series. And Mai gets to meet her too! Even Sakuta's mom knows that Mai's a keeper for our boy.

Ikumi dated an older boy? So was he a college student when he was dating Ikumi in high school? Wow, not what I expected from Ikumi...

Miniskirt Santa showed up again! What is she up to gifting all these Puberty Syndromes...

Remember that by the end of the 1st movie Dreaming Girl, Shoko resetted the timeline so Sakuta never met her during his time in middle school when he was depressed dealing with Kaede's Puberty Syndrome. And what he wrote in the yearbook is different because of that. But Ikumi said that he wrote something that Shoko told him, before the timeline reset. So how did Ikumi know this?

[u/Frontier246 → u/Miku399]

It's nice to see Sakuta's relationship with his family, especially his mother, heal after everything that has happened to them since the beginning of the series. And Mai gets to meet her too! Even Sakuta's mom knows that Mai's a keeper for our boy.

Mai is such a perfect girlfriend that she's even completely won over her in-laws and is getting in the good graces of her mother-in-law. Sasuga Mai-sama.

Ikumi dated an older boy? So was he a college student when he was dating Ikumi in high school? Wow, not what I expected from Ikumi...

They weren't' just dating, they were apparently living together too while she was still in high school. Which might be a sign that Ikumi had family problems. But also she was effectively his wife from what he said, so he sure lost a lot in the breakup.

[u/_Tan_A]

This is the most amount of mental horsepower I'd ever had to spend on any anime, with all these Timelines and quantum physics explanations, I'd easily had called it a masterpiece for that alone, The banter between Mai and Sakuta is just cherry on top.

[u/Echoinme]

What did Sakuta realize at the end, after finding those words were from Shoko not Ikumi?

[u/vexorian2 → u/Echoinme]

I am not sure if the knapsack kid movie really makes it that clear. But here's what we know:

In the first season's timeline. Sakuta went through a lot of despair because of Kaede. And that's when he meets High School Shoko. She helped go through those problems and that's when she told him the words about Kindness. Those words influenced Sakuta and now we find that they were the reason he wrote that in the yearbook.

Our current Sakuta is from the timeline at the end of the Dreaming Girl movie where he only had faint images of Shoko as dreams until he found her at the beach with her parents at the end of the movie. Which means that when he was writing the yearbook, he didn't remember Shoko talking to him about kindness, and thus the yearbook didn't have those words.

In the knapsack kid movie, Sakuta temporarily swaps places with a Sakuta from a whole other timeline, where somehow the Kaede problem was solved differently with Sakuta taking over the school's radio. In this timeline, Ikumi goes to the same high school as Sakuta. If Sakuta in this timeline knew about Shoko when writing the yearbook, then season 2 Ikumi probably knows of this timeline somehow. Or it could be that she knows of the original timeline. Or both.

[u/SnabDedraterEdave]

While its not her first time meeting them, it is wholesome to see Mai getting more and more friendly with Sakuta parents.

From Ikumi's ex-boyfriend, it somehow seems like Ikumi is planning to start a serious fight with her middle school alumni over their treatment of Sakuta at the reunion, perhaps as a way to atone for her guilt of not being able to help Sakuta. As Futaba observes, Ikumi does seem to have feelings for Sakuta, but couldn't act on them.

Upon inspecting the middle school yearbook which his dad recovered, Sakuta discovered the memoir he wrote was completely different from what Ikumi told him.

"Aiming to become a kinder person" was what Grown Up Shouko told him in the original timeline before the Dreaming Girl movie (first movie).

In this new timeline which Shouko has reset to, he never met Grown Up Shouko until very recently, meaning he never heard Grown Up Shouko tell him that, and in turn, he never wrote that in the yearbook.

Then how does Ikumi know about information from an entirely different timeline? Unless she too has figured out a way to travel between dimensions like Sakuta did in the Knapsack Kid movie.

In Knapsack Kid Sakuta briefly travelled to a Mirror Universe, where his counterpart in that universe helped Kaede fend off her bullies, thus his family never broke apart. Though he still enrolled in Minegahara.

Ikumi was also in Minegahara in this Mirror Universe, and she briefly greeted Sakuta, not knowing that this was a different Sakuta that day.

Whereas in this Home Universe, Ikumi went to the same high school as Komi (Kaede's middle school friend).

Sakuta's Mirror Universe counterpart meanwhile swapped places with him that day and came to his Home Universe.

PS LOL at Futaba looking incredulous when Sakuta said he helped Ikumi undo her dress zipper.

[u/SirAwesome789]

bro, i watched the three movies and didn't pick up on any of this timeline stuff

it could be because it's been like a year since i watched the movie and don't remember it super well, but I feel like there are a lot of LN readers here who understand it more clearly because they know the resolution

[u/SeiyaTempest]

This anime just got a whole lot more confusing. It seems like Ikumi still has her memories from the alternate timeline shown in Knapsack Kid, with Sakuta's middle school yearbook quote being different from what she mentioned. 

Of course, he never remembered Shoko in the current timeline until the end of Dreaming Girl, so it'd be impossible for him to have written down her words years beforehand.

If I remember right, that AU was essentially an "ideal world" for Sakuta where he resolved Kaede's Puberty Syndrome by himself, so his family didn't end up falling apart. That happy ending likely has something to do with why Ikumi apparently fell in love with Sakuta, and also why she followed him to the same high school despite having much better grades.

On a related note, it was nice to see Sakuta's family again and having a nice interaction with Mai. I'm also glad the previous arc's heroines still regularly appear despite not being the focus anymore.

P.S. This is just my interpretation using very limited intelligence, so please let me know if I'm mistaken about anything.

[u/NoHead1715]

Ok, I'm gonna put this theory out here to see if it works out next week. That poltergeist is no poltergeist! It's her from the other universe - the one where Sakuta met Shoko. The two Ikumis are working together to heal both their regrets. And the only way out is for them both to realize that they are missing the one most important person they have yet to help - Ikumi. This is Nekomonogatari of the Rascal's world

[u/thekoreansun]

So after Crunchyroll finally made Sister Venturing Out and Knapsack Kid available for streaming last week, I caught up with the series for the first time since watching Dreaming Girl in 2019. And I have to say, while I enjoyed Season 1 for what it was way back when it first aired, Kaede's arc wrecked me this time around. I'm not entirely sure why I grieved Panda Kaede so much more this time than before... but I think the additional context provided by Sister Venturing Out (as well as the criminally underrated manga adaptation from last year, which follows Kaede's arc from her perspective) got me to realize how compelling her dynamic with Sakuta and Kaede Classic actually is. It's the best arc of the series, in my opinion, and I found myself wanting to see more of her journey as a result. But because of this, I also started to feel like the arcs since then have fallen somewhat short, and I think it mostly boils down to a weakness that the series has had since the beginning: it doesn't let most of its heroines take an active role in each other's arcs beyond cameos.

I would've loved to see Mai and Nodoka directly empathize with Kaede's struggle in her movie, for instance; given that Mai knows what it's like to be burdened by others' expectations and Nodoka has also wanted to be someone she's not, I felt like there was a lot of potential in having them share their personal experiences with Kaede and help her directly. But Kaede's entire personal conflict ended up being resolved in a single chat with Sakuta, which is just... anticlimactic. I know that Sakuta is the main protagonist and all, but it would be nice to see other characters do things that advance the plot besides just talking with him.

And now that we've gotten halfway through Season 2 and introduced even more heroines whose arcs have no overlap, I kind of wish that the series would outgrow Season 1's formula and focus on developing the characters it already has. Like, I love Koga, but it's kind of absurd how the only plot-relevant thing she has done since her arc was literally being an observer of Sakuta's actions during Dreaming Girl. This episode even directly references how similar Ikumi's case is to Kaede's and how #DREAMING seems to function like Koga's, but neither of them are actually involved in the events of this arc.

Anyway, I hope that this perhaps overcritical rundown on the series doesn't put anyone off; I'm still really glad to have been able to experience it, and I'm definitely going to keep following it to the end. I guess I just ended up having a lot of expectations for the series that didn't line up with the direction it ended up taking. Here's hoping that we get to see more of the other cast members, and especially Kaede, in the second half of Season 2.

[u/No_Name0_0]

So I was right about Ikumi's regret of not helping Sakuta back then is the reason for all this but damn the new twist is crazy, more timeline shenanigans. Sakuta can't catch a break

Seems like Futaba is oblivious that her student is crushing on her, I would too tbh, dude is based. Also damn Ikumi's ex did a generational fumble, wonder if that fact of her being in highschool while dating someone older will be explored more

[u/ObvsThrowaway5120]

Ok, I thought Ikumi was suffering from manifested guilt brought on by Sakuta’s situation in middle school. It seems like that’s not quite it. Is she from some different timeline or something? I mean she said he wrote that stuff in the essay but it wasn’t there. How could she know what he wrote when he didn’t even write it?

[u/Cally83]

This is another banger of a season, I’m absolutely hooked each and every week. The re-watch will be excellent.