Summary:

The night after Tooru leaves with his fiancée, Chizuru finally decides to bring Ryuu his present. When Ryuu sees her though, he comments on how she’s late and how his brother wanted him to tell her that she should show up properly when he visits again. This angers her, and it doesn’t help that Ryuu goes on to admit that he’s relieved that things finally turned out like this because it means that she can give up on Tooru. Chizuru ends up throwing the present in Ryuu’s face before running off, and she avoids him at school the next day. Sawako and Ayane are really worried about their friend, particularly since they feel that they can’t do anything for her, but Kazehaya tells them that it should be encouraging for Chizuru to know that they’re concerned about her.

Things come to a head during lunchtime when Ryuu stops Chizuru in the hallway to make her stop ignoring him. Chizuru thinks that Ryuu should apologize, and when he makes it clear that he has no intention of doing so, she questions if he’s always felt that it’d be better for her to get her heart broken quickly. Ryuu confirming that he did causes her to declare that she didn’t fall in love to get her heart broken and that she didn’t come over to his house yesterday to see Tooru. She admits that she wanted to, but she felt that she couldn’t and had instead come later to give Ryuu his present. What he said then still angers her, and she now storms off again, leaving behind all the bread she bought for lunch. Having witnessed most of this, Ayane and Sawako catch up with her, and Sawako isn’t able to hold back her emotions any longer. Seeing Sawako cry leads to Chizuru crying as well, and she finally expresses her frustrations about Ryuu. However, she realizes that she’s most angry at herself for taking it out on him like this because she had wanted to give him his present cheerfully. Ayane and Sawako support her and urge her to keep letting out her feelings, and Chizuru feels better afterward. Meanwhile, Ryuu calls his brother to tell him about the bread he got.

Preview

I had somewhat mixed feelings about this episode. I liked the observation Kazehaya made, and there’s clearly a lot of emotion throughout the episode, but I didn’t actually feel any significant emotional impact from it like I did at the end of last week’s episode. Part of it may be that most of those emotions were coming from Chizuru, yet I found myself not particularly sympathetic towards her character. As blunt as he was about it, I think that Ryuu was ultimately right about her, and that in turn made the extended focus on Chizuru’s frustrations feel dragged out. What she needs is probably just closure on her Tooru crush and the whole marriage thing, and the person who can do that is Tooru himself. Hopefully that’s what will happen next episode since it looks like Tooru will come back to talk to her, and maybe Chizuru will finally realize Ryuu’s feelings as well. Either way, I can’t imagine this arc going on for much longer, if for no other reason than the fact that the series is close to over and likely needs to go back to Kazehaya and Sawako’s relationship for the finale.

15 Comments

  1. I don’t feel sorry for Chizuru. She just needs to get over this and grow up. But I think she will. 😉 But indeed, it seems a bit dragged out, though I still liked the episode… I just cross my fingers for a second season, ’cause as we all know, they won’t ever be able to finish this up :<

    Acylia
  2. I hope they’ll be able to end chizu arc with the next ep. they MUST end it with the end of “first snow” chapter… they just MUST do it.

    and i hope so much they won’t go for a alternative ending to close this season and will continue to keep close to the manga waiting for s2

    Zeross
  3. Chii … Chii !!! Well I can relate to her in the sense of being hearth broken and putting a face to their friends “Oh yes I’m fine” yeah right! Some people have this kind of internal/never expressed love/infatuation desires and when it doesn’t workout they just swallow their pride and go in denial. I didn’t like the way Ryuu handled the whole thing. Maybe he’s trying to avoid being the “other” guy to save Chizu-san and is being this harsh with her to make her come to her senses on her own ?! But now the whole pairing is mess up. I’ll hate to have a girlfriend that loved my older brother first. Even if he never felt the same way and/or touched her. Even if Tooru properly reject her now. I feel dirty for the Ryuu x chizu pairing.

    Another weird thing is that we are made to believe that Yano is “experienced” in love relationships. However she is as lost as Sawako is to confort Chizu. Lucky Sawako broke in tears and that was the catalyst to the girls being able to let it all out.

    Overall I like the episode but I’m sad hopefully they will fix the whole thing.

    Island Esper
  4. First time posting here, long time lurker of this blog 😛 But I have to say that I’m a little disappointed in Omni’s view on this episode because I loved it 🙁

    Then again I might be a little biased on this since I’ve been looking forward for Chizu’s arc for a while now. Really excited for next episode, it has the same title as the chapter I’m in love with….I hope it all goes well and that you’ll like it Omni!

    robbydesu
  5. I thought the last scene where Chizuru finally starts crying was pretty well done. It’s hard to write scenes that keep bouncing between humor and drama like that but this series manages to pull it off well every episode or two. Still, there’s only four episodes left. I’m surprised they’re spending this much time on Chizuru’s arc.

    As of right now, Kimi ni Todoke is only slated for 24 episodes. Given that it has a pretty typical shoujo storyline, I doubt it will get any more than that. Anime original endings usually end up being pretty similar to the eventual manga endings — the anime either gets the main couple together early or ends on a chapter of the manga that suggests they will eventually evolve to that point.

    AuroraFlame
  6. kazehaya really pisses me off. i dont know why but his all happy thing really just pisses me off. ryuu too. He really doesnt know how to talk to girls. i mean to put it that blunt to her that she had no hope.

    the guys in this show are weird in a bad way.

    ahelo

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