White Album - Episode 24

Poor old Akira - It seems that even being hit by a truck can't give him more than a fleeting appearance in this series. Instead, this twenty-fourth instalment of White Album focuses almost exclusively on the revelations dished out by Menou at the end of the last episode, namely that she's never sung on any of her records, instead merely lip-syncing over tracks written and recorded by others. Rumours that Menou is currently looking to join Milli Vanilli are currently unconfirmed.


Needless to say, such a large-scale scandal leaves fallout and debris everywhere, but most squarely at the door of Eiji Ogata, as the revelation that his newly hired star can't actually sing twists and turns into stories of fraud, theft and the fabrication of stories published about Rina in the past. In short, Eiji's career appears to be finished, as he goes into hiding for most of the episode.

Of course, things aren't all that much better for M3 Productions, Menou's former employer and a company presided over by her mother. With Menou also due to take part in the Venus festival, this also looks like a dead end until Rina steps up to the plate and offers to take her place despite the cold reception she's likely to get. Similarly, Yuki remains determined to take part too, setting her up for a reunion with her former stablemate at long last.

There's plenty of other drama swirling around this episode of course, from some potential peril for Rina (who shows her intellect this episode by proving to have figured out everything going on after doing a little research) through to Eiji having a bit of a "Touya moment" with Yuki, albeit one that fails miserably.

Probably the best news for this episode however is the relative lack of Touya himself, leaving this episode to get on with things without spending too much time worrying about whether he's managing to keep his pants on. While he finds himself with quite a lot of explaining to do come the end of the episode, it was refreshing to see Yuki and Rina taking the lead without deferring to the show's equivalent of a village idiot at all for most of it - It's enough to make you wonder; what would White Album have been like without a male protagonist at all?