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The episode starts after Nagisa returns from the student council room. She tells Okazaki that the student council said that, since the drama club is inactive, they can’t recruit members. Okazaki tells Nagisa not to give up, and that they’ll find a way to revive the club. Meanwhile, Sunohara sees Okazaki hanging out with Nagisa. Afterwards, when Okazaki is hanging at Sunohara’s place, Sunohara asks him if he’s dating Nagisa. Okazaki decides to tell him that Nagisa’s mother runs a bakery, and her bread is so good, that he’s willing to hang out with her to get a whole bunch of free bread.

The next day, Sunohara once again meets up with Sakagami, who is anything but happy to see him. Trying to use the same “trick” as before with the razor, Sunohara suddenly cries out that he “forgot his breasts” and asks Sakagami if he can have hers. She, understandably, asks him what for, and Sunohara once again sees her asking “why” as affirmation of her ability to give them to him (thus, proving, at least to himself, that Sakagami is a boy). Of course, all of this leads to Sakagami power-kicking Sunohara around some more.

While exiting that encounter, Sunohara and Okazaki run into Fuko, who decides to start calling Okazaki “weird person” (explaining that he’s so weird, he’s almost his own species). Sunohara then decides to get involved, and the girl immediately describes him as “the boy with weird hair.” Fuko then drags Okazaki off to talk to him. She asks him to attend her sister’s wedding in exchange for her “gift” of the star that she gave him earlier. Okazaki resists, noting that he hardly knows her, much less her sister.

Fuko tells Okazaki that she’s been handing out the stars to people at school and asking them to attend her sister’s wedding. Okazaki tries to explain to her that no one at the school knows her either, and that they’re not going to take time out of their day to attend the wedding of someone they don’t even know, but Fuko still decides to try.

After this, Sunohara decides to have a round 2 with Sakagami. This time, Sunohara tries to lead her into the boy’s bathroom (thinking that, since he’s a “guy,” “he” wont care about it), but this leads to Sunohara getting another beating. Sakagami then gets mad at Okazaki, telling him that there are limits to their harassment of her, but Okazaki tells her that Sunohara has just been trying to “prove” that she’s a guy. Sakagami seems rather depressed by this, saying she thought she was acting as a “normal girl” while at school.

After school, Nagisa and Okazaki hang out in the drama room, trying to decide what to do next when Sunohara comes in and says he overheard them talking about the situation, and says he wants to help. First, he suggests they all jump the student council president, but Nagisa obviously rejects this plan. He then suggest they go around asking people to join.

Their first target is Ryou. Sunohara tries to decide how to approach her without Ryou getting involved, and Okazaki tells him to tell her that someone is interested in asking her out, and then Kyou will back off. So Sunohara tells her this, and they present Nagisa as the person who wanted to talk to her. This makes Ryou start to get flustered. And of course, how the conversation goes makes it sound like Nagisa is leading up to ask her out as well (along with Sunohara and Okazaki making leading comments in that direction as well).

Kyou, who was listening in from a nearby closet, falls out once Nagisa actually asks Ryou to help her form a theater club, and then storms over and takes it out on Okazaki and Sunohara. Afterwards, Ryou explains that you need 3 members and an advisor to form a club, and Kyou notes that they already have 3: Nagisa, Okazaki, and Sunohara, but the two guys say that they’re not actually interested in joining the club.

The next day, Sunohara decides to harass Sakagami yet again, this time to apparently get on her “good side” for some reason. Sunohara starts complimenting her, but Sakagami just blows them off considering that she’s not very fond of Sunohara. Okazaki has Sunohara say and do a who series of ridiculous things which eventually leads to Sakagami beating the crap out of Sunohara for a 3rd time. After she’s finished with Sunohara, Okazaki asks her if she’s interested in joining the drama club, but she tells him that she’s running for student council president, so she doesn’t have time for that.

Next, Okazaki goes up to the library to ask genius girl Kotomi if she wants to join, but she goes off saying that Okazaki’s first name, Tomoya, makes her feel weird. Okazaki tells her that he’ll be back to ask her again, and asks her to consider joining. Okazaki then meets up with Nagisa, who hasn’t had any luck asking people to join either. Okazaki then thinks of someone else to ask.

He and Nagisa then go to the room that Fuko hangs out in to ask her, but she tells them that she’s busy. Okazaki remarks that she can’t be carving out stars every moment of every day, but Fuko tells him that she is, and that she stays at home doing so from morning till night and doesn’t go home, saying there is no point in doing so. Fuko then explains that on the way home from the entrance ceremony, she was almost hit by a car, and then the next thing she realized, she was at school.

Nagisa then asks her what her family name is, and Fuko tells her that it’s Ibuki. Nagisa then asks her if she’s Ikubi-sensei’s younger sister (as Fuko’s sister had taught at the school until 3 years prior). However, Nagisa says that she had heard that Ikubi-sensei’s little sister had been in a car accident and was in the hospital ever since. Nagisa then pulls Okazaki aside and tells him that she had even stopped by the bakery and mentioned that she visited her sister in the hospital that day.

Nagisa then asks Okazaki if he’d heard the rumor about the ghost of a girl who had been involved in a car accident roaming around the school…

Well, it looks like I was wrong in the last episode write-up (what’s new?) and it looks like Fuko is going to be the first storyline that the show is going to pursue. Of course, I can’t ignore how similar Fuko’s situation seems to be to Ayu’s in Kanon (in an accident, been in the hospital ever sense, yet her “ghost” is out and about doing whatever). I’m interested to see what twist they put on this situation.

Next is Sunohara’s increasing harassment of Sakagami. Luckily these encounters are leading towards learning more about Sakagami, because doing each of these every episodes would start to get irritating otherwise. Though, if we’ve already gotten to the point where Sunohara had to have his face mosaiced out, I’d hate to know what will happen to him next.

In any case, overall, this was another great episode. I was busting out laughing at the Nagisa/Ryou roof scene. If I had to rank this series out of the 5 I’m blogging, it would probably come in 2nd right now, just after Blue Drop. I had pretty high expectations of CLANNAD after watching Kanon, and I haven’t been disappointed yet. Of course, we’re not into the beef of the series yet either, though it looks like we will be very soon.

Addendum: I’ve also been thinking, now that the widescreen version has aired on satellite, whether to start replacing the 4:3 screenshots in previous episodes with the newer 16:9 screenshots.  At least if people look at them in the future, they’ll have the better pictures if I do that (whenever I find time to do it, that is).

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The episode starts with Yuji and Shana walking Fumina to school since they’ve been tasked to aid her until she gets used to things. However, Shana is less than happy with this arrangement, especially since it was Ike who was originally given the job to look after Fumina, but she insisted on sticking with Yuji. Once at school, we see that Yoshida has been tasked to help Fumina with the “girl things” at school.

However, through several events like Yuji showing Fumina how to clean the school’s pool and sharing his lunch with her, Shana becomes increasingly agitated at how close Yuji and Fumina are getting. Yoshida decides to tag along with the group as they walk back home that afternoon at Ike’s proding. On the way, they pass a new restaurant called “supersize heaven” which is opening the next day, and decide to swing by again then. However, while they’re looking, Fumina continues to walk on, oblivious that everyone else stopped. The group catches up to her, and Shana chides her for walking off on her own.

Meanwhile, Fumina appears to sense something, and looks up at the sky and leads the others to a park, where she sticks out her hand and, to everyone’s amazement, a bird willingly flies right down into her hand.

Back at Satou’s house, Satou, Margery Daw, and Wilhelmina are discussing Fumina. Wilhelmina sent a message to Outlaw – an information exchange for flame hazes – but heard no information about what the Bal Masqué is up to, and Margery doesn’t think they would send Hecate by herself into a town with three flame hazes.

Margery Daw then reveals the fact that Wilhelmina isn’t exactly comfortable with Shana and Yuji constantly training with each other. However, the news that Yuji has been training with Shana sends a jolt of jealousy through Satou. Meanwhile, Shana is expressing her jealousy over the current situation by beating the crap out of Yuji during training.

The next, everyone (Satou, Ike, Ogata, et. al.) all go to Supersize Heaven. Both Yuji and Satou order supersized ramen, and Satou challenges Yuji to a battle to see who can finish first. Meanwhile, Shana is busy chowing down on super-large ice cream sundaes. After Yuji and Satou finish their battle in a tie, Yoshida notices that Fumina is gone again. Yuji thinks they should look for her, but Shana says that she’s not their problem since she had already been warned not to wander off on her own. Yuji asks Shana what’s wrong with her, but Shana just runs off.

The group then splits up to go search for Fumina when Yuji wonders if she is back in the park. He goes there and indeed finds Fumina there. Yuji takes another good hard look at her and again thinks she looks a lot like Hecate. He approaches her, and starts to ask Fumina something but stops. Meanwhile, Yoshida stops by, probably wondering if Fumina is there as well, and sees Fumina and Yuji standing together and gets all jealous herself.

Early the next morning, Yuji is waiting for Shana for training when Wilhelmina shows up and says that she’ll be his training partner from now on. The next day at school, both Yoshida and Shana skip out on eating lunch with the group as usual and decide to eat lunch on the roof instead…

Well, what’s going to happen next? I guess any episode that elicits that question is a good one. Are we going to get action or more Shana/Yoshida angst? Or both? Despite all of the flame haze’s tests to see if Fumina is somehow Hecate in disguise showing no results, I still just can’t believe that it is a coincidence, especially with some of her behavior in this episode with her “hearing” some sound that causes her to go to the park, and her constant excessively clingyness to Yuji.

Alastor also seems to have some big plans for Yuji eventually, and I expect we’ll eventually see what those are, but probably not until later in the series I’d guess. This was, for the most part, a rather uneventful episode, with no fighting at all, though if you love raging jealousy, you’ll loved this episode.

Go Straight to the Screenshots | Go Straight to the Review

The episode starts right where the first episode left off with the stalker dude trying to wrestle Shion away. However, Ayumi runs and punches the guy, and the guy runs away. Ayumi starts to chase after the guy, but then decides to see if Shion (who is obviously quite scared) is alright instead and hands her a handkerchief. When they hear of what happens, Shion’s foster parents run to the police station to see if she’s alright. The police, however, have no idea who tried to kidnap her, and Ayumi was able to slip off without the police noticing and before they could thoroughly question him.

Following the incident, Shion’s foster parents have someone trail her to look after her (I believe it’s the younger of the two guys who were watching her enter the Shogi association building in the first episode). Stalker guy, who is trying to get some more good shots of Shion on his camera phone doesn’t really appreciate the new company.

Some time passes, and Shion graduates to middle school and finally gets her win to become a junior pro, making the newspaper and adding another piece to Mr. Stalker’s collection of goodies.

Meanwhile, a new guy is showing another blond guy (or maybe the same one – we don’t really get to see his face) pictures of Shion, Ayumi, and Saori, explaining to the blond guy that they are the three newest girls to advance to the junior pro league. The new guy mentions that he hopes to get the three girls to “work with us” and hopes that the blond guy can help him with that.

Meanwhile, Shion defeats her foster-father at a game of shogi (albeit, with some sort of handicap), but her father remarks at how complex many of her moves have become and how much better Shion’s gotten at playing. He asks Shion how the pro league is going, and she writes down that it’s been fun. He then laughs at that, but tells her that in tournaments, sometimes you have to get to the point of almost hating your opponent to be able to defeat them, but he thinks Shion will be able to understand that eventually. He then gives Shion a fan which has the character for “Dream” on it for her to take to her next tournament for good luck.

At the shogi association, Ayumi, once again dressed as a girl, debates whether he should try to in the next tournament. He think that winning such a major tournament so soon might make him stand out too much, but the prize is 1 million yen (something like $10,000) and that’s quite a sum to pass up if he has the chance to win it. At that point, he runs into Saori who appears to be waiting for him.

Saori asks Ayumi where “she” studied shogi, since she hasn’t been able to look up anything about her playing before she started training with Kamizono (I’m guessing this is Mr. Ugly). Ayumi tells her that she learned in a neighborhood dojo before then, and never really entered any tournaments up until that point. Ayumi also decides to himself that he must defeat Saori soon, lest she discover his secret.

Saori tells Ayumi that “she” must have learned her playing style at the dojo, and tries to describe it, but can’t really come up with a description. However, Ayumi asks Saori if she’s trying to think of “vulgar shogi.” Saori pauses for a moment, but then says she wasn’t thinking of it quite like that, but does think it’s rather “war-like,” but still admires it. Ayumi then tells Saori that her shogi is “too kind” and, basically, she doesn’t go all out.

This rather depresses Saori, who runs to her trainer’s – Hanemeiji – (unlisted) apartment. When he comes out to see Saori off to a taxi, she explains to him how he had called her Shogi “kind” before, and thought it was a compliment, but then explained to him what Ayumi had told her earlier, and asks Hanemeiji if he was just pitying her. Hanemeiji then tells her that if she regrets playing “kind” shogi, then she should learn to grow stronger. She then asks him to teach her how to play stronger by playing a match with her, so he brings her inside his apartment.

Meanwhile, a weird kanji-cut-out letter has been left at Shion’s house which says “The King’s Crown doesn’t suit you,” – referencing the king piece in a shogi set. Shion’s mother tells her about it, but says that such things are rather common once someone enters professional shogi. That night, Shion once again dreams of the night her parents were murdered. The recalls the words the murderer told her: “tonight, you will forget what you saw. If you want to keep living, forget your words.”

The next morning, the shogi association is sent a note saying that the sender will kill Shion if she wins the tournament going on at the association that day. Furuta and one of his assistants ponder what to do about it, debating whether it’s a prank or not. They decide not to disrupt the tournament by calling the police, but decide to add extra security to the event.

Inside the building, Saori runs into another competitor, Kawai, who remarks that is Shion is going to “cause this much trouble” that she should be kept out of the tournament. Saori asks her what she means and she tells, Saori about the note. Ayumi, who arrives out of the elevator just as Kawai is explaining the situation hears about the note as well. The two run to the front desk to ask how Shion is, but Furuta tells them that she’s already arrived.

The matches in the tournament begin, and Furuta is about to bring in a set of spectators so they can see how tense the matches are, but explain that no pictures can be taken and no one can talk. However, the sole woman in the group is bringing in a hidden camera to record things. Once inside Shion’s room, the lady asks Shion if winning the tournament is worth dying for – referring to the note from earlier. Of course, this causes her to get immediately ejected out of the building. The woman meets up with her companion who asks if what she got was “article worthy.” She tells him that she doesn’t know, but that when she asked Shion the question, Shion looked at her and nodded “yes.”

Meanwhile, the stalker guy stands outside the shogi association building…

Well, we’re getting some background about some of the characters, but also getting into some conversations would seem to require at least a basic understanding of shogi to understanding (“kind” vs. “war-like” play, for example). We get a possible reason why Shion has stopped talking, with the murderer having told her to “forget her words.”

We also learn that Shion’s shogi play is getting increasingly better, though she doesn’t really play a match on screen, except for the short time we see at the end.

In the first episode, I wasn’t sure if the stalker was the same person as the murder of Shion’s parents, but in this episode I’m starting to believe he is. Not only does he look similar (at least compared to what we can see of the murderer from Shion’s memory), but that would also explain his extreme interest in Shion in particular.

We have this other deal with the two guys trying to get the girls to “work for them” that’s still hanging out there as well, but that hasn’t really gone anywhere yet.

Also, a note about the animation quality. Am I the only one who thinks that it dropped somewhat in this episode? I guess that’s not wholly shocking, but the difference in quality of mid-distance shots seemed to be quite drastic to me (close-up shots still seemed to be pretty good quality).

I’m still not sure where exactly the series is going, and there are multiple storylines that have popped up. I’m interested to see where all this ultimately leads.

This week’s Podcast Stats:

Time: 24:25
Download Size: 16.8 MB

Opening theme:
“Falco” by Hitomi Shimatani
First opening theme to The Law of Ueki

Ending theme:
“Natsuiro no Kakera” by Youko Takahashi
First ending theme to This Ugly Yet Beautiful World

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