It’s ef – a tale of melodies episode 5, and in this episode we get an eyeful of familiar characters from the first series as Kei, Chihiro, and Mizuki all reunite. But things aren’t alright with Nagi nor in Yuu’s arc.

Kyosuke persuades Kei to visit Chihiro who lives in a weird alternate yet identical town in Australia for the first time in 5 years. Hiro’s sister, Nagi, decides to tag along. Mizuki, who is still dazed from what Kuze told her in the last episode is shocked to see Kei there, but has some good times with her anyway. Then Kei and Chihiro reunite, finally healing their wounds from after Chihiro’s accident 5 years prior. In the meantime, Nagi tells Mizuki to stay away from Kuze since she’s the one who is really dating him.

Meanwhile, Yuuko gets into a fight because someone tried to search through her bag. Yuu tries to get Yuuko’s brother to do something about it, but he blows it off as something not to be concerned about. However, we learn that Yuuko apparently got angry at the bag search because she has a special memento that she keeps there. Also, wounds on her shoulder that Yuu thought were from the fight are apparently from somewhere else…

Well, that was interesting. I remember Kuze and Himura talking about “another Otowa” or something earlier, but didn’t really know what they were talking about, and whether it was metaphorical or not. Now we confirm that it is indeed literal and there appears to be an Otowa City in both Japan and Australia which are exactly the same.

I knew something with weird with Mizuki “taking a vacation” to the city she was apparently from before. They had mentioned that they were in Australia, but I thought I had just mistaken them being in Japan before. I guess not, at least in part.

What appears to be the case is that, as I mentioned, there are two cities which are exactly the same – one in Australia, one in Japan, in which the only difference is the season, since one is in the Northern Hemisphere and one is in the Southern Hemisphere. Interestingly enough, even though someone remarked how there was “no time difference” between the two cities, Japan and Australia actually don’t share a time zone, as the time zone in Australia that would normally match Japan’s is actually offset by a half hour.

In any case, Kuze, Himura, Chihiro, and Renji are all hanging out in the Australia city while Kei, Hiro, Miyako, and, at least in the first episode, Mizuki are all hanging out in the Japanese city, though, as I noted, Miyako is taking a vacation to the Australian version in this series.

This has several repercussions: 1) my wish to see all the characters in the two story arcs interact in the first series would have been impossible because, even though it appeared like they were in the same city, they were not; 2) Kei and Chihiro haven’t actually seen each other since recently after Chihiro’s accident, since they could never get over it due to Chihiro’s condition; and 3) that makes Yuuko popping up in both arcs just that much more mysterious.

Other than that, we get another wrinkle in the Mizuki arc with Nagi, who is obviously jealous about Yuuko in Himura’s arc, showing up to act jealous about Kuze now in Mizuki’s arc. I’m also growing increasingly suspicious about the true nature of Yuuko and her adoptive brother’s relationship and past.