Saekano: How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend Flat Episode 3 Review: First Draft, Second Draft and Great Long Thinking

Hello everyone! Another week has rolled into the past and as a result, we got a new episode of Saekano!

This was quite an interesting episode. We got to see Tomoya’s reply to Utaha concerning the plot and it was quite the unexpected one. However, this episode was basically about the trials Tomoya had to go through to be able to make a decision concerning the plot. Usually, when you are a fan of a certain artist, writer, or just a creator in general, it is easy to lose the sight into the distance and start accepting each and everything they produce as a masterpiece, creations bestowed upon us by a demigod. Yet this is exactly when we should be able to judge with all of our existence.

Being a fanboy/fangirl can dim our sight, yet we should be harsher towards the creators we love, instead of blindly accepting everything they make. I am going to assume that this is exactly what happened to Tomoya when he was reading the scripts that Utaha had written.

But more about this later! It’s time to get into the detailed review!

Japanese Original Episode Title:初稿と二稿と大長考

Plot

We ca divide the episode into two parts. The first part is Tomoya and Eriri having a showdown against Iori and Izumi, while the second part is Tomoya gathering the members of Icy Tail to help him turn the second script Utaha wrote into a game.

The things I liked about the first part of the episode were not too many, but I guess Kato was one of them. While the other four were getting at it, growing angrier and angrier, there was Kato, totally calm and disconnected from her surroundings, as if she wasn’t even connected to the world the others were living in. Think about it; Saekano is your very generic harem/fan-service anime, and usually, you have all the girls fighting each other for some reason (while the main reason is the attention of the main hero), and yet you have Kato, who pretty much doesn’t care about anything or anyone. Even when she does, it is really hard to understand since her facial expressions rarely change and the tone of her voice rarely goes up or down.

Another thing I liked about the first part was the humor behind it. For example, Iori trying to make Tomoya like the web page of their group, Rouge en Rouge. A very typical expression of the modern world. On the other hand, while challenging Eriri, Izumi says something along the lines of ‘if you lose to me, you’re gonna regress to a wannabe illustrator on Twitter’, which I found quite hilarious too.

And then we have the second part of the show, where Kato, Tomoya and the members of Icy Tail try their hardest to finish the game since this seems to be the best way for Tomoya to choose the final script. Well, as a result, things do take an interesting turn…

Episode Highlights

Utaha: There was a short in-between the first and second parts of the episode, where we see Tomoya and Kato at school. It is at this time when Utaha talks to Kato and asks her many questions about Tomoya. As Kato points out, Utaha acts extremely and unexpectedly cute for some reason.

Eriri: It might be just my guess, but in the short scene where we see Eriri’s room, I could feel like she had an artist’s block, which she might have gotten after meeting Izumi.

Themes & Trivia

Teamwork: The main theme of the episode was teamwork. Not just because Tomoya manages to finish the crazy idea of making the second script into a game together with other people, as a part of a team, but also because Iori says that making a game is something you do with a team. He starts bragging about his own team and pretty much challenges Tomoya into a battle of software to see which one will make a better game.

Comments

After spending a whole weekend on transferring the script to a game, Tomoya finally manages to make a decision concerning the plot of the game. However he seems to notice something hidden in the script that he didn’t notice when he was reading it on paper. It really bothers me and I want to know what exactly it was he noticed that slipped his eye before. The decision he makes was also something I didn’t see coming. But that much you should watch and see by yourself!

Battle of Softwares!

This concludes the review of Episode 3 of Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata Flat. We are slowly but surely moving towards the completion of the game and I am sure you are just as eager to see how it turns out, as I am. What do you think will be the move Utaha will make next? With the reply she got from Tomoya the whole track of the game, heck, the whole track of this anime might turn! Do share your thoughts with us here, on MANGA.TOKYO! We will be looking forward to see your opinions!

As always, here are all our reviews for Spring 2017 and our impressions for (nearly) all the first episodes of the season!