What They Say:
Natsuki and Anna meet up for a brief moment on New Year’s, but can Anna gather up the courage to ask about the kiss?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Anna didn’t do herself any favors for me as a viewer recently with her Christmas Eve actions, though I can understand them in an abstract kind of way. That things went as badly as they did and then went as expected with Natsuki’s cold catching up to him to the point that he passes out without remembering the move he made on her is about par for the course with these kinds of series. His being out of it for a few days is comical and the way she’s agonizing over it now, trying to figure out what it all was, feels kind of odd because the two have been pretty close up until that point. I’ll attribute it to cultural to some degree, but there’s that odd element about it where you’d think she’d be able to figure out what it is that it really meant – even if he doesn’t remember it.
With the new year here and her celebrating it with Mari, it goes about as you’d expect and Mari’s hopes of time alone are dashed as they stumble across most of the others. Natsuki’s not being there does get Anna to call him, however, and try to get an idea of how he’s feeling since she’s told he’s still stick and couldn’t come. There’s a nice phone conversation that happens with this as we get a good sense of her general worry over him but also the way she’s struggling with her own uncertainty, which gets him to recognize something’s up and come and see her – even though he’s not feeling fantastic yet. That it’s a chance for him to give her the present she got her is the icing on the cake, of course. It’s nice watching all of this play out and seeing how things smooth out as she extracts herself from everyone else, Mari included, to go and meet with him.
The two have a good bit of quiet time together, something like the back half of the episode plus a little more, and there is a pleasantness about it as they exchange gifts and generally just enjoy each others company a bit as she dances around trying to figure out what happened on Christmas Eve. It has a sweetness about it as she realizes he really doesn’t remember what happened and that gets her to keep it to herself for the most part, and I’d like to believe it’s so that he can remember their first kiss when they do kiss again since that would have some good meaning to it. Natsuki’s just oblivious to all of this though as he still wishes he could have confessed to her before the year was out but was unable to. So it’s like a secret confession that she has, which gives it a different kind of sweetness. Poor anna, though, who really isn’t completely sure to some degree and is uncertain overall. Oh, Anna…
In Summary:
The dance continues between Natsuki and Anna and that’s all this really is. There are a few nice moments to be had but you partially get a little frustrated because you think Anna is finally getting it only to realize that she’s still not sure and kind out confused about the whole thing. Some of that is just her charm to be sure but it can also be frustrating. At least Natsuki is unaware and is just beating himself up for something that he didn’t do that he actually did do and didn’t get to enjoy.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Funimation
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.
