The tension mounts, but having friends at your side can make almost anything better or more bearable.
What They Say:
During the search for Sakura, Akira confronts Koko and Haru and demands to know why they are here on earth. The duo explains their situation, but bigger plans are already in motion against them.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The series has taken some unusual turns to be sure over the course of it and has definitely felt off at times, what with Haru and his alien nature and Akira and the whole duck thing. With events in the last episode, some of the more basic human elements have been twisted a bit as Natsuki screwed up enough in what he said to cause Sakura to run away from home. While it’s not clear if she just headed out for the time being or something longer, the moment has put a lot of pressure on everyone involved and has Natsuki feeling the worst. He’s got his friends there doing what they can to help, but they have their issues as well, especially with Yuki and his inability to understand how this could have happened since his family issues preclude it for the most part.
Thankfully, they don’t spend the whole episode focusing on finding her and actually get it out of the way quickly in order to smooth over the whole thing. What the episode wants to bring into play mor eof is dealing with Haru and Koko as Akira is making it clear he wants to know what they’re here for. Perhaps not surprisingly, the pair are fairly open about why they’re here, looking for that someone that has hidden themselves deep under the water that they need to bring back to be dealt with. This furthers Akira’s believe that the Bermuda Syndrome is something that is caused by aliens, but it also reveals something else. Haru and Koko needed to befriend people in this village because they didn’t know how to fish and fishing is required in order to get him out.
While we get a lot of revelations there, and you can only trust so much of it, the show also spends a good bit of time with Yuki. He’s been in a curious position since the start of the series when he came here with his grandmother, but making friends has helped. What the short term loss of Sakura has shown him is that he was truly lonely before, having nobody to really fill the gap in his heart that he didn’t know existed. He had his grandmother, but there’s a different relationship there that kind of steps outside of things and doesn’t exactly apply. His forcefulness with Natsuki earlier in the episode does a good job of reinforcing that he knows what it’s like to be alone and doesn’t want others to feel that way, and by doing so has found his own path to feeling better as he’s got connections now that he didn’t have before.
In Summary:
While we get some answers here in regards to Haru and Koko, the real meat of the episode is seeing how the boys have come together and truly changed the way they live and think about things. Natsuki’s time is decent when it comes to his sister, but it’s how Yuki shakes him into realizing things before finding her that really hits home the best. And the same can be said for Yuki later in the episode when he talks with his grandmother about things and truly opens his heart to her by explaining what it is that he’s discovered about himself. It’s a hard thing for a lot of people to talk about, but he’s turned such a corner and grown so much since coming there that it’s made a huge difference.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.