Episode 8
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Fuck. This. Show.

Even when a consequence has finally showed up, Tsurayuki still spends half of the scene saying how fucking great Kyouya is.
"You always made the rational and accurate call."
"There's no way I can catch up to this guy's talent."
"You're not a writer, so it thought it would work out, but you're even better than I could hope to be. You could have pulled it off without me."

Lay it on little thicker, please. I haven't thrown up yet.

Tsurayuki should have been telling him how useless he was being made to feel, emphasizing his feeling of redundancy rather than phrasing it in a way that continues to complement Kyouya. Maybe it was the translation, but I kinda doubt it. I expected him to, after all the previous blow ups. Tsurayuki is not the meek Japanese maiden that Aki is, or Nanako who is never given a chance after the concert for her confidence to grow beyond the level that Kyouya allows her without his approval (unintended, but that is what is happening). He should be the one other person besides Kawasegawa who will actually stand up to Kyouya's unearned (from our perspective) 'genius.' Well, at least it serves as the object lesson for how damaging Kyouya is to his peers when he is blindly followed.

Kyouya isn't just doing a director's job at this point. He was actively squelching all of their creativity to meet the deadline. Telling Shino to not do her own style of art that she knew would evoke a stronger emotion. Telling Nanako to rehash someone else's work and just be derivative. But no, they don't even fight back, and Kawasegawa or her sister aren't even there to tell him off. Aki and Nanako's hints were too subdued, because how dare they question the 'genius' who has saved them so many times so far in school? Even the self-satisfied thought Kyouya had "I'm glad we decided to do things my way. It was the right decision." What an intensely unlikeable guy. Who writes a business proposal to his housemates on a collaborative project then gently guilt-trips them into agreeing to it?

Is he quite up to Makoto from School Days in terms of unlikeable? No. At least with that series it was deliberate, but this feels more like they've just gone way overboard on the praise while taking far too long to hint that he was doing real harm.

Due to the nauseating levels of praise he keeps getting, it's not even satisfying to have him collapse and with the realization that he did this to himself. Because he slowly deviated into thinking that he was so important that he help people who never needed him in the first place. He wanted to collaborate, but instead he ended up undermining all of their confidence. Does he learn from this to try and hit a better balance point? Maybe too early to say because this is the low point in the textbook narrative this show has going. I suppose his reward at the true end to this series is he'll still be a recognized genius assistant director or something.

I guess the loli is the devil though? I assume in the future jump that we'll see Aki gave up on art, Nanako left the music industry after struggling with being mediocre, Tsurayuki is doing something boring or his fiancée thought he was pathetic and left him, while Kyouya is a 'genius' film/game director.

No wonder he's a failure in the original timeline. He blames everything else and his "lack of opportunity" when his personal efforts aren't enough, and when he's given free reign with all the talent helping him he could ask for, he lacks the capacity to relinquish even an iota of that control. Lack of determination on the forward end, lack of humility on the redo.

This series mostly makes me think more fondly of other franchises where they do most of the aspects of this series, just far better.