Whatever went on, it doesn't stop Touya from managing his usual act in the midst of the various tears that follow - First those of Yuki who has a rare day off and sees Touya at his father's hospital, but breaks down because her singing lessons have been cancelled and out of some general feeling of responsibility for having a good time while others were suffering. While Touya finds kind words for her, he has nothing of merit to say when his father breaks in tears at the thought of his own demise... while his Dad is hardly the poster boy for good parenting, seeing Touya's cold reactions to his own father welled up a hefty dose of that good, old-fashioned Touya hatred that seems to come so easily with this series.
Even without the tears it seems to be misery all around this episode, with Eiji's depression only seemingly cured by a visit from Yuki, who he urges to go out and be happy. On the cusp of the New Year, this means getting to spend the evening with Touya, although even this meeting doesn't stop Yayoi arranging her next rendezvous with him. Meanwhile, Rina is working hard, Haruka and Mana are similarly training and cycling together a lot, and the hapless Misaki is trying desperately to fend off thelustful advances of Akira. All in a day's work for an episode of White Album, really.
If I have one issue with this particular episode, it's that it jumped around rather too much - We were given bite sized chunks of everyone's story here and there, but not enough of any one aspect of the plot to really get our teeth into. That aside, and for all my utter, utter loathing of Touya (which makes me a girl apparantly according to an anonymous commenter on my last entry for this series), I can't help but love the lightly tacky but oddly compelling soap opera this show serves up. For all of its flaws there's a certain energy of unpredictability about it, and with so many unlikeable characters (because let's be fair, Touya isn't the only idiot in this show in terms of character) even the bad news dished out like so much bread and butter is enjoyable in its own way. I wouldn't quite call watching White Album a "guilty pleasure", but it's probably not all that far off for me.
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2 comments:
Excellent post. Made sense of the senselessness. I find myself really liking this show right now, too. I'm not ready to hate Touya just yet, however: he's more lost than anybody, it seems to me, and is falling down the path to hell without any intentions at all, wounding everyone he passes. But the character seems fairly realistic, I'm sorry to say. In any case, he isn't really the unalloyed villain of School Days. He's an illustration of the idea that sin is usually the result of weakness rather than intentional evil.
I think you've summed it up perfectly there, and the same is true of... well, pretty much all of the characters here - They screw up their own lives and the lives of those around them on account of weakness, not malice. That doesn't mean I have to start liking them though. ;)
I would argue however that anything that Touya has lost has occurred at his own hands, and that he only has himself to blame, even if it is (as you say) down to weakness.
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