White Album 13 (S1 ending) review; Yuki’s big performance, and nothing is settled.

 

       This episode begins with all three sets of idols getting ready for their concert performances, Yuki’s seems a little nervous, Rina’s venue looks like a sellout, and the Sakura-dan group is missing one member (maybe Touya got to her). As Yuki is about to go on stage, Eiji tells her to forget about everything and just sing. Yuki’s concert seems to go over very well, Rina sings to a fully packed stadium, and the Sakura-dan also plays to a full house. As the concerts are going on we see Haruka sitting by herself, Mana shopping alone, and Misaki and Akira running out of gas. As Rina finishes her concert she rushes from the stadium to the other venue to put on another performance.

 

        After Yuki’s show is done she rushes off stage to cry in Yayoi’s arms. Later, Touya and Yayoi run into each other, and as Touya is about to ask Yayoi to give Yuki his gifts she tells him that Yuki wants to see him. When they meet, Yuki and Touya talk about her concert, and Yuki wonders why Haruka, Misaki, and Akira didn’t show for her concert even though she sent them tickets? Touya tells her that they were just being considerate of their feelings. Then Eiji tells Yuki that they have to leave as she’s giving Touya her x-mas gift, and she tells Touya to come with them. After Touya gives Yuki her gifts she tells him that the phone call ban is over and that she loves him. Touya is left standing there as Yuki and the crew drives off.

       After Yuki and her crew drives off, Eiji offers Touya a ride, later Eiji tells Touya that they won. He also talks to Touya about all his Yuki replacements, he tells Touya that Yuki will probably tolerate unfaithfulness on his part but she probably couldn’t tolerate herself being unfaithful. Eiji tells Touya that both he and Rina do battle with songs, they defeat them, and they make them their slaves. But, he says that Yuki is different, she like a song’s lover, sometimes she wins, and sometimes she loses, she gives off the illusion to the audience that she lives to sing. Eiji asks Touya want he wants to do? Just then, Yayoi pulls up and Eiji tells Touya that his ride is here.

        Then we see that Akira and Misaki have finally made it to a gas station, and they debate whether they should continue on to visit Touya’s father. Misaki tells Akira that she’s sorry, but she promised that she would visit him. When Yayoi drives Touya back to his apartment she tries to put the moves on him, but he stops her and tells her that she’s much too cold. When Touya gets to his door he finds Mana asleep by his door, and he bends down to wake her.

        When Touya wakes Mana, she tries to say that she went to visit a friend but that friend went out with her boyfriend, so she decided to visit him because he was close by and just dozed off. Touya invites her in to warm up, but Mana says she has to go and gives him the gift she wanted to give her friend. Touya notices that Mana looks really cold and a little sick so he insists that a girl with cold hands and cheeks has to come in to warm up. At that point, Mana starts to cry but blames it on the cold wind in her eyes.

        So, Mana agrees to come inside to warm up as long as Touya doesn’t try anything. While Mana is warming up and Touya is making her some food his doorbell rings. Yayoi is back saying that Touya left something, when she sees Mana, she touches her forehead and finds that she’s burning up. Mana asks if this is Yuki, and before he can tell her that she’s Yuki’s manager, Yayoi puts her in the car and drives off. Inside the car Mana asks if Yuki is older than Touya? Yayoi says she’s about the same age and gives Mana a not very nice look.

       Later, Haruka shows up at Touya’s door and he thanks her for the concert ticket. Just as Haruka’s about to say something to Touya she notices a umbrella by the door and food for two at the table. Touya tells Haruka that the weather is to bad for a walk and before he knows it Haruka has run off. Touya then puts two and two together and goes after Haruka but she’s already driven off on her bike. When Akira and Misaki get to Touya’s dad’s house there is no answer when Misaki rings the bell, she notices that the doors open and decides to go in. When Touya finally finds Harukahe asks her why she left so quickly. Haruka asks if the umbrella was Misaki’s? No, Mana-chan forgot it. Haruka asks what the hell was Mana doing at his place, but before he can answer her Akira pulls up in his car and tells Touya that somethings wrong with his father. Then we see Yuki trying to call Touya after she opens her gift, but there’s no answer at his place, and we also see that Yuki’s gift to Touya was a new phone/answering machine. Well, that’s all for this episode and the first season of White Album.

       Well, it’s finally come and gone, season one of White Album is over, and I can’t say it happened soon enough. While I felt that White album started strong and had potential, I feel that the series got bogged down with too much emo self-torture, unrealistic situations, and many of the main characters became just plain unlikeable.

      I think that the concept of a up and coming idol and her boyfriend struggling to keep their high school romance alive through the intervening years is some pretty good material to work with. But, I thought both Yuki’s and Touya’s problems were too silly to be believable, I never bought the whole concept that they could never find a spare hour to see each other and do the whole BF/GF thing.

      As the series began I thought that the supporting characters were interesting and intriguing, but as the series went on I felt that many of them became just plain unlikeable.

       Touya’s buddy Akira, after all the time Touya spent trying to get Akira to hook-up with Misaki you’d think that he’d be grateful when it finally happened, but no, he’s so jealous or paranoid  of  Touya that it almost boarders on a mental disorder. Plus, the way he talks to and treats Misaki he deserves to be promptly dumped by her.

      At first I really liked Misaki, I thought she was calm and refined with her head screwed on tight, but after watching her put up being treated like shit by the theater club’s president and Akira made me feel that she likes being a punching bag.

      I don’t like or dislike Mana or Haruka, both of them are typical of their character types. Mana’s your typical lonely anime schoolgirl. Mana acts tough and together, but she’s really deeply lonely because her parents are almost totaly absent from her life, out of all the girls she’s has the realistic reasons to fall for Touya. Haruka just a messed up and confused young woman, she probably can’t distinguish whether she thinks of Touya as her lost brother or she’s really attracted to him in a romantic way, she needs counseling.

     I also really admired how strong of a character Rina was at the start of the series, but as the series went on she became too indecisive and compromised for my tastes. At one point in the later episodes Rina basically knew the whole deal about what was going on between Touya and Yuki and she could have fixed the problem or at least limited the damage to their relationship by just telling Touya that Yuki really misses him and Yayoi never delivered Yuki’s letter, and she could have told Yuki that Touya really misses her. But, Rina chose to protect Yuki from finding out about Yayoi’s attempts to keep Touya from her, while this might have protected Yuki’s career it might have destroyed the relationship with the man she loves.

     The only character I would really like to see inside their mind is Yayoi. While I can understand her wanting to protect Yuki’s from being distracted by Touya I think that her relationship with him actually means something to her. At first, maybe, Yayoi thought of her sexual trysts with Touya were just part of her “job” but I think she needs him as much as he needed her. Yayoi never struck me as having much of a life after work so maybe her little trysts with Touya where actually filling a void in her life, like I said in a earlier review “the only bad sex is having no sex”. Plus, if Yayoi was only interested in keeping Touya away from Yuki she should heve been happy seeing Mana at Touya’s place but she seemed more concerned with getting the girl out his room then she seemed about Mana’s health, and the look Yayoi gave Mana was quite wicked where it was suggested that she was older.  

       Overall, I feel this series had potential but never used much of it, and I really never came to care for any of the characters so I’ll watch season 2 but I won’t be blogging it. White Album was worth the 25 minutes a week it took to watch it, but it was a hollow meal indeed.