To call Real Drive unconventional would be a bit understatement. When I went into this series, I expected a huge focus on technology and heavy terms, but the focus on Minamo ended up much bigger than I thought. This yet again was another episode without diving.
In this episode, a book that Minamo’s reading turns out to have parts cut off. She initially believes that this is some kind of message or love-letter. Holon, however, corrects her, and says that it’s probably a protest made when all the books got digitalized. Obviously disappointed by this, Minamo tells her grandmother about it (wasn’t she on Haru and Eiichiro’s team before Haru got his accident?) and her grandmother suggests her checking out a certain book called “love letter”.
Minamo starts reading the book, and although it’s a bit too “mature” for her, she’s quickly drawn in. Then, when she just reached the end, t turns out that the final page is missing. Haru then explains that that missing page has been blank all along, and the original purpose of the ending was for the reader to make his or her own conclusion. Apparently, this page was ripped out to write a letter. I’m not sure about the details (Holon is just too much of a walking thesaurus when she starts talking!), but I think that it was meant to preserve a message and to prevent it from getting lost in the digitalization of the books. I that that book kept its final pages blank on purpose, so that who read it could use these pages to write a letter to his or her loved one…
In the end, Minamo finds a name on that book. She’s died now, but as it turns out, she was a former colleague of Haru and Eiichiro as well, before the accident. In the end, I think that Minamo’s grandmother told her about the book, and she rented it herself. She then got inspired to write a small letter to Haru, though she never delivered it. The book then remained in the library for forty years until Minamo picked it up again.
I must say that this was a very interesting way to show something about the people that Haru left behind when he went in coma (at least, I assume that she wrote that letter after Haru’s accident, but I’m not sure. I can’t seem to find the exact date of it). As it turns out, that woman died two years before Haru woke up again. This yet again proofs how the director is a master of characterizations: he knows exactly how to develop them and make the audience care about them, as he showed in Tsuiokuhen, Chevalier and the recent Amatsuki.
I really must say that this is the series I look forward to the most each week. This really is different from your usual mystery-series, as we still hardly know anything about the concept beyond the basics. The thing with this series is that it likes to reveal its mysteries as little as possible. And personally, I love the way the creators decided to handle this.
I think Kushima was the one who gave Kaori the book. She read the book and wrote Masamichi a love letter. Masamichi then went out with Kushima on diving expedient. He wrote back promising to see her after the expedition. Kaori kept his letter in the book. Masamichi fell into coma after the accident. Kaori cried over the letter. She built a seaside park to remind her the last place where Masamichi went on diving. She then quited Kushima’s research institute and started her own business and adopted a son. Her son became her successor to the company. She died two years before Masamichi waking. Her son donated her books with Masamichi’s letter to the city library. No one ever lend out the book until Minamo. In the end, Masamichi was holding his own letter he wrote 50 years ago.
I found this episode to be very moving. So much life has gone by as Masamichi slept in his coma. Loved ones died off and the scenery has changed so much. Diving, something that as in it’s infancy when Masamichi did his fateful dive is now a realization. Kushima, who doesn’t age apparently (cyborg/android I’m assuming), knows all of this as it really the only person left that Masamichi can speak with on the past. I think Kaori demonstrates quite well the emotion of the viewer. It was a very moving episode and expertly done. Bravo.