Crystal Tokyo Anime Blog

       This episode begins in the other world, with it becoming colder and colder, the girl is almost unable to move, she tells the junk doll that she wants him to stay with her, but he continues to work on the craft so they can make their escape from this world.

     Meanwhile, Tomoya and Nagisa prepare for the birth of their child. While Tomoya goes to work each day, Sanae spends the day taking care of Nagisa. Tomoya is uncertain about whether he’s been good or bad for Nagisa, and he even asks Sanae if she and Akio wishes that he had never meet Nagisa that way she wouldn’t be in this situation, Sanae tells Tomoya that she and Akio are glad that he had meet Nagisa for many reasons.

     As Christmas and Nagisa’s birthday are approaching, Tomoya asks Nagisa what she wants? A big dango family of course, but Tomoya says that there’s not enough room. In the end, for Christmas and Nagisa’s birthday, Tomoya still gets Nagisa another large stuffed dango. Youhei stops by for the New Year’s holiday and he’s shocked at seeing how pregnant Nagisa is, then Kyou and Ryou also stop by, and soon Kotomi shows up too. As everyone is making small talk, Youhei asks Tomoya what it feels like to become a father, and soon the girls are also interested in Nagisa’s and Tomoya’s thoughts on parenthood.

      After a few tense moments, Kyou, Ryou, Kotomi, and Youhei figure out that Nagisa and Tomoya are still the same people they knew from before. See, they admit that they were a little uncomfortable because they were worried that Tomoya’s and Nagisa’s new status as a married couple and expecting parents have placed them in a different world from them. Soon, the conversation turns to Kotomi’s field of study, parallel worlds. Kotomi tells them that current theory says that it’s possible that other worlds exist near our world and it’s possible that there could be linkage between these other worlds. Kotomi’s words triggers Tomoya’s memories of a vision he had of a other world that contains a lonely girl. Ryou then tells the group that she still feels that the future is not set in stone, and that there are many possible paths for the future.

      A few days later, Tomoya is watching the construction of the new hospital when Akio walks up and joins him. Tomoya and Akio talk about how the city is changing, and Tomoya tells Akio that he feels that if the construction was stopped that Nagisa would get better, Akio tells him not to be silly, but Tomoya tells him that’s how he feels. At the same time as a heavy snow storm hits the city, pretty much putting a stop to everything, Nagisa develops a fever and begins her labor two weeks early.

           When Nagisa begins her labor, she’s having a tough time with it, and Tomoya holds her hand for comfort. Soon, Akio and Sanae arrive with Yagi-san, Akio tells them that he doubts that any vehicles will be moving because of the storm. Yagi-san soon takes charge of Nagisa’s delivery, she tells Tomoya to remain calm and to give support to Nagisa. Nagisa’s labor lasts for hours, Nagisa loses consciousness several times only to reawaken in severe pain, Tomoya is so upset by Nagisa’s pain that he almost feels like looking away, and he says that it feels like it’s taking an eternity. Then when Tomoya says that he feels that his mind won’t be able to take it any more, Nagisa finally gives birth to a baby girl.

     As soon as Tomoya is handed Ushio-chan, he shows her to Nagisa, but Nagisa is very listless and tired. When Tomoya shows Ushio to Nagisa, she’s very happy that Shio-chan was born safely at home, but Nagisa says that she’s very tired and that she now needs to rest. As Tomoya tries to keep Nagisa conscious by talking to her about their baby, Nagisa’s vision slowly turns blurry, fading to white. Tomoya keeps calling out to Nagisa, and as Ushio’s cries of life bathe the apartment, Nagisa’s gentle and loving spirit leaves this world as she dies.

        Once Tomoya realizes that Nagisa is dead, he sees flashbacks of all the good times he and Nagisa had together, and he comes to the conclusion that if he and Nagisa had never met, they wouldn’t have dated, fell in love, married, and had Ushio, causing Nagisa’s death and creating all this sadness. Well, that’s all for this episode, I couldn’t have taken anymore, anyways.

       Well, I knew that this outcome was possible, maybe even probable, but that knowledge didn’t lessen the impact that Nagisa’s death had on me. I know that there are plenty of Nagisa haters out there, or at least people that would have rather have had Tomoyo hookup with Tomoya instead, but I feel that Tomoya and Nagisa were tied together by the red string of fate.

       What made Nagisa’s character endearing to me was that while she might not have been strong of body, Nagisa was a kind, gentle, caring, and loving soul. Many times throughout this series Nagisa had opportunities to become bitter or angry with her situation or with others, but she instead chose the path of caring and understanding.

     After watching this episode  I found myself experiencing two contrary states of human emotions; joy and profound sadness. First I experienced the feeling of joy for Nagisa seeing her wish completed. When Tomoya asked Nagisa what she wanted, she told him she really wanted a child, and she wanted that child to be born intheir home. Nagisa also told Tomoya that she felt that the life she was bringing into this world was greater than her own. So, in that respect, I felt great joy for Nagisa safely giving birth to her dream, her wish, her child, Ushio. But, I also felt the contrary emotion of profound sadness for Tomoya. In those moments after Nagisa’s death, Tomoya pretty much turned his back on everything that his and Nagisa relationship was built upon, after all the happiness that he and Nagisa experienced together in their courtship and marriage, culminating in the birth of their ultimate expression of love, Ushio. At that moment, Tomoya wished that he and Nagisa had never met, never married, and never given birth to this sadness. To be true to Nagisa and her dream, Tomoya should have seen Ushio as his supreme treasure, a shining jewel to protect, cherish, and to nourish with enough love for two people, but instead I think that Tomoya will go down his father’s path for a while, I just hope it won’t be that long of a journey.

     It’s perfectly OK for Tomoya to feel sadness over Nagisa’s death if it’s for the right reasons, like feeling sad because he misses his wife, his lover, and his soulmate. But, it’s not OK to feel sad because he wishes that he and Nagisa had never met; go ahead and cry Tomoya, but cry for the right reasons. For a better explanation about my feelings on this matter please read the review portion of this post, and enjoy the following poem about what I feel is Tomoya’s and Nagisa’s cycle of life.

This is our Cycle

      This episode begins with Touya getting a phone call at around 5am from Rina, she says she’s calling because Yuki’s too busy to call, Yuki needs to move up the time of their date. Touya suggests 10Am at the scheduled meeting place, or because he was so sleepy was it at 11Am somewhere else? So, the next day both Yuki and Touya board separate trains to travel to the their meeting place. But, it seems that Touya is uncertain about what gate he’s supposed to meet Yuki at, so he goes searching around the station. While waking around, Touya bumps into and knocks a schoolgirl down, and when he tries to help her up she calls him a pervert.

       After talking with the girl, Touya asks her if she’ll look for his girlfriend at this location while he watches another location? She says that she doesn’t know what his girlfriend looks like, and when he tells her his girlfriend is Yuki the idol, she laughs at him. While this is going on it seems that Rina has something up her sleeve, she seems to be searching for Touya for some reason of her own. After a while, the schoolgirl suggests that since Touya and Yuki were supposed to meet at the school anyways that he should just go there and wait, and with this logical suggestion Touya declares the girl to be his goddess of the day. At about this same time, Rina also gives up on waiting and jumps into a cab, also the schoolgirl decides to tag a long with Touya.

      As soon as Touya and the girl arrive at the school, the girl jumps on another bus, and as she’s leaving she tells Touya that she hopes he finds his girlfriend. Back at the train station, it’s after 11Am and Yuki is now waiting for Touya to show up. As Touya is waiting at the high school he sees some smiling kids, and he has flashbacks of him, Yuki, Akira, Haruka, and Misaki all smiling and laughing as kids. Touya then realizes that he’s in the wrong place to meet Yuki, so he goes rushing off to meet her, and in the process he runs right past her as she’s in a phone booth.

     When Touya finally makes it to where he was supposed to meet Yuki, he tries to call her office but they won’t give him her contact information. At the same time, Yuki decides to go to their old high school, and when she gets there she also has flashbacks of her high school days. As the day goes by, Yuki and Touya keep running past each other. Back at Eiji’s office Rina keeps stalling her practice session with Eiji until it gets so late that Yuki’s manager finally gives up and leaves, and Eiji asks if he’s finally free for the day?

      As Yuki’s manager is leaving the office she gets a call from Yuki, and she tells her that it’s too late, so the lesson is canceled for today. As Yuki is leaving the phone booth Touya spots her, and they embrace on the sidewalk. While they are hugging, Yuki tells Touya her secret, she will be releasing a single that Eiji wrote and composed for her. After they talk for a while, Touya asks Yuki if she wants to go back to his apartment, she says no, but she tells him that he can walk her home. As they walk home, they talk about the misunderstanding about the time and place of their meeting, and once they get to Yuki’s apartment she invites him up.

      Yuki tells Touya that she doesn’t want dreams of being with each other to be only in their dreams, so Touya goes inside the apartment building with Yuki. Once they get to her door, Yuki and Touya face each other and begin kissing. While Yuki is in the shower Touya sits on her bed thinking to himself. Well, that’s all for this episode.

      Well, this was another episode filled with misunderstandings, miscommunications, and too much angst. First of all, I really don’t get what the deal is with why Rina has to be the go between for Yuki and Touya, can’t Yuki make a call on her own, and why doesn’t Touya just tell Yuki that he wants her apartment phone number? Also, why can’t these two young adults ever just be able make a date and actually keep to the time and place, I don’t really care if Yuki’s a idol, she should be able to meet him at cafe or at one of their apartments at 11PM or so! Now to the issue of Yuki’s and Touya’s longing for each other, give be a break, they clearly need each others company and have deep feelings for one another. So, if they don’t finally get busy, then as far as I’m concerned, they can pine away for each other and I won’t feel the least bit sorry for them. Well, for now, I’ll keep watching to see how it works out for them, and I’m also interested to see what Rina’s part in the whole story is.      

     This episode begins with Touya talking on the phone Rina while Yuki tries to call Touya only to get a busy signal, after a short interruption by Haruka, Rina offers Touya a part time job helping her manager. At first Touya is hesitant, but Rina mentions the fact that she’ll be working together with Yuki, and then it looks like he accepted the job. As soon as Rina hangs up, Yuki’s call to Touya goes through, they talk for a while and Yuki tells him that she managed to get this Saturday off, but it looks like this might conflict with something Touya has at school, but he manages to get Haruka to take care of the school matter for him. But, before he can tell Yuki about Rina’s job offer, Yuki’s time on the phone runs out, so she has to hang up.

      On Thursday, Touya begins his new part time as Rina assistant manager, as he arrives at the building he finds out that Rina’s brother Eiji (a company president) has fired her main manager, so Touya has to fill in as the full time manager. When Rina sees him entering the building she waves him into a room where he meets a shocked Yuki.

        As Rina is filming a take for her upcoming show, her brother talks with another company president about how Yuki isn’t ready for prime time yet, she’s too nervous. Then Touya waves to Yuki from across the stage, this causes Rina to stop the taping and she slaps Touya for the interruption. She calls Yuki and Touya into a private room, where she proceeds to loudly chew them out. But, this is just a front, while she is supposedly yelling at them, she really arraigned a meeting between Yuki and Touya on the roof.

     On the roof, Yuki tells Touya about how Rina arraigned this for their benefit, Yuki then hugs Touya from behind, and he tells her that that’s her place. He then asks her about the secret she mentioned before, she only tells him on half of the secret (they are going to visit their old high school) and she tells him that he’ll have to wait for their date on Saturday to find out the other half. Before Yuki and Touya finish their meeting on the roof, it looks like someone has spotted them while they were up there.

           Later, we see Yuki calling Touya and breaking their date for Saturday, it seems that president Eiji has something for Yuki to do on Saturday. As soon as Yuki finishes her call, Touya gets a phone call  telling him he’s been fired from both jobs(?). Touya then goes to his father for help, all his father does is give him some food, but when he goes back to the university office he’s told that a tutoring job is available at twice the normal rate if it’s him. When he’s shows up at the tutoring  job someone throws a note down to him telling him to go away for today, so he decides to stop at Echoes to visit Akira.

       While Touya is talking with Akira, Rina bursts in and goes to see her brother, we see that’s she pissed at him for firing Touya, and he tells her to talk it over with him and he quickly leaves the building. As she rushes after her brother, Rina tells Touya that she’ll make it up to him, and Touya wonders to himself if meeting Rina was good luck or bad luck? Well, that’s all for this episode.

     Well, this episode was low key and filled with mystery, it obvious that Yuki and Touya are in the middle of some one’s game, but who’s game is it exactly? It seems to me that Rina’s call and job offer to Touya was her just trying to help out Yuki with her boyfriend, not really flirting or I could be wrong, and it could also be Rina that setup the tutoring job for Touya. I wondering who exactly saw Touya and Yuki on the roof, was it Yuki’s manager, or was president Eiji? If it was the manager did she tell Eiji to fire Touya, or if it was Eiji does he feel that Touya is a distraction keeping Yuki from becoming a “robot/machine” like his sister Rina. I blame a lot of this stuff on Touya’s inaction, I’m sure that when Yuki gets off work and heads back to her apartment, it’s not a prison camp. So, Touya should just head over there and tell Yuki how much he loves her and misses being with her, then they can rock the futon and make some noise, problem solved, angst and longing gone.