Da Capo II SS – 09

Summary:

In the aftermath of Sakura’s disappearance, Yoshiyuki finds a letter from her saying that she’d be gone for a while. Otome is the only one between her, Yume, and Yoshiyuki who knows what really happened, and she’s depressed about it. On the way to school, the three of them see Koko across the street, and Yoshiyuki starts to walk over, but at that very moment, the light suddenly changes from green to red. Otome realizes that there’s a car barreling down the road towards Yoshiyuki now, and she so tries to pull him out of the way. The car ends up crashing into a pole instead of into Yoshiyuki, and all of this causes Otome to realize that the accidents haven’t stopped. She thus pays a visit to the sakura tree to try to tell Sakura that the bad wishes haven’t ended, but she gains no insight into what to do. Otome eventually decides that she has to put a stop to things herself and questions if she can make the tree wither given that she knows that one of the effects will be Yoshiyuki disappearing. Having been looking for her all day, Yoshiyuki finds Otome on the school rooftop after school, but she’s unable to face him and runs away in tears.

The following morning, Yoshiyuki tries to wait for Otome to walk to school together, but he finds out from Yume that she had already left. When he manages to run into Otome in the hallway at school, she avoids making eye contact with him and claims that she’s too busy to talk with him. Mayuki also notices that Otome isn’t acting herself and later points out to Otome that she isn’t talking about Yoshiyuki like she normally does. Yoshiyuki then shows up at the student council office looking for her, but Otome still doesn’t want to see him and tells him not to wait for her. Despite this, Yoshiyuki is waiting for her when she leaves that afternoon. In order to continue avoiding him, Otome claims that she has something to do and tells him to leave her alone, however this time, he presses her about what’s troubling her and reminds her that they’re supposed to be one in body and soul. When he says that he’d do anything for her, Otome reacts by telling him to let her be alone. This combined with her tears causes Yoshiyuki to decide to do as she says, and though he starts to say something as he walks away, he opts not to finish his sentence.

Otome knows that in her heart she truly wants to be with Yoshiyuki, and the torment of all this causes her to wander around in the rain until she finally returns home later that night. When she confides her troubles to Junichi, and he sees how much of an emotional wreck she’s become, Junichi tells her to leave this to him. He intends to use himself to control it like Sakura did, and he feels that this is a responsibility that should be shouldered by an adult. Unfortunately, the next morning, Otome finds that the sakura tree still has the bad aura around it, and all that’s left of Junichi at the base of the tree is his pair of glasses. For Otome, this means now that she has to make the tree wither.

I don’t know what’s more frustrating to watch – the fact that Otome burdens herself with everything and doesn’t talk to Yoshiyuki, or the fact that this tree and/or the bad wishes just can’t be stopped. The former is bad because we’ve seen time and time again instances where doing that only makes everyone unhappy, and the latter – specifically how Junichi sacrificed himself too to no avail – just takes away from the effect of Sakura’s sacrifice last week. It also means that we’re back to square one now, and Otome is once again faced with the decision she spent all episode troubled over. Whether or not she goes through with it, the title of next week’s episode (The End of the Dream) makes me think that there’s a double meaning with relation to Yume, so maybe she’ll finally get involved in this too. Oh and on a side note, a friend mentioned to me that Otome sounded kinda like true tears‘ Noe this time (both are voiced by Takagaki Ayahi, and that ended up being all I could think about whenever she was on screen.