I've become quite backlogged on my posts, due to lots of time spent procrastinating the working on the blog code (and then some working on the code). The question of why I'm trying so hard does come to mind, since Pearz has announced her intentions to master Flash in order to make things easier and prettier all in one go, but on the flip side, the Banners Page is now fully functional, as intended~
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| Row, row, fight the gravity~! |
This week's AnoHana episode was pretty slice-of-life, as the group continued to attempt to both figure out and fulfill Menma's wish. (Jinta's response to Yukiatsu's question of why he just didn't ask Menma was that it was scary. Sigh.) The little bits of development were interesting to watch, even though the story didn't particularly move forward so much.
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| That's pretty diligent in terms of writing everyday... |
It kind of feels like a Wish of the Week situation, as their current guess for Menma's wish was super fireworks (that they'll make without her). There was some stuff about Letters to God and Prayers for the Ill (Now Dead), but it wasn't that useful. This drove the story forward by bringing the friends together in the same lukewarm way as before. The elephant in the room was addressed by Yukiatsu -
why won't you just ask her, dammit?! - and deftly thwarted by Jinta's wishy-washy answer -
she's a scary and evil ghost!
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| A typical scenario that never happens in real life. |
The other aspect of the episode was the deepening of some old friendships, particularly between Jinta and Anaru. While she's a nice character, she and Jinta really don't fit so well together. Nonetheless, this episode showed how easily the attachment came to them (mostly her; I wonder if he just played along), and they went back to calling each other by their childhood nicknames. It's amusing how I don't even know Poppo's real name. It's also amusing how he can "claim" to have travelled to so many places, but has never seen 200,000yen in his life before. (Well, in his defence, he did say "cash"; maybe he has some Sugar Mommy supplying him credit cards.)
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| What an awkward way to hold a phone. Why would you do that? |
The other big plot point (and one of the only ones I genuinely care about; Menma is pretty annoying in large doses) has always been Yukiatsu's craziness, lessened to his cross-dressing. It wasn't really addressed in this episode (in fact, all the friends seem to not treat him differently; that, or they're doing the classic "ignore the problem and surely it'll go away" shtick), although Tsuruko did comment (to herself) that going around with Yukiatsu had its own problems. She could mean a plethora of things, including the jealous and self-righteous treatment she received from her female classmates in the previous episode, but a part of me hopes that his cross-dressing is a factor in it. Out of everyone, I genuinely want these two to be happy (maybe together).
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| Is she a tsundere or a sexpot? So confused... |
It felt like a very standard episode, one I watched almost half-heartedly while wolfing down a bowl of instant noodles. I was left hungry by the end of both. I'm glad to not have seen Menma too much, though; I can't stand her for too long and the constant questions in my mind (like why no one ever "coincidentally" sees her moving things around) only enrage me further. But it's okay that this episode was a little slow; it's definitely picking up pace to head towards a (hopefully satisfying) definitive ending.
...I'll go crazy if the ending isn't definitive.
~Aaro
PS. As of making this post, I still don't know what to write for my "About the Author" blurb...nor do I have a picture in mind. I'm the odd man out. Sadface.
