Next time on Ganbare Douki-chan! Douki suddenly wakes up with a start! It was all a dream.
Everything we saw today was simply what she wanted to do. But instead, at the last moment, she chickened out. She let Douki-kun leave without saying a word. She couldn't make her move.
She gets dressed and goes into work. Soon, she hears the latest gossip. Yesterday, Kouhai-chan confessed to Douki-kun, who accepted her confession. They've started dating. Douki-chan missed her chance.
Then, Douki suddenly wakes up with a start! The past few paragraphs were the dream. The comic posted today is the real timeline after all. She finally kissed Douki-kun.
Quick rundown of some of the Twitter responses. They generally fall into a few categories:
1. "He has EYES!?" Quite a few responses focus on this!
In particular, one person used the term 開眼. The literal meaning is opening your eyes, but it also has a sense of 'Buddhist enlightenment' to it. Also, you make a new Buddha statue, the very last thing you do is give it eyes. That's what links it to the spiritual and consecrates it. This uses the same term.
In other words, Douki-chan helped Douki-kun reach enlightenment by growing eyes.
2. "She finally did it!" Lots of super happy memes here, like the IGN guys. These run the gamut from "Congratulations!" to "FINALLY!"
Special shout-out to the person whose mom was so happy, she started crying.
3. "It's a trap!" AKA the cynics, jaded by years of false hopes.
A lot of these comments are along the lines of "Douki-chan had a dream where she..." and "How will Douki-chan wake up this time?" There are also the hopeful cynics, saying stuff like, "I hope it's not a dream this time!" and posting memes like this.
4. And finally, the most common response type of all:
In particular, one person used the term 開眼. The literal meaning is opening your eyes, but it also has a sense of 'Buddhist enlightenment' to it. Also, you make a new Buddha statue, the very last thing you do is give it eyes. That's what links it to the spiritual and consecrates it. This uses the same term.
I'm conflicted too: on one hand, this evolution is logical : Intern-chan indirect wingwomanship doesn't work on Douki-chan, she needed to hear Maiko (who understands her as she had been in the exact same position) being upfront and telling her that she must make a move or she'll lose him.
But on the other hand, we've been blue-balled so many times already that can't help but fear that it'll all be a dream again, although this time it's not something outlandish like one of the girls jumping at Douki-kun's bone that made it immediately clear that it was a dream, still if it does end again as a dream, I think that his fans will take it badly.
WHHHHAAAATTTT! Now if we can Himura-sensei to do some plot progression with Ai-chan and Onii-san this week . . . .
Unless she goes down the Maegamiroute there's not much room to progress since Ai & Onii-san have been dating and screwing for while now.
Maybe you're thinking about (Tawawa's) Senpai & Kouhai, but the problem with those two is that Kouhai is too innocent make a move & if Sempai tries to do anything it would be view as power harassment or at best an Error Code 400 induced by liquid courage. Unlike those two, these two Doukis don't have that power dynamic, the only thing that has been holding them back till now is their mutual shyness and Kouhai-chan trying to invoke a threesome by constantly interrupting them.
But on the other hand, we've been blue-balled so many times already that can't help but fear that it'll all be a dream again, although this time it's not something outlandish like one of the girls jumping at Douki-kun's bone that made it immediately clear that it was a dream, still if it does end again as a dream, I think that his fans will take it badly.
I get where you're coming from. He's teased us a lot, so I'm expecting a curveball too!
But this time, I don't think it will all be a dream. The build-up's been too long, spanning multiple story arcs lately. The Valentine's/White Day gifts in particular injected a lot of tension. I don't think the two can go back to normal now. They've both raised each other's hopes. They've both stepped ever so slightly beyond the point of no return towards each other. Any "return to normal" now will no longer feel ambiguous, but like a rejection. And that means if the kiss was just a dream, all that tension's still sitting there, unresolved. Yomu has to address it somehow.
So I think we will get another twist, but it won't undo the kiss. Something like the dream-within-a-dream sequence I wrote above. Douki-chan's pretty awkward. She can still throw us plenty of curveballs.
