Summary:
While Mana is busy acing the Kazahamaurara Women’s Academy entrance exam, Yuki is officially entered into the Venus Festival. Yuki is surprised, however, to learn that M3 is sending Menou instead of Rina. Instead of pouting, Rina puts Touya on leave and pours work into helping out Natsuko. Meanwhile, now that Misaki knows that Touya is not faithful to Yuki, she goes in for the kiss (good thing that envelope was waterproof) and dumps Akira. When Touya’s dad dies (in the middle of a dream telling loli-Yuki to praise Touya) Misaki has boxed Haruka out for the rebound, and agrees to sleep with Touya to help him feel better.
Touya recounts how his dad used to have friends and relatives board in their house, and Touya would borrow everyone’s books, records, and (probably) daughters. Interestingly, Itsuki also tells Rina that Yuki used to hang out with Mana all the time, before Itsuki got divorced and her other daughter Menou left with the dad (although Itsuki retained beating rights). In fact, Yuki is even distantly related to Itsuki. As everyone else takes this info in, Touya gives Haruka an ugly birthday gift, and Akira shows up to ride with Haruka and clear his head… by getting run over by a truck.
Reaction:
Wow, we sped through some heavy stuff, starting with how Mana clearly poisoned Gouzou with that fruit basket (and we got a new mystery woman who probably also got her cab stolen by Mana). Akira keeps ending up with Touya’s sloppy seconds, but Akira’s just a scavenger, and without Touya he’d never get any girls anyway. I noticed Akira was friendly with Touya the next day, mostly because Akira is a loser and he thinks that Misaki is a prude (oh the irony). Sure Akira got to punch Touya (all the guys at Echoes do it), but then Touya banged his ex. Akira thinks he’s with Haruka now, but the whole date was an obvious ploy to lure Akira in and then run him over as revenge for running over her bike last season. Payback’s a bitch.
The revelation about Menou made sense, and now I understand why Mana always hated hearing Menou “sing” on the radio. I wonder if eventually we will get some revelation about the past where Touya and Yuki are like siblings, and Haruka is trying to make out with her real brother. I loved the scene where Haruka stopped by with chocolates and then quietly exited as soon as she saw Misaki’s shoes. Haruka is so weird and awkward that it’s hard to hate her for being crazy and wearing ugly shoes. Rina didn’t get much screen time, unfortunately, but at least she realized right away that Menou was a no-talent hack. BTW, did anyone else think it was odd that Menou’s confession was printed in the February 19 (a Thursday), 1987 issue of Mana-day Monday?
Related posts:
This post was written by...
Kabitzin – who has written 1940 posts on Sea Slugs! Anime Blog.
One of the founders of Sea Slugs, I handle most of the blog admin tasks while wearing my I AM BOSS shirt. I like my action series well choreographed, and my romance series extra trashy. I also have a soft spot for puns.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
I am a horrible human being for doing so, but I laughed so hard when Akira got run over. I was all… “WHAAAT?!” and then I couldn’t stop cracking up. And it fit perfectly with your Haruka leaping through time caption from last week… I could hear the “just as planned” from here.
I have myself partly convinced (based on the terrible Mana art at the beginning of the episode… yeah, that’s supposed to be her walking) that the mystery woman is Misaki… she tore up the letter she had been meaning to give Mr. Fujii outside the funeral home in a scene that made me think of that Mike and the Mechanics song. It’s either Misaki, or Touya’s mom returned from the witness protection program, one day too late.
I’m starting to think that all of Touya’s old playmates are closely related to him, and I’m waiting for the revelation that Mr. Fujii was quite the player back in his day. If we get that, then I know we’re going to get the Joe Dirt “You’re my sister!” scene. It’s coming, if Touya doesn’t get run over or stabbed first, I know it is.
And I think the magazine thing is like the US practice of putting a month that is three months later than the current month on magazines, except that the Japanese are so efficient that they use days instead. Okay, probably not but that’s a nice bit of detective work there.
Speaking of terrible art, it saddens me that Frankie had to take care of Eiji and Rina, but was forced to give up his sweet audio suite and is now stuck with headphones.
I’m pretty sure this is how the deal went down.
LOL! I think that you captured it perfectly, and I’m sure that Eiji used the whole rock star/bumming around Europe thing as a test, building up to the eventual subversion of Frankie’s secret lair. I just wonder if Frankie is going to remain silent through the rest of the episodes, or if he’s going to say something at the very end….
The horriblesubs release was trounced by the tomodachi-raze group this week, which is odd.
Akira COULD possibly be alive. I stared in disbelief at first thinking that the crowd around haruka would have behaved differently had he really been hit. I figured Haruka’s PTSD might have caused her to see a hallucination. I’m crazy like that.
“Don’t you know the meaning of the word ‘delicacy’?”
Of course Touya does, he’s eaten enough delicacies on Yayoi’s per diem after all.
Then when Akira clenched his fist, it cut to Frankie grinning and i was expecting some awesome sound effect. Nothing.
3 episodes remain, just wait till we find out that Yayoi was born a male.
I think we’ll have to wait for the DVD for that. They burned the sound budget on Akira’s crash scene.
…
…
Oh, hell. Even if she was, she’s still hot.
I considered that too, but I don’t think that Akira reminded her of her brother.
Horribly enough, I have also considered this possibility. I think it’s the pant-suits.
Too bad Mana didn’t get AIR FORCE 1s. Oh wellz…
Still waiting for the inevitable three (and four)somes, where the girls will want to back out but Touya goes ‘well it was your idea wasn’t it? You’re going to back out now?’.
Yo, I keep it real, dirty
Dirty, you know how I do
Purple and gold with the Lakers
The Broncos the orange and blue
I like ‘em floppy with ankle socks
Lows, mids, and high tops
With the clear sole, but it’s tims and fat laces when it is cold
Mana would definitely be involved in this.
Man, what a total disaster. This is even better than I could have ever hoped for. Even though I knew things were going to go to hell, I never thought the whole cast would end up this broken (literally in Akira’s case lolol).
Akira’s fate was icing on the cake. Personally, I love how this is going, especially how people are all being revealed as relatives.
I’m gunna miss Akira. >.>
but I’ll miss Mr. Fuji more. Cuz that man was a real man. The only guy with any real sense.
I finally got the time and nerve to catch up. Sue me, I like it
I’m alternating between outbursts of rage at Touya’s incredible asshattery (e.g. simply deserting his student office date like that) and *shrug* shikata ga nai, since that’s obviously what most of the girls want (see Mana/Misaki).
For the ending, I hope that Rina manages to revitalize her career with the cute musical brain behind Menou. She’s the only character I consistently liked and still like. Touya and Yuki are both two of a kind in a way, I still expect them to end up with each other (after they’ve screwed all their friends over crosswise). Good luck Haruka/Akira. As for the rest, I guess we’ll have to wait and see.