This episode sets the focus squarely on Suwa and his secret/ not-too-secret affection for Naho. Suwa is actually the one who always look after Naho, and he would do anything to make the girl safe and happy, even if it means he will eventually end up losing her. Normally I never buy that kind of love, simply because I believe if you truly love someone, you have to be a little selfish. You would want that special someone to yourself only. All that to say Suwa’s sadness is just so damn appealing that it’s hard to fault him for being too nice. Naho, on the other hand, takes his kindness for granted and she’s just too occupy about her feeling towards Kakeru to really notice everything around her. This episode gives her moment to really takes a step back and looks around, so that she could notice the efforts of everyone around her, Suwa especially, and moreover she has to acknowledge that. The two developments from Suwa and Naho come together nicely in the last scene, but I’m not entirely happy with its execution. There are 3 consecutive scenes where the show basically repeats the same message. In the first scene we have Kakeru asking Suwa if it’s alright for him to go watch fireworks alone with Naho, then the next scene the group teasing Suwa on the girl he likes, just so that the insensitive Hagita bluntly speaking out loud. The very next scene we have the girls confront Suwa again, asking him directly if he will help supporting Naho and Kakeru, in which he agrees. Those scenes are variation of the same things: Suwa has a felling for Naho and everyone but her notices that, but Suwa decides to steps down and being a supportive player. I get it but sometimes repeating the point too much and it lost its impacts. While I personally think the last scene is rewarding and effective, I also feel the story drags down too much in that middle part.
This week orange mentions time travel for the first time and honestly I don’t really care much about that. After all, the time travel element in the show is just the setup to progress the story, there’s no point to delve much into that. When the teacher goes for the technicality of time travel; about how it could produce alternative timelines, my mind wanders right back to Steins;Gates; which is very fitting because the director Hiroshi Hamasaki was the director of Stein;Gates. The topic of time travel was then explored nicely by the discussion between Suwa and Kakeru: “Would you go to the past or future if you could time travel”. It’s interesting to note that Kakeru really wants to go back to the past to fix his regrets, which is exactly what the future-self Naho has been doing. The conversation also hints at the insecurity of Kakeru, which further evident by his message towards Naho asking who she sent her chocolate for on Valentine Days. He hides his feeling well from his friends, but he is the one who always looks back to the past, feeling regrets with what he could do and refuses to look ahead to the future.
This episode still has an awful lot of still frame and the animation itself is a huge step down compare to the first three episodes. Let’s take a look at one of this week’s screenshot and you can see the quality of the animation was dropped to the point their faces are slightly deranged. While I can accept it last week as an illustration for Naho’s feeling hangover, there is no excuse this week and I start to think that this is more of a budget thing. Sadly, if it’s true then I have to come to terms with the animation quality. Overall, I think this is my least favorite of orange so far, both because the story could have been neater and more impactful, and the animation quality has decreased significantly. It’s not a disaster yet but I really hope the show can pick up itself from here.
~SuperMario~
