Seishun Buta Yarou wa Santa Claus no Yume wo Minai Episode 8 Discussion

How many times have sakuta and mai's dates been canceled in this season?

This season has been a disappointment for me. I was looking forward to another season since I thought we would finally get more focus on Sakuta and Mai's relationship now that they are in college. Instead in most episodes Daddy Sakuta is helping out some random high school girl and he has deeper interactions with them than his own girlfriend. They also keep teasing with Sakuta and Mai's relationship. Every time it has a chance to progress it gets derailed by something. That something also usually results in Sakuta having to go an a date with a new girl too. Missed opportunity to just have them work together to help people with Puberty Syndrome. I feel bad for Mai as this show is basically a harem at this point.

Really surprised this still has a higher MAL score than the first season even if due to sequel bias. It looks like its not going to get better after this episode and is getting repetitive. Himeji is another random girl Sakuta is going to help at the expense of his own relationship. This episode also made me realize the character designs are bad since a lot of the girls have the same design with minor changes. Its actually hard to tell them apart at times like Mai and the Santa girl.

Maybe it’s just a me thing, but I feel like the people complaining about the characters looking like Mai don’t look like her at all, but all that aside he better not cancel that damn date with Mai. let them have their moment please 🙏

It's an annoying trend of this season that every single Mai x Sakuta interaction/date is either interrupted by another random girl, or outright cancelled to keep the plot progressing. Mai and Sakuta's romantic chemistry and overall relationship is one of the strongest parts of this entire franchise, but this season is helbent on shoving that aside to force the uninteresting new characters into the spotlight instead. I think I'm going to lose it if I see the words "keep your schedule open" again, because I know full damn well that whatever plans Mai and Sakuta make won't happen because we need to focus on another uninteresting side character instead (this episode provided no real context for who Himeji is or why the hell we should take any interest in her beyond her having an unspecified type of Puberty Syndrome).

Also, this show's character design is absolutely awful at this point, such that you can barely tell who is who (particularly with the many new characters this season is throwing at us). Eye colour aside, Touko looks more or less identical to Mai and Akagi just looks like a short-hair version of Mai. It just makes things needlessly confusing when these characters simply aren't visually distinct enough from each other.

I hope Sakuta doesn't ruin his date with Mai by going out with his student.