And suddenly, after weeks of hovering around, Irozuku has some sort of urgency this week. You see, Hitomi’s spell starts to wear off and she only has 2 days left to say goodbye to this world. NOW the cast has some motivation to actually do necessary stuffs before time running out. That means Kohaku has to bare all the responsibility of bringing her back to her time safely, and Hitomi has to sort all her feeling out before the moment comes. Both the visual and the narrative are purposeful this week (something I can’t say for their previous episodes). In specific, the moment where she… whoops… vanishes into thin air, Irozuku makes it feel as if time has stopped. Or the moment later where Hitomi making those paper planes and communicate with Aoi by switching her light on and off, it works because it’s understated. These small moments like this is what Irozuku unfortunately missed during its middle section.
It still comes a bit out-of-nowhere the way Hitomi suddenly disappears and how Kohaku later informs us that it’s a sign that she has to go back home. I mean, we didn’t learn about this Okabe-situation before, and it doesn’t help that the day they want to cast the magic is on the same day with the School Festival. I’m willing to put all these aside, however, because this is the only rare times where I see the cast actually having some purposes. Chief among them is Kohaku, with all the burden of whether or not she can do it, and do it safely. Then it’s also a matter of gathering up the right material, which in this case is the pure magic sand. The rest of the club has some nice development where at first they’re sad to receive the news, but determine to do their best to help bringing Hitomi back to her timeline safely, even if they aren’t gonna see her ever again.
As for Hitomi, she doesn’t take this news too well. She knows it has to be done, but she doesn’t want to leave the world where she has good friends and where she finds her first crush, Aoi. There’s a saying that “either you have a sense of urgency today, or you have a sense of regret tomorrow”, this time both Aoi, and her wanted to say what they feel towards each other. What happens next is that they reach to each other without a single word. As they both race to each other’s house and meet halfway (boy, I’m glad there’s only one route to their houses), and embrace each other in a near-full moon. Time remaining might be too short for the two now, but finally they can be able to express how they really feel.
