First Impressions / HanTsuki

OP Sequence

OP: 「青い幸福」 (Aoi Koufuku) by nobuko

Summary:
Ezaki Yuuichi, who is technically hospitalized, is out wandering the streets when he realizes how late it is. He tries to sneak back in, but gets caught by the nurse, Tanizaki Akiko. He’s saved from her wrath when one of the perverted elder residents – Tada-san – feels her butt and distracts her attention. As we learn from Yuuichi, he’s been hospitalized for acute hepatitis. One day, he sees a girl in a room on the far end of the hospital. Akiko tells that the new patient is Akiba Rika, 17 years old.
Yuuichi is quite bored in the hospital, so he works up the nerve to visit Rika, but can’t make it past her door. Instead, he gets his opportunity when Akiko asks him to keep Rika company and hands him a book of one of her favorite authors, Akutagawa Ryunosuke. Yuuichi almost doesn’t go in again, but he slips and accidentally knocks on her door. Rika quickly figures out that Yuuichi doesn’t know anything about the author or his works, but decides to let it go if Yuuichi goes and brings her an Akutagawa book from the library. Yuuichi gets the wrong book, so she makes him go back to get the right one. In the next days, the two start to spend more and more time together.
On the roof one day, Rika admits that she’s in the hospital because of a heart disease, which she’ll probably die from. Looking at the scenery, she then tells the story of how her father took her up Mount Houdai and how she wants to go again. That night, Yuuichi returns to the hospital to learn that Tada-san has passed away and left his collection of dirty magazines for Yuuichi. The impact of Tada-san’s death makes Yuuichi decide to take Rika to Mount Houdai. His friend Tsukasa helps out by providing a moped and then holding Akiko back while the two sneak out. In the moonlight, the two climb up and reach the peak of the mountain. Much to Yuuichi’s alarm, bringing Rika up there seems to have strengthened her readiness to die. But because the memories of her father are too painful, Rika starts to cry, and she runs to Yuuichi for comfort. After she calms down, Yuuichi tells Rika how his father told him to treat women nicely. But he continues on by saying that his father was the worst because he gambled and drank, the latter which he eventually died of. Rika seems to think that Yuuichi brought her there because his father wasn’t there anymore, but Yuuichi knows that’s not true. However, all this activity has taken its toll on him and so he falls over. He then says something to Rika that shocks her.

ED Sequence

ED: 「記憶のカケラ」 (Kioku no Kakera) by nobuko
nobuko sings both the OP and ED. The opening song is as good as I remember it from the commercial, and nobuko’s voice in the ending song reminds me a bit of Rie Fu. The marriage picture at the end of the ED sequence seems to be a bit spoilerish, though I don’t know how the story’s gonna turn out.

The first episode of HanTsuki meets pretty much all of my expectations. Animation’s a lot better than I thought they’d be, and I think the only complaint I have is that the soundtrack thus far is a bit lacking; there were only three BGMs played the entire episode, though I did enjoy the one during the last scene. But anyway, the story is what I’m watching this for and it delivers the romance drama that I was hoping for. Rika and Yuuichi’s relationship seems to be quickly developing from a friendship to something more, though we have to keep in mind that this is only six episodes. And although Rika is the one who’s likely to die, Yuuichi is the only who looks sick for most of the episode. The hospital setting seems to be a constant reminder of death, which I imagine will be a central theme.
The two main seiyuu do a good job. Takahashi Mikako’s voicing of Rika reminds me a lot of her Tomoko (from Canvas2) voice. Of course the thing that interests me the most is what was not voiced: what Yuuichi said (and we didn’t hear) at the very end. From Rika’s face, you’d think that he confessed to her or something.
Unfortunately, there’s no second episode until January 25th (two weeks from today).

16 Comments

  6. Omni, the part in your summary where it says,

    “After she calms down, Rika learns that Yuuichi was also brought up the mountain by his father, who also died.”

    Did he really? Rika asked him why he does all these things for her, Yuuichi replied that his father told him to be nice to the girls, Rika said he was a nice dad, but Yuuchi rejected that idea and said he was the worst father who always drunk, and the reason he died was because he drank too much alchol. Maybe I don’t have the whole idea here, but I don’t think Yuuichi’s dad played much role in the mountain topic…

    And yep, I’d definitely bet my money on Yuuchi’s last words being confession…The lip synchronization says it too 😀

    Rasmiel
    Reply

  7. Yea I got confused, corrected…
    Actually I picked up the novels to cross-reference, and it seems that the novel has Yuuji thinking that the line he said about what his father said wasn’t entirely true. In fact, Yuuichi’s father said that Yuuji will someday have a girl he likes, and he should consider her the most important. Yuuichi remembers this line twice before the chapter is over, making me think even more that he’s confessing at the end.

    Omni
    Reply

  12. hmm i dunno whybut somehow i think someone is gonna die and this will be a bittersweet ending… this is what i presume…

    Show Spoiler ▼

    just my point of view… i just have a bad feeling that this will happen.. anyway great series i should be holding on to it till the end… lets hope they dun pull a iriya no sora ufo no natsu on us coz that will leave us finishing the series in july =.=”””

    cyw1988
    Reply

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