Aoi’s struggle is keeping her distant.
What They Say:
It’s summer vacation, and Aoi is still feeling down after her unsuccessful climb of Mt. Fuji. But then Hinata’s postcard from the summit finally arrives, prompting Aoi to revisit their first climbing spot – for a surprising discovery.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The adventure to Mt. Fuji was definitely a great one overall, at least for the viewer, as we got to see some beautiful backgrounds and the story of the girls making their climb up the various stations. It’s easy to see why it’s such a destination spot for many to make such climbs. Unfortunately for Aoi, the climb was too much for her physically and she couldn’t make it to the top, which lead to the group splitting up for a bit before reconnecting on the way down. For Aoi, she’s simply crushed and feels bad on so many levels that you can easily it easily eating away at her and leaving her in a place where she’s withdrawing even more.
Now that life is going on again, Aoi is still pretty much in the same bad place and is keeping her distance from the others while feeling largely down about everything. Hinata and Kokona are hanging out together now that Kaede has gone off on her own adventures and the two of them aren’t sure about the best way to help Aoi, which largely has them doing nothing in the end. With all this time alone, Aoi is coping with the situation as well as you could expect of a young woman of this age, and we see her thinking a lot on what lead her to this point with her early time with the others, Hinata in particular, that drew her into climbing.
And that takes on a larger meaning as she goes for a stroll to the local summit that they went on before and she gets reminded in small pieces exactly why she likes climbing. Not that she’s in full gear mode, as it’s a very simple walk overall, but it reinforces her love of the experience in a good way that helps to clear out the cobwebs. It also helps that Hinata shows up along the way and that helps to reinforce how much fun it is to do all of this together, which is where a lot of her guilt was stemming from. The two end up having a good time together and the main rule of climbing comes into play in fixing all of this; just dealing with things step by step.
In Summary:
Rather than being all hugely dramatic, the fallout from Aoi’s incident on Mt. Fuji is pretty well handled across all parties – except for Kaede flitting off to whatever grand adventure awaited her next. With the focus on Aoi as she struggles with what went on and her feelings towards climbing in general, seeing her making the efforts to step out of the shadows she put herself in by doing it herself is welcome, though a little help from Hinata certainly isn’t without merit or unwarranted. These two are the ones where everything started from, so getting them to reconnect a bit here to help Aoi make the final push back to being a part of everything is sweetly and nicely done.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.