Hayami goes to live with Hirose in the city in order to try and restore his memory and state of mind.

Impressions:

This episode was certainly big. It seemed like it was going to go at a normal pace, and then Hayami would just yell something and fix things. I didn’t expect her fixing things to involve her dieing. I loved the revelation about Hayami’s mother. I always thought it was pretty tragic for her to kill herself and didn’t really like it but revealing that she didn’t kill herself, that she saved a child from getting hit by a train, was great. However it was definitely a bit NO WAY moment when Hayami did the same thing. I was stunned, as I didn’t think anything like that was going to happen. Still, it was an impressive moment form the show to have something that big happens like that.

I loved the epilogue. Forgetting the end of the epilogue, it was neat to see all the characters older like that. Hotaru being the village elder like that was awesome, still having her feuds with Yui and all. I absolutely LOVED the bit with Maki and Hamaji. I didn’t really ever guess that the two of them would end up together. Partially because they were really only side characters and I wasn’t sure how interested a girl would be in a guy who pretends he’s a girl. Still, it was a fun little addition they threw on there. Then of course the epilogue was huge when it dealt with Takuma and Hayami. It really was the ending to the series. Where some shows end before the epilogue, this one rally only concluded at its end. I thought them bring back Hayami was good. I didn’t really like that she died as it was kind of taking away even more from Hirose’s life that had been hard, and making Hayami who has suffered a lot not have a chance to be happy. So although I sometimes dislike return from the dead type situations, I thought this one was pretty good.

Final Thoughts:

H2O ROCKS YOUR SOUL! Ok, perhaps not, but that phrase will forever be burned into my mind as being associated with this show. Regardless of how the actual show ended up I have to say that the preview for it was one of the most hilarious things I’ve ever seen, in a sense that they weren’t trying to be funny. So even though the actual show may not have “Rocked my soul” the phrase wills till be burned into my mind.

This show definitely had its problems. There was constantly an issue of explaining things. So and so is hated then accepted? People just instantly adapt to a new revelation? So on and so forth. While when really looking at things it seems that it isn’t so much the characters just readily accept stuff, but they just have a time skip. Now, I’m fine with a show having a time-skip to skip over showing something long and drawn out as you don’t always need to see how things change, just what causes them to do so. Still, there is a degree to which that hurts the show. Not only did this show seem to reach that but they didn’t even clearly explain there was a time skip. Its one thing to tell us there is a gap between events, but the way this series handled it it could be taken as instantly happening. So the show definitely had problems, and a lot of them really were too much for this show to ever become great. Not only did the show have that pacing problem but there were just several parts I hated. Even though it’s not really a flaw with the show I just really disliked the whole beating some girl to near death. Not only that but I was constantly infuriated by the character and towns stupidity. Now I understand that this girl’s family were dictator like and caused many people to suffer but that still does not mean that habitually torturing their little girl who lives by herself in the forest after everyone drove her family apart should suffer. It’s not lie she said to her parents, “Hey, let’s target his family next” It just seemed ridiculous the degree to which they hated her. While it may have been needed for the story, but I still think it was incredibly stupid.

Now, while for the most part this series was really not that great, there were still some redeeming parts about it however in the end these redeeming points that I STRUGGLE to find aren’t enough to redeem the show. Still, the show wasn’t complete crap. I did think that although they executed most of the story horribly, some of the basic parts of it were quite interesting. The bit with Otoha was interesting and the twist involving Hirose’s eyesight was certainly something. There were some surprising and exciting moments in the show and although it seemed like it had a rough ride to get there, I did like the ending. It may have been a bit sudden to bring someone back to life like that but it’s not like her dieing held that much weight, the situation could have gone where she saved the kid and didn’t die so her being alive doesn’t really cheapen anything, therefore I’m fine with it. I think without that the ending wouldn’t be anywhere near happy enough. So although there were bad parts of the show and it wont’ amount to something “great” I still had fun watching it. That’s what matters after all, fun.

Hirose faces Hayami after learning the truth about what her family did to his and tries to face his own feelings.

Impressions:

Wow….this was a HUGE episode. I was just staring at my screen in disbelief throughout a majority of the episode. I was just utterly stunned. This episode had revelations and aspects to it that have almost redeemed this show from the crap fest it was earlier. Now, it may be a little late to redeem it into an amazing show but this episode has certainly knocked it up several notches for me. This episode rocked my soul! Really, some of the biggest problems I had with the show were kind of negated with this episode. One of the biggest problems seemed to be them not showing how things progressed after some big revelation yet in this episode they kind of did explain that. They showed that in fact several of the things we thought had changed and they haven’t explained didn’t actually happen at all. Hirose can see again and they don’t’ explain it? The village is all of a sudden super happy and content with Hayami? The grandfather has lighted up and learned his lesson? NOT! Hirose never was able to see, the village still hates her, and the grandfather was just planning on how to be even more of a scumbag. All of those things being pretty much thrown at you at once in this episode made it incredible.

I’m really interested in what will happen next. I’m sure this show is a shorter series but whether that means 12 or 13 episodes I’m not sure, regardless it will come to a close soon. On one hand it seemed as if things were being resolved at the end of this episode with Hirose protecting Hayami like that but then they kind of revealed he’s totally insane at the moment and things she’s his mother. Not to mention him being constantly insane as he was wandering there. The whole situation will be interesting to see, its no longer just the grandfather and the village trying to keep the two of them apart, his father doesn’t want it and that alone would be enough content to give conflict and drama to the conclusion, but they have to deal with the fact he’s totally psycho, so I’m looking forward to seeing how this ends. Even if this show hasn’t been the greatest until now and that will always affect its ranking for me personally, this episode raised its standing with me TREMENDOUSLY. It did in fact rock my soul…

Hotaru’s grandfather tells Hirose that it was the Kohinatas’ that were to blame for his mother’s death, driving a wedge between him and Hayami.

Impressions:

This was certainly an interesting episode. It definitely got things from being pretty nice and happy to extremely dark and more serious. I’m kind of glad it turns out the grandfather is still an absolute horrible person and hates Hayami. I don’t have anything against Hayami but having him still feel that way against her helps the show because of its problems with showing change. It seemed as if the grandfather had become fine with her but that’s not the case. It also seems public opinion of Hayami hadn’t really changed, they were just kind of dealing with it so those things do help the show as it means it’s not as bad with the whole showing change thing. Still bad at it, but just not as much anymore.

On a little bit of a lighter note it was extremely mega cute to see Hayami try and do the household chores but have no idea what o do since she had been living alone in a forest practically. Seeing her try and vacuum and do the laundry and get frustrated over not knowing what to do, then extremely embarrassed when Hirose did it for her was great. It’s too bad those moments ended so soon with the ugliness.

Even though it was the grandfather that pretty much set off the spark that made things get extremely messy and bad I would have to say the person I’m most pissed off at right now would be Hirose. I’m extremely disappointed in the way he his handling this all. I mean, sure it’s a shock and I don’t hold it against him that he would be shocked at it but really the fact that he would let that change anything doesn’t speak well for him. It’s not like Hayami did anything. Hayami didn’t cause his mother to commit suicide. This all goes back to a fairly ancient situation about the sins of the parents being passed onto the children which seems to be what’s happening here when it really doesn’t have much basis to. I would have hoped Hirose would be smart enough and care about Hayami enough to not let this change anything. It would have been great for his character to stand up and say he doesn’t care, he still loves Hayami and whatnot but instead we get…this. I’m just not happy with Hirose right now for having all this happen.

Hirose finds a bell left to him by his mother and takes it around with him, causing a misunderstanding amongst Hayami and Hotaru due to the meaning it holds due to the upcoming festival.

Impressions:

I absolutely loved the confession bit at the end. Although this show really isn’t the best and it’s kind of too far along to wind up being a great show it still has some interesting parts and is a bit fun to watch. The confession really helps this show in my mind as it really points to it not just becoming some show where nothing really happens in the end. The entire time the two of them were on the hill I was just screaming in my head “Tell her to keep the bell!” Which did end up being what happened, so I’m really glad that it turned out that way. That and they keep the meaning behind it, as they kissed so it was a confession not just a lets continue being friends type thing, which could have happened. It will be interesting to see where this leads to now.

Hotaru’s grandfather really interested me in this episode. It was pretty believable and understandable that the adults would still bear a grudge against the Kohinatas more then their children, considering they’ve gotten to know her via Hirose and Hotaru’s efforts. They would be more understanding that Hayami herself didn’t do anything. However although Hotaru’s grandfather didn’t get super pissed and try to punish the arsons, he also didn’t even begin to hint towards using this as an opportunity AGAINST her. I was surprised at the village meeting when he kind of defended her, saying to just not worry about it. Then when he saw her running he kind of said this must be karma, which when I thought about it seems to mean he thinks this is karma punishing him. After all he would benefit from Hirose being with Hotaru, yet Hirose goes with Hayami therefore Hirose choosing Hayami is bad for him in a way. It seems like he was understanding something along those lines that because of his actions against Hayami it was coming back at him. Although that may not be the case exactly, it depends on how serious you believe in karma and so forth but I got the impression he wasn’t being so evil.

The world around Hirose becomes extremely weird as Otoha plays with what is real and tells Hirose he has to return things to normal.

Impressions:

…

Wow…This episode was extremely weird. Really this episode was all one long giant WTF moment. I don’t really know how else to explain it. I was in constant amazement about how weird it was. I’m not saying this show is anywhere near amazing when it’s a normal episode but for it to suddenly change so drastically like this it really was weird to see. Now given this was all basically a dream, and thank god for that. If it was more real it would have given this show even less credibility. However, even though this episode really was extremely odd and just bizarre it was admittedly funny in several parts. It’s not the best comedy I’ve seen in an anime or anything but it was still pretty funny and for this show it was one of the funnier moments.

My quarrels with the episode though are that it tried to give a meaningful and serious end to Otoha but the wackiness of the first 90 percent of the episode took away from that, which is a bit of a shame. This really does seem like the conclusion to any story she might have gotten and albeit not a big one it was diminished even further by the lack of seriousness the rest of the episode had. Even though the wackiness kind of had a reason to it, being that Otoha wanted to leave on a happy note and not a sad one, it still took away from her scene at the end I think as that scene itself seemed like it should have been more emotional yet wasn’t if nothing else because of the wackiness before it. I am curious now as to what will become of his eyesight. I’m a bit shocked they haven’t addressed the issue. I’m not going to get into them not making a fuss about it when it first changed, but I am a bit surprised Hirose or Otoha hasn’t brought it up now that she is leaving/has left. With her gone it would be the perfect explanation as to why it would disappear again, but he seemed to have it at the scene at the end after she had left. Hopefully they won’t completely forget about it though and the issue is addressed later, otherwise I really see absolutely no reason why he needed to be blind in the first place.

More is revealed about Hinata’s past and what happened to her sister Hotaru.

Impressions:

Wow…this episode was huge. I would definitely say this is one of the better episodes of the show. I didn’t expect Hinata to actually be Hotaru like that. I’m still just in shock about how fucking horrible that is for her to go through. Having her grandfather and her relatives all say how they wish she would have died instead of her sister. That alone is just absolutely….horrendous. Then to have to live your life as someone else and hear the villagers say they are glad who they think you are died….wow. That just adds a whole new level of horrible experiences. I would say that is worse then Hayami’s situation almost. Going though your whole life knowing that people are glad you died instead of the person you are pretending to be is just….It was a huge episode and I am really glad at the way it ended. I’m just curious as to where they are going to go from here as they’ve pretty much given both Hayami and Hotaru (It’s going take a bit to get used to calling her that) some big development. Hopefully they will still deal with her grandfather but it also seems they have to deal with Otoha/Hinata and Hirose’s blindness issue.

I do have to talk a bit separately about the pace of the show. Although part of the show really gets hurt by the fact they seem to skip some time and don’t explain it well, overall I think it does have a purpose. I’m referring to the fact that they seem to accept pretty big things rather quickly. They seemed to instantly have no problem with Takuma’s eyesight and now it seems like they have all readily accepted Hayami. However while that may seem to be a bit odd I think it has a valid purpose. I mean, if they were to spend the time showing every single even that lead up to those revelations then the show would have no time for other stuff. I really don’t think it’s a matter of people readily accepting things but a combination of that and a time skip that they don’t really explain. Sure they could do a better job at explaining they had a time skip but as far as not showing it I’m fine with. I mean really, they could spend two episodes in between this one and last showing people getting used to Hayami but in the end it really won’t matter. If you can just realize there are time skips it does help the show out a lot.

Yui gets agitated that Hinata is now being friendly with Hayami, which she still continues to detest.

Impressions:

This episode was pretty interesting. At first I was very skeptical of it just because it featured Yui a character that I didn’t really particularly like due to extreme annoyance factor. However it did not only end up being a pretty good story for Yui it also really contributed to the overall plot about what had happened in the past with Hayami and why she was hated. However…I can’t really say it’s justified. Like…at all. I’m a bit surprised and really this technical aspect of the show has really knocked it down a lot of pegs for me. I mean, the entire village hates her to the point of beating her to near death every day because her parents which they murdered were semi-dictatorship over the village due to their wealth? First the big major point here is that HAYAMI WAS LIKE 5 WHEN THIS WAS GOING ON. Is everyone in the village a fucking idiot? Let’s habitually torture this girl whose parents, which we murdered, were cruel. Let’s forget for a minute that she herself did absolutely nothing wrong and in fact we did HER wrong by tearing her away from her family. I mean….MY GOD. Yes the show has some other redeeming pars about it and it’s still pretty interesting in a lot of ways but I almost just can’t get over this, its ridiculous.

I’m really interested in Otoha’s comment about Hirose not having much time remaining. I’m sure that means he’ll go blind again soon, or perhaps something even worse like die. Though, they haven’t really said death is a consequence for getting his eyesight for a while, so right now it only seems reasonable for him to loose his eyesight again. They seemed to do some time skip when he lost it or did a very horrible job showing peoples reactions to his eyesight, so hopefully they’ll do a much better job about him loosing it again, as it is a bit serious. Although they may not be horribly surprised he lost it since he once hadn’t had it before. Er…that’s kind of confusing but pretty much they would be justifiably less surprised about him loosing it then someone loosing it that never had lost it before. Still, I wonder what kind of affect this loss of eyesight will have on any of the really important aspects of the story.

Hirose tries to deal with Hinata’s confession, thinking there is something deeper behind all of this and tries to get Hinata and Hayami to talk together.

Impressions:

This episode was so much better then last episode. Last episode was pretty much fluff and after a big moment, but this one definitely had some things going for it. I can’t really say if it’s enough to change any overall quality of the show, but it was certainly a start. I really have to commend Hirose. He was awesome in this episode. He took so much initiative it shocked me. No more trying to say something and being cut off he took charge and it was awesome to see. Also, the whole event where Hinata and Hayami confronted each other was great. It seems almost too good to be true, having them be friends again, and it makes me wonder what the overall conflict is going to be for the show. The pacing seems really weird in this show.

I do want to say here that I don’t really blame Hinata for really a lot of things she did. Although it seems like it might be over for now, previously people were saying how they hated her and I don’t really agree. I’m not condoning her actions but you have to view it from her perspective. If you were raised in a very harsh family and told you always had to be super good and perfect and then were told something you were doing makes you a horrible person and causes you to be bad, when you were harshly raised to be good, you don’t have much choice. What was she going to stand up to her extremely scary harsh grandfather going against what she had been raised as when she’s like five? Then that mentality must have just been burned into her when she got older. Again, I’m not condoning her actions but I don’t view it as her fault or her being a bad person at all.

I also want to kind of question briefly the connection, if any, between Hinata’s dead sister and Otoha. They look VERY similar. Now, it could be a coincidence or it could be that Otoha is a spirit that’s kind of formed because of Hinata’s sister or whatever but I’m just wondering if there is some connection between the two of them.

Everyone heads to the beach for some relaxation when Hamaji’s imouto tags along and tries to keep Hirose away from Hamaji and the others.

Impressions:

This episode was alright. However, it wasn’t’ really anything special. The one thing that really made this show interesting was the story about Hayami and Hinata’s past and they didn’t really touch on that at all in this episode. Without that focus it really wasn’t that interesting. It was pretty much like any other show, and considering they spent so much time developing that part of the story some other things were lacking to make an episode like this super great. It really was just normal clichéd beach episode. Even the conflict in this individual episode wasn’t too great, Hamaji’s little sister being jealous wasn’t something that huge and considering Hamaji is a side character anyways, all in all it just wasn’t anything too spectacular. Hopefully it will get exciting son though, as they did have a confrontation at the very end of the episode. Not something to make this episode interesting really, but something that will hopefully make the next episode interesting.

As I somewhat mentioned above, I am disappointed in how little deal they made about the kiss at the end of last episode. It was something pretty big but they spent hardly any time showing what happened after and then had Hinata act like nothing happened. It seems like when the show gets to a point where it could be more interesting it just drops, and if it keeps doing that that show won’t go over too well.

I was pretty damn surprised about Hamaji turning out to be a guy. I didn’t really ever expect this show to have a trap in it. There really wasn’t anything to suggest that he was a he. His friends didn’t even make subtle jokes about it really, stuff like snickering when he did something that would be funny if you knew his real gender there was just no warning. They certainly like putting traps in anime, it seems like they pop up more and more.

When Hirose suspects that Hinata and Hayami used to be friends in the past, he tries to figure out what happened between the two of them.

Impressions:

Wow… I’m not quite sure where to begin. This episode was great, and just overall this show has been pretty good. There are defiantly some things that aren’t the best about it, the way they handled the eyesight thing, but overall I’m just amazed at the amount of mystery this show has. There are so many things that I’m trying to figure out as I watch this that its defiantly got me extremely invested in watching each episode. It’s far more then an ordinary harem type show. I’m not going to defend that too much, because I’ve said it several times before how pissed I am at people who group shows based on a genre. Just because there are multiple girls here doesn’t mean this show will be like all other harem and love triangle shows. Anyways, the fact that there is such a serious tragic past to these characters defiantly makes it something that I’m looking forward to watching more and finding out what happens.

I’m still pretty confused as to what exactly happened in the past between Hinata and Hayami. Originally as I was watching this I thought it was still something along the lines of perhaps Hayami accidentally burned something important to Hinata, which is why she is hated, but that didn’t make sense why the whole village hated her. However, when Hinata mentioned her sister I guessed that her sister died in whatever was Hayami’s fault, which would explain a bit more this huge hatred. However, for the most part, that idea and theory was completely thrown out the window. It really looked like, from one of the flashbacks, that Hayami’s house was the one being burned down by the villagers. What the hell is up with that? Was Hayami’s and her family marked as bad before this fire thing? Were they marked as bad before Hayami made friends with Hinata or was that what marked them as bad or was that just the event that triggered the house burning? There are still so many questions and I’m finding it very interesting to try and figure out what’s going to happen.

I was pretty surprised by the kiss at the end. I’m not sure if Hinata did that JUST because she wanted Hayami to see or for another reason, but right now I just feel so sorry for Hayami in every way. The one time she gets close t o having a friend or more or less has a friend, everyone is doing everything to keep them apart or make it so she’s causing someone else to be hated for being with her. Then she sees this, it just seems horrible for her. I am a bit curious as to why Hinata is so pressed upon to be “a good girl” Her grandfather obviously is kind of pushing this on her, but why? There are just so many things going on with this show which is what makes it far beyond a normal harem, love triangle, whatever. Even if others have tragic pasts, this one is still interesting.

When Hirose suspects that Hinata and Hayami used to be friends in the past, he tries to figure out what happened between the two of them.