Xebek’s Blog

It’s coming time for the school festival and all three schools are putting together the play Carmen and have to decide upon the cast.

Summary:

We start off with Tamao telling us that soon will be a joint school festival, and that there will be one play put on by all three of the schools. We then go to a meeting taking place between the three student councils from the three schools, and Etoile. They are talking about what play should be put on. They decide that it will be Carmen. The Spica president says that there will be two main characters and according to the rotation they will be from Le Rim and Spica and Miatre will be backstage support. However Etoile has to be on stage so one of the two, Spica or Le Rim will have to have no lead actress. She says Amane would be perfect so that leaves out Le Rim. The two other girls from Spica speak against Spica’s president, saying how Chikaru would be a good choice for a lead, and that there is no reason that Amane MUST be chosen, much to Spica’s presidents shock. Chikaru says that’s fine, as long as the play is good but in the end it will but up to Miyuki to decide. Nagisa and Tamao are trying to listen to the meeting from outside when everyone comes on out. Spica disperses soon after but Miyuki turns to Tamao and says they decided on Carmen, which was Tamao’s suggestion. She then says that since she knows the story o well, if she would like to be the script writer and Tamao happily accepts. That night, Tamao is working on the script when Spica’s president (I’m too lazy to look up her name, I’m sure they have said it) is at their door. She tries to influence Tamao to write thinking of Amane as the role of Don Jose, because she desperately wants her to be that part.

All throughout the schools the next day talk is going around about who will play the parts, that the two most popular choices are Etoile for Carmen and Amane for Don Jose. Hikari is talking with Amane and Amane says how she really doesn’t want to be on stage, even though Hikari kind of said she wanted to see her perform. Spica’s president arrives saying how Amane must perform, how everyone is expecting her to. She even asks Hikari in front of Amane if she wants to see Amane perform and when she eventually says yes Amane kind of gives in. We then see Chikaru working on costume designs as she has been asked to do by Miyuki. She tells the two other girls who always hang out around her that it’s fine if she doesn’t get an acting part. The next morning we see Tamao and Nagisa standing before Miyuki while she reads Tamao’s finished script. She says how it is amazing and accepts it much to Tamao’s joy. At dinner that night, Miyuki is going to announce to the schools who is playing what part. Miyuki tells everyone that the person playing the role of Carmen is…Chikaru, much to everyone’s, including Chikaru’s, surprise. She goes on to say Don Jose will be played by Etoile. The Spica president doesn’t seem too happy about this, as Amane did not get a leading part. Miyuki gives the names of the other three parts as being Amane, and the two “other” girls from Spica’s student council. Later that night Spica’s president is yelling at Miyuki, telling her that this is an outrage that Amane was not a lead role because it’s what everyone expected and was the most popular choice. Miyuki just says that parts shouldn’t be given based on popularity, that she gave Spica the most number of roles so she should be satisfied. She just leaves in a fit. We see a club or another group of students deciding on a play and they choose Romeo and Juliet. They all argue over who gets what part and eventually decide with a thumb war tournament, to which Kagome wins over Yaya. We then see outside at night Etoile practicing her lines with Nagisa, even though Nagisa is a terrible actress. Etoile even laughs at her and the two of them seem to be getting along well and everything is fine.

Impressions:

Wow, this is one of my favorite episodes thus far. There were so many great moments in it, and it seems to be the start of an arc that my guess is will be three to four episodes long. There was a great moment between Etoile and Nagisa which I was fairly surprised at actually. There didn’t’ seem to be hardly any tension between the two of them after the…incident they had at the end of episode 12 which is a little odd but okay I guess for the sake of an advancement of their relationship. It was interesting to see that Nagisa actually caused Etoile to laugh which we heard earlier on is very rare for her.

The whole play thing was really interesting and the almost politics that Spica’s president was placing behind the roles. How, Amane needed to be one of the two major roles so she had a better chance of becoming Etoile and so on. Although, I too was extremely surprised at Chikaru being picked to play Carmen. Not that I dislike Chikaru, on the contrary she is one of my favorite characters next to Kagome and Oshibaru. Although, at least Etoile and Amane were still given positions and all, it seemed like the two others from Spica’s student council were glad that Chikaru was chosen and that Amane wasn’t one of the main two, but they looked extremely surprised to find out that the two of them were in it alone with Amane just in a smaller role.

This episode had a surprising number of hilarious parts in it. The best part was when the club, whatever it was, was deciding on their own play and decided on Romeo and Juliet and they were picking who would do which part. Everyone was yelling how they wanted to be Romeo or Juliet and they decided with a thumb war tournament and Kagome won the role of Romeo. Her line, “Romeo, oh, Romeo. Why are you called Romeo?” Was so hilarious and cute, that and just her beating Yaya was one of the best moments of the episode. Nagisa’s acting was another high point, in how incredibly bad she was, it was hilarious.