What They Say:
Honoka accepts Aoi’s invitation to visit Hanno and watch the fireworks with her, Hinata, Kaede, and Kokona!! Unfortunately, Aoi and Hinata still aren’t speaking after a recent fight. Can they make up in time to enjoy the festival?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the girls having made their climb to the summit of Mt .Tanigawa and also having made a friend along the way with Honoka, the last couple of episodes have been fun to watch. The show has worked its balance well in providing climbing episodes alongside character episodes so that we flesh them out in decent, albeit simple, ways that expand on who they are. Adding Honoka to the mix was a nice surprise as I really didn’t expect the group to grow much based on what they do and its source style as well. But Honoka adds a new dynamic to things and it’s also an area where we can see how being friends with a group can help one find their own voice as well, to be a more confident person able to handle things.
Now that the climb is done and over with, the silliness back on the home front is in full swing, especially with Aoi and Hinata having a tiff over nothing of consequence. This also makes it easier for Aoi to shift her attentions to Honoka, who has come to the area to watch fireworks with her. Honoka is, of course, more interested in taking pictures of new places more than anything else, but she also ends up becoming a bit of a sounding board for Aoi about the problems. The two do pretty well here as they go through various places, but Aoi is pretty oblivious at times as she’s fuming more about Hinata than showing her friend a good time, but Honoka is pretty interested in most of the places they go and gets lost of great pictures. Aoi, for her part, just talks about Hinata until Honoka calls her out on it, which was amusing to see.
Things eventually do come around to the festival itself, where we have everyone meeting up and having fun, but still with some tension between Aoi and Hinata to give it all a little drama. It’s no surprise that they resolve it fairly quickly – especially with Kokona wins herself a ton of goldfish – and it’s pretty much as you’d expect because you know these two girls well over the course of the series. The festival itself is fun to see as are all the fireworks, which come as the two repair things in the way that works best for them. As a way to bring the series to a close, it works pretty well and makes for a pleasant time overall.
In Summary:
While climbing was certainly a big part of the series overall, the real chord here are the characters themselves, their friendships and what was born of that. Bringing in a new character towards the end here worked well, since it didn’t dominate and reduce the interactions of other characters, but instead was used as a way to highlight the core group while adding to them. This series is one that utterly charmed me when it ran as a four minute series of shorts and it did a fantastic job as a longer work. There are a lot of shows that can’t do the simple slice of life stuff without being problematic or truly about nothing, which is unfortunate because slice of life does not mean dull or boring. These kids here showed wonders, explored their area and continued to grow up across the series. Very good stuff, very wonderful stuff in fact, that sadly won’t get a larger audience like it should.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Re-ceiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
