White Album - Episode 6

Another episode of White Album comes my way, and so again I find my irritations regarding Touya's nature starting to grow - I've been quite determined to explain away his character deficiencies in the early episodes of this series, but while I still contend that his nature is an important part of this anime's story development that doesn't mean that it can't get on my nerves.

The big focus of this episode is really on Touya's relationship with Misaki, and indeed her feelings towards him - After being given a ridiculous deadline to make costumes and the like for her drama last episode, she goes crying to Touya about her problems, and of course he agrees to help her in any way possible. From here, we see Touya remain totally clueless as to Misaki's thoughts, while her own intentions are either softened or strengthened (depending on how you look at it) by her own emotional and physical state, which seems to be extremely weak, due in no part to her drama club-related stresses and the bullying (to put it mildly) that she is suffering on account of that.


While Touya is being incredibly helpful and altruistic towards Misaki, he is quite fraknly a jerk throughout the rest of this episode - He still only half-heartedly pushes away Yayoi's advances while allowing her to come between himself and Yuki, and perhaps worse he lies through his teeth over and over again on the one occasion in this episode where he gets to speak to her on the phone. You could argue that they're all white lies, but when that many fibs build up in such a short period it becomes something entirely different if you ask me, thus adding another check box to the "reasons to dislike Touya" file.

That aside, this was actually a pretty slow-paced episode of White Album. Rina enigmatically wanders around and pops up now and then without saying a word, Yuki spends most of the time recording her debut single, and the kid Touya met a couple of episodes back makes a sudden and unexpected reapparance. I can't really fathom where the series is going next (especially considering how clueless Touya seems to be around the various girls that make his acquiantance), which is a good thing in a sense as at least that means things aren't becoming predictable, but I do feel that the series needs to push on a little faster to bring us to some meatier parts of the story sooner rather than later.