White Album - Episode 20

Oh Touya - Just when I think you can't make me loathe you any more, you somehow manage to raise your game yet further and fill me with yet more hatred. I suppose it's quite a talent if you think about it...

Of course, the last episode of White Album saw Touya confronted with Menou on his way home, and as is his passive nature he ends up buying her beer and letting her shower at his place before she finds herself dragged off back to her production company. From here, a large chunk of episode twenty concerns itself with Eiji Ogata who, quite simply, has gone bonkers.


Why so? From all of the talk of paintings in previous instalments, we finally fin out the truth about this situation - Namely, that Eiji doesn't even remember the painting he saw which inspired him all of those years ago, and since that point he's been collecting what in his mind are identical paintings, but which are in fact all completely different. It takes Yuki's naivety to come forth and tell him this when she sees these paintings, throwing Eiji completely off-kilter before he seemingly recovers his composure later on in this episode.

Aside from that rather bizarre turn of events, we reach the reason for the addition of another notch on my Touya "hate-o-meter", as he goes out on a date with a woman from the student union, only to leave her hanging at the table while he "goes to the bathroom" - Touya's euphemism for going to hang out with Yayoi again, in truth. Add to that yet another message left on Yuki's answerphone as though nothing is wrong, and you really have to start wondering what this guy's problem is.

I suppose getting annoyed at Touya is at least good stress relief if nothing else, but that aside this was a bit of an odd episode really - While Eiji's mental breakdown wasn't entirely unexpected the nature of it was really quite weird and out of left-field, and deciphering Touya's thoughts and actions at all is a nigh-on impossible challenge in itself. Perhaps it's simply reached the point where I prefer the pure soap opera of White Album to its harder to fathom moments, but this episode certainly didn't have quite the zip or zing of previous instalments. If nothing else, it's getting decidedly tough to figure out where this series is seeking to head for its remaining episodes.