It’s episodes like this one that really make it unfair to wait for an entire week to see what happens next. Such a powerful episode even though it was nothing like your average dramatic anime episode. Aoi Hana really feels like one of the most realistic romances I’ve seen in a long time and it works incredibly well so far.
In this episode you could really see the distance between Fumi and Yasuko. It all starts with Fumi seeking refuge at Akira because of what happened in the previous episode, which is when she realized that Yasuko is still hung up over her past crush. In the meantime Akira finds out through Kyouko (who obviously has been researching on Yasuko) that Yasuko has four sisters, one of which previously taught at their high school.
The main meat of tihs episode however was about Yasuko, finally deciding to show Fumi her family and vice versa, and at that point we get to see a totally different version of Yasuko. At home, she’s really known as the spoiled princess. As the youngest, she often gets looked down upon by her sisters. You’d think that that would make her stronger, but because she’s seen as a role model outside of her family, she instead chooses to withdraw whenever her sisters or mother start to annoy her.
On top of that, Fumi makes a huge mistake of mentioning to her sisters how one of them taught at their high school, without ever mentioning that she had that knowledge to Yasuko herself. Fumi makes even more stupid moves, by actually taking the side of her family, rather than of Yasuko, and also mentioning how she previously was in love but got dumped.
That all leads to the end of this episode, in which Yasuko proposes to break up. That’s one very nasty cliff-hanger there. If the two of them manage to stay together like this and grow to accept their differences, they’ll probably get a lot closer to each other, however the chance of the two of them really breaking up is really big, and I’d really hate to see that happen. It’s exactly because the two of them are so different that they form a very nice couple.
I also wonder. Kyouko obviously got her crush on Yasuko because of her popular image, but I wonder whether she’d be still as enthusiastic about her when she learned that she also had a vulnerable side. In that way you can really see that Yasuko cares about Fumi: I don’t think that she’s ever willingly shown her weak side to anyone else, but Fumi at the same time is just so dense that it’s going to take a lot of effort for the two of them to fully trust each other.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Aoi Hana – 07
You forgot to mention that the art was yet again better than ever this ep.
Seeing Yasuko’s family was great-the previous episodes have focused on a very closed cast of characters, so it felt very fresh compared to this show’s usual awesome, and the character development on Yasuko’s end was amazing.
It’d really suck if they broke up right after coming out to her family, and for both of them. Yasuko would face yet more teasing from her family and close further in on herself, and everything that happened in just one day would be a shock to Fumi, who’s already coming out of a painful betrayal. Next episode could turn out to be hugely depressing.
Yup. You could see Yasuko pondering a mile a minute how Fumi could possibly know that her sister was a teacher.
I suspect it might make her immediately think that Fumi’s learning things from a certain someone. And that someone would undoubtedly be Akira.
So maybe she’s wondering just how close Fumi and Akira are, since there are moments in previous episodes where she kept wondering why Fumi talks about her best friend so much.
I got the feeling that the sister who used to be a teacher may have been involved with the teacher Yasuko was in love with, hence why the whole episode would be a sore point for her; and why that sister would have reason to feel guilty. Also all the sisters obviously knew about Yasuko’s love for that teacher, hence the comment about “currently in love with Fumi” and being bisexual.
I don’t think that Yasuko would break up with Kyouko after going through all the trouble of introducing her to her family. We’ve all been in a situation where we’re feeling so down that we just want to give in and give up on everything. If the two can make it through this, their relationship will be so much stronger!
Sorry, I mean’t Fumi, not Kyouko!