Josh’s Anime Blog

It’s episode 10, and it’s a Chihiro and Renji-less episode as at least two of the character’s story arcs appear to reach their end as Hiro chooses who he wants to be with. But will he choose Miyako or Kei?

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The highlights of this episode:

• As Miyako and Hiro lay in bed in the morning, Miyako says that she realized that Hiro will be someone who will cherish her, and that she doesn’t want to be with someone who won’t cherish her.
• Kei arrives to wake Hiro up and sees the two of them in bed. Kei then proceeds to wreck Hiro’s apartment with her crutch and runs off. Hiro starts to chase her, but Miyako grabs him, telling him not too, but Hiro goes anyway, leaving Miyako behind, feeling like she’s been dumped again.
• Kyosuke tries to comfort Kei but is rebuffed. Seeing Kei’s pain, Kyosuke decides to confront Hiro, yelling at him that he’s being “half assed” about everything - about Kei, his manga, about school, about Miyako, and is hurt everything and everyone as a result.
• Hiro returns home to find his apartment cleaned up when Miyako calls to say that they should break up and hangs up before Hiro and respond.
• While walking outside, Hiro runs into Mizuki who tells him how excited Kei was making food to bring over for him (despite her horrible cooking skills) and as a result, got a subscription to a magazine with the manga series that Nagi Shindou, Hiro’s pen name, writes (not knowing that it’s Hiro, of course), but notes that Nagi seems to be off his game recently.
• Hiro goes to the roof of the school and meets church girl Amamiya there. She tells Hiro that he has to give up something dear to him, so that he may keep holding on to what he holds most dear, lest he lose all of it. Hiro knows which thing he’ll give up first: school, so that he may focus on his manga.
• Hiro then goes to Kei’s house, where he tells her about giving up school. He tells Kei that she and Chihiro are the reason he started drawing manga in the first place.
• Kei decides to confess to Hiro before the two of them finally “break things off,” thinking that they won’t see each other again, but Hiro wants them to remain “like brother and sister” like in the past. Kei says that she thinks it will take some time, but she hopes that she can go back to that time as well.
• Meanwhile, Miyako is talking to Amamiya, telling her that she’s running away because she’s not as strong as Hiro. However, Amamiya tells Miyako that it’s a shame, since she wanted to see a dream “that might bring her happiness” fulfilled.
• Miyako calls Hiro to tell him that she’s leaving, saying that even though she believes that Hiro cherishes her, she’s still believes that she’ll be erased from Hiro’s heart eventually. She tells Hiro about her past: about how her parents started ignoring each other, and by extension, started ignoring her. She tells Hiro that this allowed her to have the freedom to go anywhere she wanted, but ended up being a lone as well.
• Hiro gets angry at Miyako for not telling him about this sooner, but Miyako tells him that she wanted to be cherished, not pitied. Hiro tells Miyako that her home can be with him, but Miyako is still afraid of being left alone again some day. Hiro tells her to trust him, and Miyako tells him that she wants to stay, but is afraid, but Miyako’s phone card cuts off in the middle of the conversation.
• Miyako starts crying, afraid that she’s alone again since nothing got fully resolved over the phone, and with her not telling Hiro where she is. However, Hiro eventually finds her, having checked every public phone in the city, and yells at her that he loves her.

Well, it looks like Hiro and Miyako’s story arc is finally finished up. So we have Chihiro and Renji’s arc left, and we still have a possible Kei/Kyosuke arc that could get concluded as well in the final two episodes. I thought that the two major arcs would intertwine eventually, but that never happened, so this is kind of like two different but related series running together at the same time.

I’m also wondering exactly who Amamiya is. She shows up now and then, but we don’t really have any background on who she is. It’d be nice to find out before the end.

Given the very end of the episode, it appears like we’re going to hit the Renji/Chihiro arc again next episode, and my guess is that they’ll get the entire episode just as Hiro, Miyako, and Kei did in this episode. That one seems less complicated, as the who will end up with who is basically between Chihiro and Renji getting together or their not (I’m assuming they will), but it will ultimately be up to Renji deciding that he’s up to the holding the responsibility for caring for Chihiro.