I’m ready for this show to end. Does it? Not just yet, as the Choir Club fights against the doom of their school.
What They Say:
Episode 12: “Piling Up and Rippling”
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
So, as we left off last episode, the members of the Choir Club decide to have their own White Festival. While they are all very fired up about it, there are the usual setbacks. Wien’s props go missing (and are wrecked), while Konatsu’s attempt to get the Student Council to reverse the decision to cancel the White Festival does not pass (the arrogant girl from the Choral Group is the major stumbling block as usual). Despite the setbacks, they press forward.
We know it’s near the end, since we’re getting moments of closure. On her way to visit her mother’s grave, Wakana sees the Vice Principal there. Naoko apparently needed to tell Mahiru a few things, mainly her own feelings of failure, as the only thing that connected her to music, the school, is about to be no more. Wakana, however, who was coming to tell her mother about the song she has completed, their combined composition, tells the Vice Principal about it and does a little to ease her heart. It was a nice moment.
It seems that the Choir Club’s enthusiasm may be catching onto others. Taichi goes to the sewing room to make costumes, but makes a hash of it. The leader, I presume, of the sewing club, however, offers to help, inspired by his passion. Sawa goes to her mother to get help from the local shopping district committee. They are hesitant to go against the school board, but decide that putting up a few posters would not cause any trouble. Konatsu tries to get Ueno, the pianist for the Choral Group, to agree to accompany them, but is interrupted by Hirohata, the arrogant girl who is the Choral Group’s president. The argument does not reach a resolution, however, as the Vice Principal appears.
The Principal, it seems, is not such a bad guy, unlike the Chairman. Inspired by what he overheard in the Student Council meeting, he tries to persuade the Chairman to allow the White Festival to go ahead, though the Chairman seems resolute in being a bastard. He orders the Principal to make sure that students are not on campus after normal school hours, so that construction cannot be interrupted. Despite all of the obstacles, the Choir Club prepares for their own personal White Festival.
To be honest, I feel like this episode dragged on quite a bit. I wonder if they really needed to spend so much time on the build up for their final performance when earlier in the season, they seemed to rush right through the lead up to other major events. Of course this is the finale, the big finish, but by pushing the final denouement off, they’ve managed to make me less interested in the final episode than if they had had the good sense to do a more compact ending that could hit the heart now.
In Summary:
While the White Festival was cancelled, that does not stop the Choir Club from pressing ahead with their plans to sing the song that Wakana wrote with her mother. The preparations take up the entire episode, though I think that may have been a slight mistake, since it ends up dragging out the ending, removing a lot of the anticipation and drama of the final crisis for the school.
Grade: B-
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 4GB RAM, Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard
