With some anime, it’s clear to define the theme of the episode. Asatte no Houkou and Otogi Juushi Akazukin for example. You know it’s a Ibara-Hime episode, you know it’s a Shoko-episode, you know the episode is centred around the mirrors. Red Garden definitely is not one of these series. So many things happen in one episode.
If I had to give the theme of this episode, it’d probably be a Rachel/Rose/Claire episode, focusing on the support of others. Kate probably is the strongest of the four girls at the moment. She actually manages to think of everyone, instead of herself. Claire just acts strong. She likes to act nonchalant, in order to convince herself that she’s fine, while instead, she’s just as disturbed as everyone.
Rachel was a huge wreck in this episode. During the previous episode, she really broke down. She’s also not afraid anymore to hide her worries for her surroundings, and actually treats her friends like garbage and her mother is starting to notice that something’s wrong with her. This worked very well in combination with Rose. She actually has a number of siblings she has to take care off, and she actually cried in front of them. It’ll be interesting to see how such small children will act in the rest of the series. Right after Rose starts crying, we see Rachel again, in front of her friends. You would expect the same, but you get the opposite. Quite nice. Especially when you consider that Rose’s scene alone already was incredibly touching.
Kate will surely crack just like the rest at some point, this series’ approach is too realistic for things to go any other way, I think.
Nice observation about the lack of an episode theme, I think the reason for this is that the characters are just too different and experience things differently. I love how character driven Red Garden has been so far and I really hope they can maintain this quality.
True. I’m also wondering whether the fact that Rachel broke down first, also means that she’ll be the first to recover.