Saturday 30 November 2013

White Album 2 - Episode 9

What should have been so simply has proven to be anything but, as the relationships between Hazuki, Setsuna and Touma become ever-more tangled.

In fact, as this episode begins and we enter January, the relationship between Hazuki and Kazusa has broken down entirely - she ignores his calls and visits under the auspices of practicing hard for a piano recital, but given that she finds at least some time to speak with Setsuna her true intentions are pretty clear.  When the trio finally get together and Touma still ignores Hazuki the situation becomes even more clear, although Setsuna seems to be blind to the whole thing and is still dead set on the three of them spending as much time together as possible.


Kazusa's attitude isn't the only thing Hazuki is struggling with - although things still seem to be going decidedly well between himself and Setsuna, Touma is still clearly on his mind, and when he sees her strutting her stuff at the piano recital it all proves to be so much for him.  As a result, Hazuki tries to redouble his efforts and throw himself fully into his romance - something which proves difficult when Setsuna is still oblivious to the tension between her boyfriend and best friend.  With her birthday looming, things might be about to reach a head....

I'll certainly give some credit to White Album 2 for keeping things trucking along at a point in the show's story where it threatened to find itself with nowhere left to go, although it's a little hard to buy Setsuna's inability to fathom what's going on with the people closest to her as she seemingly carries on in her own little world regardless of the obvious hints that things are amiss elsewhere between Touma and Hazuki.  I'm curious as to how all of this will pan out, but I'm still finding it tough to really feel any kind of emotional resonance to the cast - even at this juncture the main characters feel a little ill-defined and with a tendency to shift in their behaviour in ways that don't always add up.  Still, it's all undeniably more interesting than all of that school festival preparation, for which I'm very grateful.

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