When it rains it pours and Boku dake isn’t pulling any punches. Hinazuki is gone and the only hint of her we see is what looks to be her dead body in front of her parents, one of whom is panicking. With this we have two possibilities. Either they happened upon Hinazuka’s dead body or her mother went too far with a beating and accidentally killed her. Her later actions seem to point to the latter as she throws out the gloves Hinazuki was knitting for Satoru with a dark sneer. It seems that Satoru’s efforts in the past didn’t bear much fruit, though it did delay Hinazuka’s death. He looks to be taking hope in that fact while I personally am more pessimistic about it.
We have our long awaited return to the future and Satoru is right back where he started. Satoru has escaped the police for now and tried to hide out at his manager’s place. It was pretty obvious what was going on when the camera showed a painting of the last supper. Though we have Airi show up to save him after with her saying Hinazukis favorite phrase. Her reasons for helping Satoru are strange to say the least. I understand Japanese culture is different in these matters but it’s really hard to take something seriously when a man loses his job, wife and livelihood all over a misunderstanding about shoplifting a chocolate bar. I mean it’s pretty clear he didn’t do it as he’s a grown adult with a job, the very notion that he would need to shoplift a chocolate bar is absolutely ludicrous. But the smart route to this problem would be to write it off as a mistake, buy the bar and be on their merry way.
I am sorry Airi, you are great but you dad had plenty of ways he could have handled that better without sacrificing his pride. I truly pity the Japanese if something so rudimentary is enough to ruin your life. Strange back story aside, it’s nice to see Airi stand on Satoru’s side. It was especially satisfying to seeing her Punch out the manager for trying to rat Satoru out to the police yet again. This manager really has it out for him, maybe because he happens to have a crush on Airi or maybe because he has a connection to the killer. We briefly see him talking to a man whom the camera is very reluctant to show us his face. All we really know about this man is that he’s clearly in a position of power and obviously connected with the murder and serial kidnappings. There’s a big chance that more than one person is to blame for these incidents and whoever they are I wish they would stop killing off all the best female characters of the series.
Japanese laws and morals at times are VERY wacky, so I could believe this, all over a dumb chocolate bar. A comment on CR said that she might have been lying, but I doubt it. Maybe she planted it in her Dad’s pocket?
Anyway, a stray thought I had while watching the show is “Hey, Satoru doesn’t exactly have full control of his abilities. It seems that the only way he could jump back in time is through tragedy” Well, look at what we have at the end of this episode. He’s run out of people close to him, so I hope he doesn’t need to take too many trips back to the past.
I suppose it’s a cultural thing, that can be hard to understand in other countries.
I think something this triviality is just amusing to me since in this kind of anime it could as well be a comic relief moment, just pounding on how a single decision changes your life. Maybe that was it, just a leitmotiv to relate her to the main character in some way. (Writing can be hard, or dense).