White Album 2 - Episode 6

Whether it's through overwork, stress or plain old organic illness, Touma's collapse isn't exactly good news with the school festival only a couple of days away.

Having not turned up to school or answered her phone, it's Haruki who comes to the rescue and finds Touma in a heap, and he sets about skipping both school and the light music club's first rehearsal to look after his old friend and club-mate.  It's something he proves rather proficient at, not only when it comes to undressing her but also in cooking for her and phoning both her housekeeper and doctor to make sure that everything is under control.  It's the kind of attention to detail that Touma has little choice but to grudgingly accept as she seeks to recover her strength and fight off her illness before the group's big day.

This leaves us concerned with Setsuna, who is having some issues of her own - namely that she completely freezes when put under the spotlight at the rehearsal, claiming that she simply can't sing without Haruki and Touma present.  This means that their first rehearsal is largely wasted, and with much still to do Haruki decides that there's nothing for it but to steal Setsuna away from the school festival's first day for another all-day session of hard practice - in fact, they even have a third song to learn and rehearse, with lyrics penned by Haruki and the song itself composed by Kazusa.

So, White Album 2 continues to roll along at a decent clip - it doesn't really do anything wrong, so I can't particularly criticise it, but it isn't doing anything particularly interesting either, leaving both me and the series to just go through the motions week upon week.  The series continues to insist that it's going to have a lot more to say once the school festival is done and dusted, so hopefully that can at least offer some moments to lift White Album 2 out of the realms of abject mediocrity for the second half of the series.