First Impressions / WHITE ALBUM

Summary:

Yuki successfully finishes recording her song after Rina advised her to put more spirit into it and promised to take her to a store with delicious cheesecake. Misaki meanwhile moves in with Touya’s father because he can provide her with a sewing machine and a place to work. She and Touya then start working, and Touya doesn’t go home for the night. When he wakes up the next morning, he remembers that he has to go tutor, so he rushes off to Mizuki Mana’s home. He doesn’t realize until he meets her that she’s the same girl that tried to help him back when he was trying to meet up with Yuki, and he initially thinks that he’s her sister’s tutor. Mana, however, reveals that she’s an only child. When Touya tries to give her a test to determine her proficiency, she refuses to take it at first and claims that she won’t go to college. Touya tries to convince her otherwise by telling the story of how he worked hard after his mother died, and she eventually just takes test. While she’s doing so, she asks him about meeting Yuki and brings up how she saw him with a girl the other day. Touya explains that it was a senpai from his university and tries to explain what was going on, but Mana calls him unfaithful. The conversation then turns to the entertainment world, and Mana comments disdainfully on some of the artists out there. She also still refuses to believe that Touya is going out with the idol Yuki, but she does manage to impress him by getting all the answers correct on the test he gave her.

Misaki picks Touya up that night and the two head to Echoes for some food, and while they’re there, Rina comes in. She’s looking for Touya, but when she sees him with Misaki, she walks off into the back of the cafe. Touya goes after her to clear up the misunderstanding, and the two descend to the basement area where Eiji is. Rina tells her brother about what she just saw and is concerned about how it’ll affect Yuki, but she goes on to suggest that if Touya were by her side all the time, then she’d be able to watch over him. Eiji is against the idea and gives his reasons why, but they put off making a decision because they have to head to the studio. They take Touya with them, and even though he thinks that he has to help Misaki still, she’s already gone home without him. While in the car, Touya tries to call her, but she doesn’t answer the phone. Meanwhile, at the TV station, Yuki passes by the female idol group that messed up her outfit a while back, and this time, they pull her hair and elbow her. Yayoi is ready to do something about it, but Yuki calls her back and doesn’t create a commotion. Over at Touya’s apartment, Haruka has come by to see him again, but he’s not there, and the neighbor yells at her for continuously ringing the doorbell. Haruka ends up crying and wishing for Touya and her brother, however she eventually leaves, and by chance, Mana sees her on the road. Touya by now has arrived at the studio with Rina and Eiji, and as he listens to Rina sing, he realizes that she’s on a different level.

Preview

Well that was an interesting episode. I still think they could speed up the pacing a little, but I’m enjoying the series more now that all the girls are active in the story, especially Mana. Well, enjoy might not be the right word in all cases. It was rather frustrating to watch Yuki keep Yayoi from doing anything to those girls – I mean, I understand that Yuki doesn’t want to cause an incident, but those girls really deserved to be slapped. Hopefully Yuki will get her revenge in a different way, but knowing how passive her character can be sometimes, she probably won’t. It was also frustrating watching Misaki, but that was a different kind of frustrating. I said last week that I don’t really find her character interesting, and those feelings didn’t change – I wouldn’t mind if we didn’t see her or any of the drama club stuff again. On the other hand, I did enjoy Mana’s playfulness, am curious about what’s going to happen to Haruka (I don’t quite sympathize for her yet though), and the end of the episode made me wonder again if anything is ever going to happen between Touya and Rina. We’re already halfway through the series, so if something is going to happen, it’d have to happen fairly soon or else there won’t be much time left for that kind of drama.

18 Comments

  7. I hope they pick up the pace too. They have a lot of ground to cover with only six episodes left too. Unless they don’t plan on coming to any conclusion, which would really stink. Its still a good series though, in my opinion at least.

    DragoZERO
    Reply

  8. haruka’s situation reminds me of an experience i had a few years back when a female room mate of mine tried to show me this book she was really into and was apparently soooo great. i read the chapter titles and was shocked at how obvious they were, especially for a self help book. the book’s called “he’s just not that into you,” the same one the movie is based on…and well yes haruka should read it.

    chapter 5 title “he’s just not that into you if he’s having sex with someone else”…gosh really? how bout this one chapter 8 “he’s just not that into you if he’s breaking up with you”

    RickyMack
    Reply

  10. I bet we’ll get an ending like “Haruka can’t stand the loneliness and when she encounters Yuki, she starts an argument about who deserves Fujii (our loser main character). Since Yuki’s so stressed with the crappy treatment the other idols give her, she stabs Haruka in the neck with a knife she was using to cut a cake at her new album’s release party. Rina-chan discovers Haruka’s dead body on the floor of the recording studio, and completely breaks down. Fade to black, when Fujii sees she left 99+ phone messages on his phone that are like “Save me…” “Fujii-kun, where are you?” and it just so happens he was with Misaki at the time. So he leaves Misaki and goes to find Rina, and since she’s so messed up at the time (having seen the bloody remains of Haruka) that he hugs her to calm her down. Unluckily for them, Yuki-chan sees Fujii and thinks that he’s hitting on Rina/they’re in a relationship. So she tries to kill Rina, too, and gets her in the stomach before Rina pulls out a tazer and Yuki’s knocked out. Fujii sits beside the dying Rina and hears her last words: a confession of love (in song form). After she’s dead, Fujii runs away from the recording studio, and Rina’s brother is the first to discover the body. Because he knows that Yuki will be a top selling artist, he covers the murder up with his A+ producer influence. Unfortunately, Misaki thinks that Fujii is leaving her for Yuki (even though he left for Rina) and smothers Yuki with a hospital pillow, then jumps off the hospital roof. When Fujii is at Mana’s house, waiting for her to get ready for the tutoring session, he gets a call from Akira about the deaths of Misaki and murder of Yuki. He’s so stunned that he’s at a loss with what to do, when he hears a certain music playing on the TV: Yuki’s new CD release, “White Album”. As the theme music plays in the background, Touya picks up a kitchen knife and stabs himself multiple times. Mana enters the kitchen only to discover a bloody mass that used to be Fujii, on the floor as the show’s theme music plays… But on the bright side, she went to school + college every single day since she was too scared to be alone, because what if Fujii’s spirit was blaming her for not helping him find Yuki on the day they first met…? 😈

    Nat-chan
    Reply

  16. I’d always found it odd how the name is written in katakana – ‘hwite’ (converting it back into English orthography). So I looked it up in a Japanese dictionary, and found that this is how ‘white’ borrowed from English is always written in Japanese. I’m at a bit of a loss to explain how this could have occurred, as the H hasn’t preceded the W in English in almost a thousand years.

    Justin Olbrantz (Quantam)
    Reply

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