Subculture Anime Blog

Tsuma desu~!

Summary:

Chihiro wonders when she had given up on escaping the area she has been trapped in, before opening her eyes in her room. She takes a look at her diary, before making her usual preparations for the day. When he was a child, Kyosuke viewed a video of his beautiful mother. His mother entered behind him, and expressed her wish for Kyosuke to find his dreams as she did hers. In the present time, Kyosuke believes that he has found his dream by filming Kei. Finding that he has been filming her during her basketball practice, Kei punches Kyosuke in the stomach. The image of Miyako with Hiro is still burned into Kei’s memory as she walks out, while Hiro wakes in thought of Kei at the same time. Chihiro meets Renji at the train station, and agrees to write the novel with him. Bringing up the events that happened during the previous day, Chihiro makes Renji take responsibility for them. Chihiro also mentions that Renji has revived a dream that she had once given up on.

At school, Kei confronts a passing Miyako with a wish to talk to her. Finding that the conversation wouldn’t be pleasant, Miyako claims that she does not wish to hear it. Miyako starts to leave for home, and suggests that Kei can talk to her if she believes that it is worth skipping class for. While walking together with Renji, Chihiro brings up that it is almost time to eat. Renji suggests that she can eat with him, which leads to Chihiro’s belief that she will be eating food that Renji has cooked. Renji’s mother quickly introduces herself to Chihiro when she arrives at their house, as does Kuze who is also there. While Renji prepares lunch for them, his mother and Kuze tease Chihiro about her relationship with Renji. Renji becomes flustered and states the trouble the two are causing for her, but Chihiro only expresses how much fun she is having.

Finding that she has followed her outside, Miyako finally agrees to listen to Kei’s talk. However, when Kei begins talking about the importance of Hiro’s education, Miyako counters by saying that only Hiro has the ability to make decisions about his life. Miyako wonders if Kei would be able to take responsibility for Hiro if he actually worked harder in school, rather than on his manga. Miyako also implies that Kei’s untruthfulness to herself would hurt her, before leaving her in complete defeat. While washing dishes together with him, Chihiro expresses her surprise and enjoyment of Renji’s cooking. As she goes through a list in her notebook, Renji finds that Chihiro cannot really cook herself. Chihiro passes Renji a notebook full of ideas afterwards, and tells him that the biggest problem she has would be remembering the things she wrote in a day. Renji decides the role he must then play, as Chihiro presents a very strange problem to him. She does not complete the question, however, and simply asks for Renji to forget about it.

While taking a run in the setting sun, Kei recalls what Miyako had told her that day. The beach she arrives at also triggers memories of her childhood, when she and Chihiro spent time with Hiro. Kei had constantly tried to get the attention of Hiro, who seemed to spend more time with Chihiro. Chihiro went after Kei and Hiro who left her behind to go to the beach one day, but this resulted in her accident. Kei blames herself for this in the present time, but Yuuko appears behind her to call it an excuse. Kei is interrupted by a phone call from Hiro wishing to meet her, and she finds that Yuuko has disappeared when she turns around. While being walked home by Kuze, Chihiro wonders if she has seen him before. Kuze tells her that he knows much about her, as he is an acquaintance of Yu. He also cites the lines from a famous poem to her, before she is let off to Yu at the church.

When Kei arrives at Hiro’s house, she is surprised to find Kyosuke there. Hiro introduces him to her, and to her shock, Kyosuke expresses his wish for her to go out with him. That night at his desk, Renji begins reading the notes that Chihiro had given him. The story is about the girl who lived on an island on her own. On the island was a castle, which contained many books. The girl read the stories in these books, but continued to remain alone. As he finishes the last paragraphs of the story, Renji notices the problem that Chihiro did not finish earlier that day. Meanwhile, Chihiro sees herself in her trapped world, expressing that the 13 hours she has is her everything.

Impression:

Wow, this show is amazing. It is giving me the same kinds of feelings that Touka Gettan did in the past two seasons, as far as the fascinating revealing of story goes. There’s also the art aspect to the show, which always hits base with me. I am still loving Chihiro’s story as much as ever, especially with the revealing of her story ideas. I absolutely loved the scenes that were displayed when Renji was reading her notebook, especially with all the typography. This makes me go back to the beautiful use of words this show uses, but I cannot emphasize enough how much I appreciate that. On a lighter note, I was really happy to see the plushie saved in Chihiro’s room. I’m also going to have to say that her accident scene came off as pretty anticlimactic, and I couldn’t really take it seriously. Imagine all of the things Renji could have done to her with those memory wipes!

The other parts of this episode focused on Kei, a character that I am starting to dislike quite a bit. This is one of those times where the girl who can’t be honest with herself, an already overused concept, is already getting on my nerves. I love how she tried to take out her anger on Miyako, who returned the favor by making Kei realize how much she fails at life. It looks like even Yuuko is in on the action. Maybe I’m just bitter about her causing Chihiro’s accident. I mean, how lame was that! On the other hand, I am actually enjoying the scenes that she is involved in quite a bit. The clouds hovering above the area when she was talking to Miyako was awesome, and I loved the parallels with light and darkness. I’m also continuing to like Kyosuke’s story, with the dreams concept being played on. We’re probably in for another artistic joyride next week, with the title of “rain”. I’m not sure what to expect after all the twists in this episode though.