Well, so this was an episode for the romance on the show. The evil coach is gone, and most of his team transferred away again, with the exception of Azuma. The training pitch has become a lot less like a war-zone, and Kou and the others finally can practice in the open, which results the popularity of the main cast members growing quickly, as shown by the countless amount of fans for Azuma, Kou and Aoba.
This paragraph contains a MAJOR Touch SPOILER, so look away if you haven’t seen it yet. And so, it was inevitable for rumours to start wandering around, in true Adachi-fashion. This time, it’s spread by Akaishi who feels that the two of them would make a nice couple. but the big difference with Touch at that point was that Minami was already in love with Tatsuya while Kazuya was still around while Kou and Aoba only got closer after Wakaba’s death.
This episode also showed a potential girlfriend for that guy whose name I can’t remember. It’s very nice to see this series break through a flaw that a lot of romance series seem to suffer from: the “only main characters may fall in love”-syndrome, in which the side-characters almost never seem to get hooked up themselves, amidst the romantic adventures of the lead characters.
The rest of this episode was filled with the banter between Kou and Azuma, who seems to have moved into Kou’s house since losing his scholarship. The two of them work surprisingly well together in these light-hearted moments. I’m really glad to see that even after seventeen episodes, this series still hasn’t shown any sign of losing its wit. My personal favourite still remains Akaishi. I just loves how innocent he tries to look whenever things don’t go his way.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Did you find the discussion between Kou and Aoba to progress their relationship? I can’t tell from just their expressions. Seems like there is still a big rift between them but a moment of realization did seem to occur.
The first season of Touch was excellent. Very enjoyable. I didn’t find the other productions (possibly second season) to be very fulfilling. I’ll leave it at that.
In the manga, I always got the feeling that Aoba always liked Kou, even while Wakaba was around, but pretended not to like him because of Wakaba. And the way that Wakaba would force Kou to do things that would make him more attractive to Aoba (learning to pitch) makes it seem like she knew, too.
I am definitely looking forward to seeing Azuma work with Kou now.
subs are out. Seems like everyone sees the relationship between Kou x Aoba. Well, Aoba seems to be the first to want to be a part of Kou’s dreams. Funny how he is still so caught up with Wakaba to recognize it. I am gussing he needs to fulfill all of Wakaba’s dreams before he can reciprocate Aoba’s advances. In some ways, it follow’s Touch. I wonder if Adachi can surprise us.
Great, great episode filled with little Adachi moments that it’d be hard not to love.
fckin boring show
well if you’ve read the latest manga chapter of Cross Game, its so clear, so clear that Aoba and Ko are so into each other..its like a dream pairing..XD