Okay. What the heck?
This episode had a very good chance to be among the best of this series yet. It was chock full of character-development, changing relationships, extra character-backgrounds, characters coming to realizations. Touya spinning even more out of control, and yet everything fitted. To think that Menou was the president’s daughter! That fully explains her rebellious attitude and it also gives a whole direction to Mana’s loneliness: she doesn’t just suffer from being neglected by her mother, but she also has to endure the fact that her older sister gets much more attention, because she just happens to be able to sing well.
Also, Akira and Misaki have finally broken up, which also really had it coming. Even though Touya tried to stay away from them, it was clear that Misaki still had feelings for him. She tried dating Akira, but in the end her feelings remain. Touya then obviously continues to screw even her. Or at least this is implied very heavily.
But yeah, we get more and more evidence that everything that made Touya the way he is stems from his childhood, and his relationship with his father. My guess is that the reason his father kicked him out of the house was in a desperate attempt to make him create his own happiness. It’s clear now that his father was very bad at raising his son: he wanted to reach out to him when Touya was feeling down, yet instead he tried making little girls do it.
But then, yeah. The cliffhanger. KANON-SPOILERS in the next paragraphs.
Akira… was hit by a car. Bloody hell, it’s now certain that the creators are planning to drop a bomb during the finale. I have to praise this show for really making me not suspect anything: even in retrospect, it came completely out of the blue: no shallow build-up or foreshadowing. But yeah: car accidents are always tricky to do. The question is: did the creators have a clear purpose for it. Are they going to use this to get the best out of the characters… or was this just a cheap death for extra melodrama.
I remember when Kanon pulled this, and I was reminded the most of that particular scene when Akira crashed down. In Kanon, it hardly served any purpose; it felt random and out of place, and just for the sake of a sad climax. This is pretty common in anime (or any other storytelling medium, I guess): We need extra drama! Let’s have a car run over someone!
These final episodes are really going to make or break this series. It’s been building up to this for so long, there had better be fireworks at that ending. What I want to see is total chaos that yet stays in canon with the rest of the series: I want melodrama that fits within the story without any cheap plot twists pulled solely for the purpose of extra drama. We’ve got Code Geass for that.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
I’d say Code Geass had both of those actually, twists that fit within the story and twists that were just for drama, but this isn’t really the place to discuss those details to death. 😛
I’m not watching White Album yet, because this kind of show tends to make me suffer a lot (except for School Days, which was too predictable because of game spoilers), but don’t mind reading these blog posts in the meanwhile.
In fact, I actively want the show to end and depending on the ending I’ll decide if it’s worth checking out. I think that may defeat the point but hey, sometimes that’s necessary. I don’t feel the need to do that with Umineko or most series though.
NOW HANG ON! *stop sign*
I got the feeling that the car crash was in Haruka’s mind (brought on by post traumatic stress disorder perhaps) and may not have happened!
I really enjoy white album but I don’t know why some people think it will end like school days. There’snot such ending in the game so why it would happen in the anime? Someone could commit suicide but I don’t see why someone would go as far as kill someone else in white album. That would just not fit.
yeah,I also can’t see any niceboat possibilities here.The characters aren’t emo enough to make them go as far as to stab Touya (with the only exception is Mana,we have seen her emo face once in ep. 21)