Subculture Anime Blog

Play the guitar.

Summary:

On a hot day, Sora accompanies Seiichirou to another client’s home. Inside, an elderly woman introduces herself to the two while speaking about her late husband. The woman’s husband was a soldier, and she had been left with the remains of an item he had carried around with him during the war. Sora does her best to return the item to its original form according to the woman’s request, but a fire appears as she has difficulty with the spell. With Seiichirou’s help, however, Sora is successfully able to complete the request. The original form of the item turns out to be a comb, one that the woman’s husband had given to her as a gift in the past. Sora expresses her disappointment with her inexperience afterwards, but Seiichirou reminds her that she wouldn’t be in training if she knew how to do everything herself. After dinner that night, Sora and Gouta volunteer to clean the dishes. While doing so, the two express their want to have each other try dishes from their home towns. Seiichirou meanwhile makes a regular visit to a live house.

In the classroom the next day, Gouta asks some of the usual students what he should do to use magic properly. However, he is disappointed when they agree that it would have to be learned from a parent. When Sora arrives late as usual, however, Gouta is able to put a smirk on his face. Seiichirou visits the live house again during the day, but he finds that no one is there at first. His acquaintance finds him playing the guitar when he arrives, then mentioning a certain fan’s first live that would be taking place soon. Seiichirou expresses that he has to work, but promises to do his best to stop by. During the night, Sora is given the important task of using magic to wake a sleeping patient. After visiting the requester’s house and meeting the patient’s young son, Sora does her best to preform the request at the hospital. The patient certainly wakes, but she is unable to remember who she is or anything about her family. Sora is again disappointed at such a sad turn of events, but Seiichirou again tries to convince her that she preformed her duty well.

When Seiichirou visits the live house again, he meets with his acquaintances from a band as usual. When a conversation about future hopes comes up from one of the members, Seiichirou can only remember Sora’s thoughts. Elsewhere, the usual guitar player sings a song outside. When Gouta returns home from his job, he notices that Sora is seemingly asleep already. Inside her room, Sora can only recall her learning that magic isn’t perfect.

Preview: Friends.

Impression:

Although it really has seemed like this show has finally started taking the episodic route, I thought this week’s episode was a bit different in that it introduced several things at a fairly rapid pace. Of course, Sora’s visiting multiple clients probably just helped to establish one of the main themes of this series – that magic cannot solve everything. That fact definitely hit Sora pretty hard in this episode, and I think it will be something that she continues to struggle with for awhile. There’s something about slice of life series and their mixing of supernatural and every day things. I think this just helps to create a more dramatic effect at times, and it’s probably no exception when it comes to Natsu no Sora. Although I do appreciate that much from this episode, what I didn’t like was the rapid introduction of new names. I guess we’re not really expected to remember all of them, since half the characters will only be showing up in this single episode, but it just makes me wonder if I should even put in the effort of pausing to write all of them down.

On the other hand, I loved the revealing of Seiichirou once being a guitar player. I guess I could have suspected this from what Sora’s room looked like, but it actually came off as being a really pleasant surprise today. Rock music has played a pretty big role in both of Kobayashi Osamu’s major works BECK and Paradise Kiss, which might be one of the reasons I have appreciated both so much. Growing up, this was the kind of culture I was constantly surrounded by. Seeing things like the guitar and live houses were pretty nostalgic, if not still familiar in the present time. There were even more nice music tracks in this episode, and I still can’t wait to get my hands on the OST. The preview for the next episode suggests that Sora will be meeting a new friend, so that should be interesting as always.