Josh’s Anime Blog

It’s episode 14, and it’s the conclusion to Kotomi’s arc. Will she ever come out of her room? Will she go study abroad? Also, we get the final pieces in the puzzle of what happened between Okazaki and Kotomi in the past.

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The highlights of this episode:

• Okazaki continues to work on Kotomi’s yard, with Nagisa’s, Ryou’s and Kyou’s help, trying to get it finished before her birthday. He’s finished all the weeks and painted the chairs, and, apparently, planted new grass (unless he has some super-miracle grow for grass or something). Okazaki finally finishes planting the flower garden over night, and finally falls asleep at the table in the yard.
• Upon falling asleep, he remembers promising to come to Kotomi’s birthday, saying he’ll bring his friends. However, his friends decline, saying it would be weird to go to the party of someone - much less a girl - they didn’t know. As a result, Okazaki was too afraid to face Kotomi after failing to bring his friends and doesn’t go to the party. However, that night, he decides to go and apologize. However, once at the house, he finds the room that Kotomi is in on fire. He tries futilely to put it out as Kotomi cries about what she’s done. Eventually, the man who worked in Kotomi’s father’s lab shows up with another man and puts out the fire. After the incident, Okazaki never saw Kotomi again until they met at school.
• Okazaki finally wakes up to see Kotomi standing in the doorway. She tells Okazaki that the boy who visited her back when was her only friend, and she’s been waiting all this time for him to come back.
• The next day, Kotomi comes to school, and Okazaki, Nagisa, Ryou, and Kyou welcome her back. Her teacher then arrives and tells her that her god-father is waiting for her inside.
• Kotomi and the others await for her god-father in the drama club room when the man who worked with Kotomi’s father walks in with a suitcase that Kotomi recognizes as her father’s. The man tells Kotomi that it arrived at the lab the night before, and he felt like he had to give it to her today.
• Kotomi opens the suitcase, after some encouragement from Okazaki and Kyou, and finds a stuffed bear, with a note. The main explains that it must had drifted ashore somewhere, and had been passed from person to person until it finally found it’s way back to the lab. He also tells Kotomi that the envelope that she burned wasn’t really a copy of the paper her parents wrote, but a catalogue for teddy bears. Apparently her parents worked on the paper until the last moment and had no time to make a copy.
• Kotomi tells the man that the paper should have been in the suitcase, though, but he just tells her to read the letter. Inside the letter, her parents have written her a note wishing her a happy birthday. Hugging the bear and the letter, Kotomi tearfully says “welcome home” to her parents.
• A little while later, Okazaki, Nagisa, Ryou, and Kyou arrive with the repaired violin to give Kotomi as a belated birthday present…

And that concludes Kotomi’s story arc. This seemed to be a rather uneventful story arc, for the most part, probably because there really wasn’t anything supernatural or weird about it. Just a story of Kotomi having to overcome her regrets and fears as a child. I thought some things went unresolved to, such as why she kept asking everyone if they were a bully and shy she was afraid of hurting other people (or maybe that just went over my head). Nevertheless, when the conclusion came around, the waterworks tried their best to turn on. Key/Visual Arts/KyoAni shows once again that, even with a more toned down story arc like Kotomi’s, they can still toy with your emotions, just like always.

The question now is, whose arc is next? The preview suggest Nagisa is up next, but the prominence she gets in the opening credits would seem to suggest she should come last, so perhaps the next episode is an episode to start things going on the Nagisa arc without actually starting it yet. If we really are starting her arc, then we’ll already have a surprise in this series as typically the last girls’ arc goes to the most important girl and/or the girl the main male lead eventually gets with. My bet is still on the next arc going to Tomoyo Sakagami.

Of course, I can’t go on without noting that most of my predictions form the last episode writeup were completely and utterly wrong, as usual.