Short Synopsis: It’s the day of the performance of Misaki’s play.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
And it’s finally happened. Finally Touya said something that… you shouldn’t say to another girl when you have a girlfriend. It’s now just going to be a matter of time before he breaks up with Yuki, though the interesting thing is that Misaki is now completely out of the picture and hooked up with Akira. The girl has been just one big red herring, whose part only was to break up the relationship between Touya and Yuki, and increase that gap as it went along. It’s now going to be up to Haruka and Rina to finish things.
It’s going to be very interesting, because I think it’s clear now that Rina doesn’t see anything special in Touya, while Touya seems to fancy her, while Haruka is clearly longing to spend more time with Touya, but Touya doesn’t see anything special in her. Now that the Misaki-arc is over, it’s time for the finale of this series to start, and at this point there are so many interesting possibilities for the ending to develop into.
But PLEASE, was it really necessary for Mana to suddenly kiss Touya from out of nowhere? That really had like… no build-up whatsoever. I’ve praised this show for being realistic, but that was about the complete opposite. In fact, that’s going to be a big potential pitfall for this series if it continues to pull these plot twists like in this episode. It’s not bad for now, but if every single girl is going to end up in the hospital (or something similar) due to a random accident, then it’s going to be a bad thing.
In any case, it’s also interesting how Misaki didn’t just force to characters apart from each other, but at the same time she also brought Touya and his father closer together. I’m not sure whether the creators are going to use him some more in the end, but it would be awesome if he would. At first I thought that they hated each others’ guts, but there seems to be a more subtle reason why he kicked his son out of the house. But then again,
It’s not quite clear whether or not Mana did the deed – we see her “hovering” over Touya, and then she blows on his lips.
Also, I have no complaint about Mana’s development. Remember last ep, where she glowingly recited how noble HER oniichan was, how hard he worked after being kicked out etc? She gobbled up everything Touya said before, and it was clear how happy she was to finally have an “oniichan” of her own…
I’m more annoyed about Touya’s confession-rejection reaction. THAT came out of the left field for me. Then again, I never liked Misaki much… glad to have her out of the picture. And her final line to Akira was simply epic ^_^
I think Mana pulled back. The Touya confession seemed odd to me at the time, but in some ways it makes sense. I figure he is just taking whatever he can get easily, since he wants to have something in place before he dumps Yuki.
Akira as your rebound guy is totally punishment. That guy won’t even make time for his crush of 5 years because he is making some lame crime scene thing for the school festival. Akira wasn’t even a critical part; all he was doing was handing out fliers!
I’m really pretty disappointed with this episode. Since the beginning, I felt this story was a bit too ambitious with all it’s heroines, complex plot and a very slow pace. It’s simply too short at possibly 12 or 13 episodes.
With regards to this episode, I felt Misaki’s character was never fully developed to the extent we knew her relationship with Yuki was so strong. Over the course of two weeks Misaki pursued her relationship with Touya. Now she suddenly has a guilt breakdown? Was Yuki that important to her and if that was the case, why hadn’t she made an effort to bring Touya and Yuki together?
As for Touya, I have no idea what the writers have in mind. He suddenly confesses after taking the time to mention Akira’s feelings for Misaki. Second, a close friend is obviously physically and emotionally hurt yet he leaves her in a secluded place. Even if you was rejected that was no reason to leave her there. Pretty convenient that Akira was there.
Back to my original point. Yuki seems to be moving on and probably wrote a letter to breakup with Touya. Will he turn to Rina now? It seems she was looking for a challenge rather than a sincere relationship. With just a few episodes left, we are going to get the breakup, soul searching and the eventual decision. But with so little time left, this is going to feel rushed and we may never know what Rina & company had in mind with Touya. There are simply too many supporting characters that take precious time to really develop the story.
Does anyone know what Touya was doing with those flyers. It looked like he lost it.
I have seen this misunderstanding several times. Akira does not suddenly appear. Touya goes and takes Akira’s job handing out fliers so that Akira can go help Misaki.
It’s pretty awesome how Akira probably thinks that Touya helped him out, when really Touya just sucked face with Akira’s crush.
@Kabitzin – Appreciate the clarification. I just couldn’t figure out what Touya was doing at the end. Much less Akira just showing up.
This episode really had me at a loss, why the hell would he confess?? All the previous episodes clearly shows he has no real interest with Misaki, so Why?? Yea he’s been helping her out with her project, but wasn’t that to kill time, or just out of his sheer kindness? Is he really letting Yuki’s work and their “time” apart get to him? I don’t know what the creators are thinking at this point, really.