The world keeps kicking Keima down but he does what he can to help Chihiro with Ayumi’s help.
What They Say:
Keima was under the impression that he had found a potential route where he would cheer up the broken-hearted Chihiro, but she’s already found a new love!? Keima snaps at the absurdness of the real world, but he is beaten down by Chihiro’s counterattack. That is when Keima is helped by a previous conquest, Ayumi! Ayumi manipulates Keima and Chihiro into cleaning the classroom by themselves. Eventually, Keima finds himself caught up in a certain event…
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The previous episode gave us a great episode showing Keima’s troubles in the real world and you really have to feel for him. While he tries hard, and says so at the start here, it’s always worked against him and he invariably seems to end up in a worse place. After the issues with Chihiro that he had previously, there’s a sense of sadness that seems to permeate things here at the start as he deals with Ayumi about it and she gets to be the somewhat typical teenage Japanese girl in that she gets to beat him up a bit and be all confident and forthright with him.
Ayumi’s certainly an interesting character to have resurface since she was one that he had helped earlier and now seems to be in a position to help him. Luckily for him, Ayumi has lost her memories of that event as do all the girls who are helped with the Loose Souls, but there’s something about her that gnaws at the back of his mind about it. It’s good to see Elsie point out to him that her heart is simply brighter since that event since a weight was lifted with the Loose Soul being purged. She’s generally a happier person and her ways have changed to reflect that. Of course, the episode does have a rather heavy hand to it as the two of them work together to clean the classroom and it’s filled with moody colors and some very obvious piano music that really paints a picture in clear fashion.
Where the episode turns is in Keima helping Chihiro trying to get close to someone she likes, and Keima does a fairly decent job of helping her once things get underway and there’s a fun little montage sequence of sorts for it that’s almost true rom-com material. The majority of the episode though, with the sheer amount of rain taking place, is a very moody piece that has a real sense of somberness about it. It’s pretty overpowering at times and adds a whole lot to the show. In a way, the rain and the feeling it creates is pretty much a character itself since having it take place on sunny days with blue skies would give it all a very different feeling. There’s even a little Cyrano mixed into this which makes it extra cute, but even all of that is weighed down by the mood that’s created elsewhere.
In Summary:
This episode has a lot of good feelings to it and it reminds me of some of the things that first drew me to anime. After watching plenty of silly shows and action shows, I watched one in the early 90’s that had such a beautiful moment with just a bit of rain that I knew this medium could really do a wonderful job in evoking emotions. That’s still very much here as the rain dominates this episode and is instrumental in creating the story. It’s a decent story overall, but I found myself far more engaged with it because of the mood that it creates with the gray skies and everything. There are some good moments had throughout it but it works really well as a whole when you take in the feelings it’s trying to evoke. Bringing back Ayumi was just the icing on the cake for it all, but delicious icing nonetheless.
Grade: B+
Simulcast 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.