It’s the subtle moments that I think really pull the show together. When Masha meets Kuze you can see the moment her brain goes from “this is my future brother in law so I should make friends with him” to “oh no, this is my longlost childhood friend / first love”, and we never get any exposition explaining it, nor do we get any when she test him by speaking russian to him. Beautiful storytelling.

I’m honestly really sad for Masha. It’s clear she’s going to ultimately lose the love triangle, and I think she already knows that. The Sa-kun she was in love with is in the past, and while there are still some lingering feelings between them, they don’t have a connection anymore like Kuze does with Alya. And Masha seems like she understands that doing anything other than letting those feelings go and moving on would ultimately do more damage to her sister and their relationship than it would do any good for herself or Kuze. But maybe that’s just me reading into things a little and we’ll end up with another mess like over in the other sister love triangle anime, lol.