A Couple of Cuckoos' Love Triangle Heats Up During the Unforgettable School Trip (2024)

A Couple of Cuckoos is a rom-com anime series with a serious love triangle at the heart of its story. The protagonist, the studious Umino Nagi, can't figure out his tumultuous love life when he has his fiancee Amano Erika on one side and the object of his affection, Segawa Hiro, on the other. That goes double during the recent school field trip.

Nagi's and Erika's parents want them to marry, but each of them is trying to impress someone else, and for that matter, so is Hiro. But who are these girls trying to impress, and what bearing will it have on Nagi? For all he knows, he's the one Hiro actually wants to marry, even if her parents demand otherwise. Now might be his time to shine.

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Is Erika Nagi's Best Friend After All?

By now, the deredere Amano Erika has said and done much to establish herself as A Couple of Cuckoos' Best Girl, even if she's a bit naive about everyday life outside the comfort of her parents' home. To begin with, Erika has a tough but fair attitude about everything and soon bonded with her biological little sister Sachi. She also volunteered as a cosplay magical girl to help Nagi get together with Hiro. Overall, Erika feels content to try and be Nagi's platonic friend and roommate, but she and Nagi are still engaged -- and sometimes, they even act like it.

During the field trip in Episode 7, Erika tries to mind her own business, but she can't help but tag along with Nagi to make sure he's happy with Hiro. On top of that, Erika and Nagi visit the beach during sunset -- a classic romantic backdrop -- and take another accidental two-person selfie there. Finally, Erika writes "FRIEND" in the sand and plans to take her picture with Hiro to celebrate their new friendship, only for Hiro to be busy elsewhere. So, Nagi is Erika's best friend in this scene instead, and the tide symbolically erases "FRI" to leave just "END," suggesting that the competition over Nagi might threaten Erika's and Hiro's friendship.

Erika never planned on competing directly with Hiro over Nagi, but it just might happen anyway, and Erika will have to decide what is most important to her: social media fame or her fiancé. Most likely, the love triangle will only heat up even more from here, and more than one friendship might be in peril. It wouldn't be much of a rom-com otherwise.

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Does Segawa Hiro Want Nagi To Rescue Her?

Meanwhile, Nagi's academic rival Hiro can't seem to decide if she wants Nagi in her love life or not. Recent events suggested that Hiro and Nagi are all wrong for one another, what with Hiro being engaged and her mother giving Nagi serious "go away!" signals during a visit to the Segawa family shrine. On the outside, the Nagi-Hiro romance seems hopeless, but in Episode 7, Hiro rekindles the possibility of a scandalous relationship between them. That is, a relationship that Erika herself might support as Nagi's wingman -- or one she'd reject out of jealousy.

Hiro sends subtle but earnest signals to Nagi during the field trip that she resents her current engagement, and that she wants to marry Nagi instead and have him help her run the Segawa family shrine one day. After all, Hiro views her engagement and duty to the family shrine as a serious burden -- one that she won't even tell Erika about. However, she did tell Nagi about it, and overall, this suggests that Hiro does in fact want Nagi to steal her away, marry her and help run the shrine. It seems like a reckless, even foolish move, and it would mean stealing Nagi from his own fiancée Erika.

Erika will more than likely take issue with that and directly compete with Hiro over Nagi to push the love triangle into its most intense phase. If so, all three high school lovebirds are about to plunge themselves into some truly chaotic, possibly heartbreaking waters.