Kobato – 15

With this episode, I’m glad to have stuck with this series. It was a fairly simple episode, but so many emotions were put into it. This episode showed that the creators know how to build up and use it to create heart-warming drama.

And with well fleshed out characters like in this series, even the episodes with cliched premises turn out to be a treat. This probably was the best “sudden illness”-episode I’ve seen in a long, long while. First of all, Sayaka’s illness actually made sense within the storyline, rather than having it as a deus ex machina: she’s extremely stressed through her work, and this has been going on for God knows how many months. It’s actually a very subtle hint to how much she’s worrying, because she’s gotten quite good at hiding it.

Second of all, the illness is not just used to create cheap drama, but what Kobato went through in this episode was surprisingly touching and genuine. There are a ton of characters who seem to have emotions bottled up inside of them in this series, and I think that with Kobato they’re hidden the deepest. We now know that she’s suffering some sort of trauma due to the death of a loved one. If the amnesia is because of that, or something else caused it we don’t know yet. Amnesia is a really dangerous plot device though: it can lead to a very compelling series, or be a show-destroying plot device when used cheaply. Thankfully Kobato seems to be edging to the former, but I can’t say for sure yet.

It’s also here where Kobato’s voice actress proved herself. She really got into her role and managed to handle the dramatic parts really well, not crossing the bounds into either emotionless or overacting. I have to admit: I only started blogging this show because the current season really doesn’t have anything else. But this episode really surprised me how charming this series’ innocence has become.
Rating: *** (Awesome is not exactly the right word, but I really really liked it)