Crystal Tokyo Anime Blog

       This episode picks up with Rina questioning Touya about his relationship with Yayoi, how did it happen and so forth? Touya tells her it just sort of happened; what does it matter I’m just an obstacle to Yuki’s career? Rina tells him it’s too dangerous, and that Yayoi can’t love anyone but Yuki? Touya tells her that he’s sorry it happened this way, so Rina asks him for a date, but he says he’s already been asked.

         During Touya’s next shift at Echoes, Rina shows up to see Touya but he takes off with Yayoi leaving Rina alone with the master.  When they get to Touya’sapartment, Touya tells Yayoi that she can’t become Yuki’s replacement but she can become something else. Once inside his apartment Yayoi asks him what she can become? Touya embraces Yayoi from behind and he tells her she can become “the goddess of the day” as he maneuvers her on to his bed.

       The next day after a emotional workout session Touya enters a room to find Rina waiting for him. As he’s about to speak, Rina tells him to shut up and listen to Yuki’s words. Rina reads off Yuki’s undelivered letter to Touya from memory, the letter explains to Touya why Yuki didn’t tell him about the concert and why she’s avoided him, and the letter covers all of Yuki’s hopes and fears about her upcoming concert. After hearing Yuki’s words, Touya breaks down in tears, Rina tells him that she can’t stand to be near someone who causing her dear Yuki this much and fires him on the spot.

Then we get a little montage of Touya’s memories of Yuki.

      Later,  we see Touya making a call to Yuki, and he only gets her answering machine. When Yuki gets home she sees her machine flashing and she plays Touya’s message. He tells her he got her message from Rina, and that he’ll be at her concert no matter what, he also says sorry. Yuki wonders why he got her message from Rina, and she struggles with herself resisting the urge to be strong and not call Touya. Then we see Touya failing to find a concert ticket for Yuki’s show, and the next day Mana makes fun of him for not getting his ticket soon enough. Mana also insinuates that if Yuki really was his GF she would have sent him a ticket, or he should have gotten one from Rina, either way she thinks he needs a shrink.

       Later Haruka and Mana meet up and Mana tells Haruka what happened with Touya not having a concert ticket, in the middle of their conversation Haruka gets up and calls Yuki a idiot and rides off. Then Misaki calls Touya and she finds out about Yuki not sending Touya a ticket and she is confused by Yuki’s actions. Touya also refuses to go visit his father with Misaki during the holiday saying it’s better for the both of them this way. Later, we see Mana asking her mother for a favor, then we see Mana giving Touya a ticket to Yuki’s concert, plus she bought him a gift to give Yuki for her birthday.

      When Touya gets back to his apartment he finds that Misaki and Haruka have both left him tickets to Yuki’s concert, now he has three tickets to the main event. The next day we see Akira and Misaki walking down a path when the drama club’s president steps onto the path and he tells them that he’s tried to see Misaki so he can apologize to her but her “boyfriend” is always in the way. So, he begins to apologize to Misaki when he stabs her with one of her prop knives, then he rushes off. When Akira  kneels beside Misaki he finds out that she’s not really hurt because the poetry book that Touya returned to her has broken the knife blade, Akira is angry that Touya manages to save the day when he’s not even here.

       Then, on the night before Yuki’s concert, we see that Yayoi has shown up at Echoes to give Touya a “ride home”, he tells the master that it’s only a ride.  When they get to his apartment, Yayoi begins her usual seduction of  Touya, but he tells her this has to stop. She continues to touch and caress his body, she asks him if he’s fallen for her or if he loves her? He says no. Then why don’t you stop me? Touya says that he only loves Yuki. Yayoi begins to kiss him again and says that she can’t allow that to happen. The next day we see Touya entering the concert hall to see Yuki’s show. Well, that’s all for this episode.

        Well, with only one episode left to go in White Album’s first season almost everyone’s plans and schemes are revealed. Rina now knows about Touya’s sexual trysts with Yayoi, and she also now knows the the full extent of just how far Yayoi will go to protect Yuki’s concert debut. What I found interesting is that Rina gave Touya a chance to stop his affair with Yayoi, she warned him that Yayoi would never be able to love anyone. But when push came to shove, Rina chose to fire Touya instead of also confronting Yayoi about her part in the Touya/Yayoi affair, could it be that she realized if this became a battle her brother would side with Yayoi?

       In this episode Touya also finds out that Yayoi sat there and lied to his face whenever he brought up the issue of Yuki’s not trying to communicate with him, and he also knows that Yayoi threw out Yuki’s important letter. But, whats even more interesting is that even after knowing all of Yayoi’s lies Touya still chooses to continue their affair and have sex with her. Maybe, Touya is just a needy guy, a guy that has to have a woman around him even if he knows she’s lies to him and he’s nothing more than a peice of meat to her?

       I wonder how Yuki is going to deal with Yayoi now that she knows that her manager lied to her and never delivered her letter to Touya. I don’t think that Yuki’s reaction will be very pleasant when she finds out that everyone knew about Yayoi’s and Touya’s affair but her. But, like I’ve said in earlier reviews, Yuki has to take responsibility for quite abit of her relationship problems. Yuki shouldn’t have relied on a third party to communicate her feelings to her boyfriend, if she would have just given in to her desires and slept with Touyaso he wouldn’t be out there trying to nail every piece of warm girl flesh he runs across because he can’t figure out whether on not his GF cares about him.

       I think that the most interesting character in this whole series is still Yayoi. I really would like to know want she really thinks, even though she says she’s just doing her job I wonder if she really wishes that Touya would fall for her? Yayoi has always left me feeling that she’s a deeply lonely person, so I wonder if she would be happy becoming Yuki’s replacement for real, if it would make her happy knowing that her and Touya’s sexual relationship means something more that just sex. I actually think that Yayoi and Touya could make a believable couple, just imagine the lying, cheating, emotional monster they could give birth to, sweet. 

        Well, since the true end of the series has come and gone these last two “extra” episodes have afforded me the time to begin the process of re-watching the entire series. I feel that the ending of Clannad has taken too much heat in the blog0-sphere, so I’m re-watching the whole thing in order to do a meta post that will attempt to defend the series and it’s ending. I personally feel that Clannad has been one of the best examples of a anime of it’s genre I’ve seen in years. Hopefully the review will be ready in about two weeks. 

        This episode begins one year before the start of the Clannad series, Nagisa is looking up at the class assignment board to find out that none of her friends from her junior year is in her new class. Kimura walks up and tells Nagisa not to worry because she’s a nice girl and will make friends in her new class. After Kimura heads off to her class, Tomoya bumps into Nagisa as he’s walking past her and Nagisa apologizes to him, and he tells her no big deal.

       Then we see Youhei and Tomoya having to do outdoor punishment work, they got caught trying to sneak out of class. Kyou walks up and starts chewing ass, she complains that she’s tired of having to keep a eye on them, she really didn’t want to be class rep because of guys like them. As Youhei is trying to sneak away he knocks over some wood, and Tomoya saves Kyou from the falling wood pile. As they’re walking home together, Kyou introduces herself to Tomoya, but she doesn’t really acknowledge Youhei, she tells them to make this year as smooth as possible.

       Once Nagisa gets home, Akio asks about her day? Nagisa tells him that she didn’t talk to a single person and felt lonely, dad tells her that she should just jump right in, but Nagisa says that it doesn’t feel right. Nagisa tells her dad that she wants to change but it might take a while. Akio gives Nagisa some pretty wild examples of how to break the ice with people so they’ll want to get to know her. The next day, as Nagisa is sitting in class, she daydreams about using one of dad’s suggestions to break the ice, but she can’t bring herself to try it. Another girl is watching Nagisa closely and she seems interested in Nagisa.

        Then we see Kyo walking up to a sleeping Tomoya, and as she’s about to wake him she thinks to herself that he looks cool and wonders if he has a girlfriend? Youhei sees Kyou looking over the sleeping Tomoya and rushes over to them and gets her pissed off. Then Youhei begins his long tradition of getting his ass kicked by girls. After school, Kimura drags Nagisa with her and another girl to do some window shopping. They have a good time, and Kimura even pulls a joke on Nagisa. She tells Nagisa that it’s too bad that she can’t be this loose in class because it would help her make friends.

         Back at home, Nagisa tells her dad that she was lonely again, he tells her that out of thirty kids she should find at least one kid that she clicks with. You just might meet a new best friend or someone you’ll come to cherish, but if you do nothing you’ll remain a stranger to everyone forever. He suggests that Nagisa take a load of Sanae’s bread to class as a “prank” or a “surprise” then everyone will find her interesting. Later, we see Ryou reading Kyou’s fortune, she tells her sister that a guy will confess to her tomorrow. Then we see that Youhei is planning a prank on Kyou, and it involves a confession letter.

        The next day we see that Youhei’s plan seems to be having the desired affect on Kyou, and we see Nagisa walking into her classroom, she sees the other girls talking casually but is unable to join them. When Nagisa finally tries to join the banter, she’s too late, and the girl from the other day seems to be watching Nagisa. After the school’s welcoming ceremony is over Kyou makes her way to the place where she’s supposed to meet her “guy”, she wonders to herself what she’s expecting from this meeting. When she gets to the library she sees a message sending her somewhere else, it seems that Youhei is sending her on a wild goose chase, and Kyou is falling for it. Youhei is leaving written messages to Kyou that just send her from one place to another. Tomoya tells Youhei that he should stop this, but he’s says that this is too much fun, as Youhei finally agrees that he’ll do this one last message Kyou catches them in the act and she lays a ass whooping on them.

        Then we see that Youhei is planning another prank and he wants Tomoya to go along with it, Tomoya half heartily agrees to the prank. We see that they have suspended a large paper ball above the school’s walkway with a string and note attached to it (the note says pull this and something wonderful will happen). Most students seem too suspicious of the object to mess with it until Nagisa stops and pulls on the string. The ball opens up, confetti and a banner drops from the ball and a large pot falls on top of Nagisa’s head knocking her out, Youhei seems happy but Tomoya seems horrified by the results. When Nagisa wakes up inside the nurse’s office she sees a girl from her class sitting by her side. They start talking and the girls asks Nagisa if they can be friends, Kimura told her that Nagisa was a wonderful person. Nagisa and the girl get a good laugh out of the whole situation, and they start to hit it off.

         Back at Kyou’s house, Kyou asks her sister if kindergarten teachers feel this tired? Then we see that Youhei is planning another love letter prank, Tomoya seems quite bored by this and we see Misae’s cat Shima sitting next to Tomoya. When Nagisa gets home she tells her parents that she meet a new friend at school today, and she decided to keep the banner from the  prank because something nice happened to her because of it. Well, that’s all for this episode.

        Watching this episode was kind of like sitting back and wondering to one’s self “how did I ever get this collection of friends”?A lot of anime series starts with the main characters already having a circle of friends and those series usually never cover the subject of how those characters met in the first place; we just ride along with the action and wonder if the main characters will hook up with their love interests or achieve their goals, so it was pretty nice seeing how Tomoya first met Kyou and how the strings of fate started tugging on everyone involved.

        Many schools of thought make the assumption that there are webs of fate or “webs of connections” that link groups of people and we are just not attuned to seeing those connections. So, in this episode we begin to see how all the main characters are being slowly drawn together by unseen forces. Call it fate, or call it destiny, but all the main character are slowly being pulled together. A perfect example of this is how Youhei’s and Tomoya’s nasty prank actually ended up helping Nagisa. Akio urged his daughter to do something, anything, to try and break the ice with her classmates, but she remained frozen/afraid to standout. So, when Nagisa pulled the string and triggered the prank it actually helped her make her first new friend. Hell, after all her classmates find out what she did and she’ll probably be the talk of the class for weeks.

        In this episode, I really wanted to kick Youhei’s ass, he really was a unthinking jerk, causing pain to cute girls for his own amusement is a high crime. Also, I laughed my ass off when Akio’s hair strung twin ahoge just like his daughter when he was showing her how she should act to get more attention from her classmates, classic. Overall, I really enjoyed this trip down Clannad’s memory lane.

       This episode begins with Fujioka asking Kana to give Chiaki a book that she wanted to read after he was finished with it. After thinking about it for a while, Kana just tells Fujioka to stop by and give it to Chiaki himself, he seems happy. All the while, Riko is watching from the other side of the classroom, she wonders aloud how she can get closer to Fujioka? Then Hiroko shows up and starts making observations of Fujioka and makes some comments about the Fujioka/Minami bancho triangle. Soon, Hiroko is giving Riko advice on how to snag Fujioka from Kana, she tells Riko that even though Fujioka only has eyes for Kana, Kana has no intentions with Fujioka, so confess to him, but don’t look weak. Keiko doesn’t think this approach will work, but she holds her tongue.

      So, during break, Hiroko takes Riko and Keiko to see Yuu, she wants Riko to practice confessing to Fujioka, Hiroko has a less than enthusiastic Yuu pretend to be Fujioka. Well, Riko tries her best to practice but when she finally gets out the nerve to see Yuu as Fujioka she freezes up, and Yuu chews Riko out for concentrating on looks vs conversation. Then Kana walks out of the classroom and Yuu rushes over and starts talking with her, telling her how cute she is, and touching her hair. Hiroko who has a girl crush on Yuu gets upset and grabs Yuu away from Kana.

       Later that day Kana asks Riko is she would be interested in coming over her house for a study session with Keiko and, oh-my god Fujioka. Riko is so shocked by the offer that Kana thinks that she might not want Fujioka at the study session, but Riko soon agrees to come over. Once Kana gets home she soon wonders what hospitality is? Warmth.

        The study session seems to go very well, Haruka and Chiaki serve the guests refreshments. After a while the guests are offered a bath, Riko and Keikoseem too embarrassed to go first so Fujioka is offered first use, he says he’s going home soon so he’ll pass. But Kana asks if he’s refusing her offer of hospitality, and even Chiaki offers him some towels, so he can’t refuse. So, when Fujioka enters the bathroom he thinks to himself that this is the bath Kana uses, he doesn’t want to dirty the tub so he takes a shower. After Fujioka is finished, Riko enters the bathroom she thinks that this is the bath that Fujioka used. So, she ends up taking a shower too. Then it’s Keiko’s turn, she thinks to herself that using someone else’s bath is scary, so she takes a shower too. Then after all the guests have used the bath Kana decides to take her turn, she removes the cover and hops in the tub and we see that Kana has added chili peppers to the water to add warmth. After a few minutes in the tub Kana finds out the meaning of warmth, she rushes back into the room and asks the guests how the bath really was?

      The next day, everyone is discussing their test scores, and Riko did very well. When Keiko asks her why she’s happy she tells her that someday Fujioka will ask her for help (Riko then goes onto Hosaka mode). But, Riko finds out that Kana and Fujioka also did very well on the test due to Keiko’s help. So, when Kana asks Riko for further studying help, she feels pressured by Riko to refuse Kana (more Hosaka mode). Then Riko finally agrees to help Kana, but she only helps in a half assed way. When the test results come in Kana managed to outscore Riko with a 99, (poor Riko, the best laid plans of mice and men are often foiled by fools).

        A few day later, Kana, Touma, Mako-chan, and Chiaki are discussing Valentine’s day, Kana just blows it off saying that she’s got no one to give anything to anyways, she just wants to play Othello. Soon, Kana decides to teach Chiaki about the V-day art of making homemade chocolate. But in the end, Mako-chan and Chiaki end up making everything while Kana just plays Othello. Chiaki’s chocolate turns out really tasty, even Mako-chan made some chocolate, and Kana chides her/him about who’s she’s giving it to? No one. Why not Chiaki? Kana then tells Chiaki that she should give anyone within reason some chocolate for experience purposes, Chiaki thinks long and hard about the within reason point. So, the next day Makoto is thinking that Chiaki will be giving her chocolate to someone who doesn’t matter, after all, that chocolate was dropped on the floor. Makoto is really getting his kicks over someone getting her “doesn’t matter chocolate” until he gets Chiaki’s chocolate. Well, that’s all for this episode.

        Very nice episode, I really liked how Riko went into Hosaka mode when she was thinking about plans for getting alone time with Fujioka. As the Minami-ke series goes on it seems like whatever brain disorder Hosaka has is very contagious and is quickly spreading. I can’t believe that Kana missed her opportunity to get free food, she should have figured out that if she gave Fujioka some V-day treats he would have to repay many times over on White Day. But, it’s also not surprising that she can’t figure this out since she seems to be the only one who doesn’t notice that Fujioka is seriously crushing on her. Poor Makoto, he thought that his status with Chiaki had improved, he seems to be confusing his relationship with Chiaki as Mako-chan with his real life status.  But, he should take this chance and get Chiaki something really nice for White Day? Could it be that he is getting a little too comfortable as Mako-chan?

       Overall, I’m really enjoying this season of Minami-ke, I could care less about the animation style issues, I watch Minami-ke because I love the comedic interactions between the characters, and it’s outrageous stoylines.