Summary:
Eiji explains the strange weighting system, and M3 has to fill all the small venues and most of the arena. When Rina confronts Yayoi about the letter, Yayoi maintains she is just doing her job, and Rina agrees and does not show the letter to Eiji. Yuki needs Yayoi, so Rina stays silent. Touya is now spending most of his time with Rina, but he barely does anything. Rina’s band jokes that Touya is just a mascot, and yet his presence seems to throw Rina off her game.
While Haruka and Mana do some training and bond over how they pretend Touya is a brother, Yuki has a disturbing dream about breaking things off with Touya. In the car with Yayoi, Touya gets extra chatty, because he is upset that Yuki never told him about her concert. As Rina’s manager, he cannot attend and he never got the chance to ditch Yuki to be with Rina. Yayoi coyly smiles as Touya sobs, and she lulls him to sleep with her tongue. The next day, Touya refuses a steak dinner with Rina to spend more time with Yayoi, and Rina is shocked and disgusted.
Reaction:
The animation was terrible and even worse than in episode 9. I found Akira’s bitterness towards Touya intriguing, and I think Touya gave the book to (the strangely mute) Frankie because he senses a bit of the hostility. I also liked that they showed how Touya shares his day with Yayoi because no one else will listen to him. It looks like my girl finally learned how to put a little tongue into it, and the scene where she smiled while licking Touya’s tears was absolutely delicious. I love Yayoi’s half-truth deceptions, and this makes me want to know what was in Hiragi-san’s letters even more!
From Rina’s reaction to Touya’s meeting with Yayoi, I wonder if Rina has been trying to keep Touya away from Yayoi this whole time. The part where Rina asks if Touya would have rejected the job offer to be with Yuki makes me wonder if Rina was hoping Touya would agree; Rina seemed disappointed when she had to tell Yuki that Touya never mentioned Yuki. I really liked the symbolism of Yuki’s dream with the severed phone cord. The main themes in WA are the inability to communicate in the face of obstacles and the desire to replace an undesirable task/person with busy-work/strangers. I think WA does a nice job of subtly emphasizing these themes while forcing us to think like the characters to determine their motivations.
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8 Comments
Yeah, the animation has been getting really awful. I guess that’s why they wanted to wait until Fall for the second half of the season. Hopefully we will actually see some improvement.
Man, I’m so disappointed there was nothing about Rina’s ex-manager this time. They built up all that suspense, but they didn’t cash in on it yet. Well, I mean other than when Yayoi was freaking out over the phone ringing.
But Rina was pretty awesome this episode. And an awesome Rina episode gets a thumbs up from me :>
I liked Rina’s song too, although I would have liked it better if she didn’t keep messing up.
I begin to dread what the show is going to do to Rina. She’s so headed for major ungrateful heartbreak… it’s not even funny.
Yuki will remain Suzumiya Haruka until ep13, I guess. Everything is revolving around her, and she doesn’t even know what’s really going on. It will be interesting how she will act once she wakes up and smells the roses…
I feel like my dream season 1 ending would be Yuki starting her gig and Rina busting on stage DMC-style to slap Yuki and steal the mic. I can see Rina with her gun-guitar being like, “Hey you bitches, your screams have summoned me from Calma Hell!” before beating up the Sakura-Dan and single-handedly winning Eiji’s contest.
And then we would cut to Eiji with a “Just as planned” look on his face. Unfortunately, I have a feeling it will just be heartbreak and then eventually Yuki will take Touya back.
BEST END
Indeed, BEST ENDO, need MOAR RINA GUNTAR
As long as we can get the fabled ten ‘raeps’ per second. :3 Does this dream also feature someone as Capitalist pig? Nah that’d be too harsh.
Once again, Touya has exhibited that he totally fails at being a man. Not because of his tears, but for the fact that he falls asleep completely clothed in Yayoi’s car after she licks the tears off of him. I mean, seriously? I am starting to think that he may be a eunuch on top of being an idiot.
And I still think that Rina is after Touya’s body. Instead of relaying the thoughts that were in Yuki’s letter, which she could have passed off as a conversation with Yuki, Rina chose to go with “she’s too busy to think about anything but the concert” when she and Touya discussed Yuki over dinner. And then later she told Yuki that Touya didn’t say anything about her. It just doesn’t add up if Rina is supposedly supporting their relationship. The scene between Yayoi and Rina was also telling, as Yayoi wonders aloud whether they are talking about the feelings of three people and Rina goes defensively offensive, thinking that Yayoi is talking about her. Rina’s shocked look at the end of the episode comes after she reaches the conclusion that Yayoi was speaking of herself as the third corner of the love triangle. I think that this is the final push that will kick Rina into full maneater mode. Her misguided intentions (and need for affirmation) will lead to her offering her body and devotion to Touya as a substitute for Yayoi, and what once may have been an honest desire to help a friend will turn into a friendship-ending attempt at (useless) mantheft.
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[...] enjoyable this time. No Rina’s M-16 guitar was not the crowing achievement despite what omo and Kabitzin might think, rather it was the funniest episode to date as Touya wept like the pansy he is. Oh it [...]