Suzuka – 06

WARNING: Don’t read this review before you’ve watched the episode, unless you want to badly spoil yourself.

Short Summary:
A girl selling newspaper subscriptions arrives at Yamato’s door, promising free tickets to an amusement park. Yamato jumps at the chance, thinking that he can take Suzuka on a date. Unfortunately, the perfect opportunity to invite her never presents itself. Instead, the tickets are accidentally shredded by the cat. Yamato is devastated, but Suzuka ends up inviting him with her pair of tickets that she also got from the newspaper girl.
The next day, on their day off, the two go to the amusement park despite the fact that it is raining. Suzuka complains the entire time, which gets Yamato quite frustrated. After the first roller coaster though, her attitude changes for the better and they spend the rest of the day together. That night, after the rain stops and while watching the night parade, Yamato works up the courage to confess to Suzuka. At first she doesn’t take him seriously, but when he says that he’s not joking, she apologetically rejects him. The walk home is silent and awkward. Arriving home, Yamato complains about Suzuka to Yasunobu, who is there reading the newspaper. Though Yamato never mentions the confession, Yasunobu catches on quickly and leaves, tossing Yamato a packet of tissues first. Yamato says he doesn’t need them, but starts crying.

Mentar convinced me to delay this post until Lunar put out the episode so that people could experience the full effect of this episode without it being spoiled by me blogging it. Hopefully Suzuka’s rejection of Yamato surprised you (meaning Mentar accomplished his task).
While the confession and subsequent rejection might have come as a surprise, I think it makes sense in the overall plot. Suzuka was right in saying that they had not known each other for long enough, plus she’s carrying a lot of extra baggage which has been hinted at and will be covered later. And if Suzuka accepted the confession, then we wouldn’t really have an interesting story anymore.
The actual production level of this episode rises several notches from previous episodes. The animation seems a bit more consistant and I really enjoyed the actual music during the dramatic parts. It could have been a bit more soft, especially during the final scene, but I’ll take what I can get.
From here, Yamato is going to have to recover and, according to the preview, renew his efforts to get close to Suzuka by joining the track team. Hopefully the next few episodes won’t lose the quality of this one.