Episode 10 – Yuri Is My Job!

This week’s Yuri Is My Job! is all about making an important distinction—and in doing so re-contextualize what is going on between Kanoko and Sumika. In Sumika’s mind, what’s happening with Kanoko is the same basic thing as when Yoko Goeido was a worker at the café. Backstage love drama is interfering with the on-stage aspects of the café.

With Yoko and Nene, the café turned into a hostile work environment with Yoko clearly enjoying getting under Sumika’s skin. Then, when Yoko quit the café—and broke up with Nene nonchalantly in the process—she left the café down two workers. It was largely up to Sumika to deal with the emotional fallout and keep the café together until new blood like Mitsuki showed up.

But here’s the thing. With Nene and Yoko, the cause of the problem was the ongoing, evolving, backstage relationship between the girls—and how it progressively affected their work on stage. With Kanoko, that’s not the case. Make no mistake, Kanoko is head-over-heals for Hime. However, unlike Yoko, she has no plans on furthering her romantic interests. Rather, she wants the opposite: she wants things to be like they had been before Mitsuki and Hime reconciled. For Kanoko, the static relationship she had as Hime’s best and only true friend was perfection.

However, the issue facing Kanoko is one of her own doing: she’s socially isolated. No one is on her side. She wants Hime to herself but can’t do anything that would make Hime sad or angry. She is basically just a pile of impotent frustration and rage when it comes to the Mitsuki situation. The only reason she was able to go as far as she had in pursuing her goals—to get to the point where she thought destroying the Schwestern concept was a viable option—was because of Sumika’s intervention.

By agreeing to help Kanoko, Sumika gave the girl hope—a way to potentially accomplish her previously unattainable goal. Now, that Sumika and Kanoko’s relationship has turned hostile, that hope is gone and Kanoko is being crushed by the weight of her despair. Hime is the one who would normally be her emotional outlet but in this one instance, she has no one to rely on—no one she can vent to.

This is what Sumika’s picking up on throughout the episode—even if she doesn’t know how to put it into words. Kanoko is suffering. However, helping her destroy Hime and Mitsuki’s friendship is not the correct choice. Nor is trying to blackmail Kanoko into not pursuing a romantic relationship with Hime (especially since that was never even an option for Kanoko to begin with). What Kanoko needs is exactly what Hime has been pushing her to get: another friend besides her—someone she can talk to besides Hime when needed. The question now is, can Sumika become that friend and help Kanoko to accept that all things change or will Kanoko explode in a jealous rage and forever damage her relationship with Hime going forward?

Rating:

Random Thoughts:

• Just the guilt of calling Hime insensitive in a moment of extreme frustration is enough to make Kanoko break down. Hime isn’t even mad—just concerned. Yet, to Kanoko, it’s practically a world-ending event.

• The big question looming behind everything in this episode is the “why.” Why does Kanoko not even dream of pursuing a romantic relationship with Hime? Is it a self-esteem issue? Or does she know something about Hime that we do not?

• Nene is once again here to lay out the hard truths. Being concerned and wanting to help is great and all but you can’t force your solutions upon others. If you want to help, make sure it’s a type of help they’re willing to accept.

• I know we’re only getting one side of the story here but Yoko is the worst kind of person. She seems to cause drama just to watch people suffer—and then discards everyone once she gets bored.

Yuri Is My Job! is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.