Nagisa decides that she’ll get a job too now that she’s graduated and living with Okazaki. She ends up hearing from Nishima, an old high school classmate, who has just been hired as a waitress as a new restaurant and asks Nagisa if she wants to work there too.

One day, Okazaki gets off and visits Akio, who decides it’s time to visit Nagisa at work (and tries to disguise himself as Okazaki’s rapper friend #1 so he may go undetected while ogling his daughter). There, they find that Nagisa is popular with the customers, but when two guys in particular decide that they really want to have a good time with Nagisa, Okazaki and Akio decide to “give them a talk.”

However, things keep changing around Okazaki, and it continues to unnerve him. The restaurant Nagisa works at is where a well known grove of trees used to be, and word has come that the school is going to replace the oldest building on campus – the building where Nagisa and friends used to hang out in the theater club room.

Then one day, Nagisa gets sick, and Sanae believes it is because Nagisa is pregnant.

This was a pretty full episode as far as things going on. First off, Okazaki likes pushing Akio’s buttons – including trying to call him “father” now that Akio is his father-in-law. However, Akio is able to get back by calling him “son.” in return.

We also saw Sugisaka warn Nishima that the manager was staring at her from across the resturant. Whether this was a thing they just threw in because the pair were chatting with Okazaki on the job or whether this is start of a story plot with Nishimi, I don’t know. But since Sugisaka told Nishimi that the manager was looking at her I seem to suspect the latter.

However, having met the manager at the end of the episode, He seems to be a good guy, and I have a feeling that if we end up having an episode about it, it will be one where everyone thinks the manager is a creep, but it ends up he’s “watching over” her or something.

And then, of course, the major event at the end is the news that Nagisa is pregnant. Though I think the most hilarious part of the episode, if not the whole series so far, is Nagisa standing there plainly telling her parents that she gets her freak on with Okazaki.

One more note: we haven’t seen the girl and the robot in the world with no birth and no death for quite a while now, despite some major events occuring in Nagisa and Okazaki’s life (assuming the two are connected, which I’d say is a decent assumption). I’m just wondering what’s going on there.

Does this show have potential? Yes, it still does. The story and the character itself presents itself for a pretty funny series, as the first season proved. However, the writers actually have to make it that way, and now after 15 episodes by the current production company, they have yet to match the magic of the first season. Having said that, at least the music and animation quality remains very good, much like the past seasons. The only thing that really tends to bug me is having the OP and ED stuck in the middle of the episode instead of, you know, the beginning and ending of it.

Haruka wakens from her collapse at the end of the last episode, and asks Akane to continue with what she was saying about Haruka and Takayuki. However, Akane can’t continue to talk about that after Haruka collapsed and runs off. Akane runs into the hospital doctor, Dr. Kouzuki while wandering around town. Dr. Kouzuki ends up telling Akane that, just like Haruka, Akane is steadfastly following her dream. However, following one’s dream has a cost: often in the form of letting loved ones drift away. She explains that this is happening to both Haruka and Akane.

In the meantime, Haruka’s mother asks Haruka what’s going on with Takayuki, since Haruka hasn’t been cheerful lately. Haruka reluctantly explains that she’s scared of being a burden on Takayuki, and mad at herself for continuing to follow her dreams while Takayuki had to ditch his, as well as blaming herself for everything that’s gone wrong. However, her mother tells her that things like that is all part of being family and being in a relationship, and there is nothing to be ashamed of, mad at, or scared of because of it.

Haruka decides to call Takayuki just as he gets off work, and tells him that she’s at the station – at the very spot of the car accident, saying that they have to “start anew” from there. Takayuki rushes to the station and finally meets up with Haruka and the two renew their lovey dovey relationship.

I don’t know if I’m the only one who thinks this, but this episode seemed to have an awfully lot of Akane in it for it to be the final episode in a series about Haruka. Meanwhile, I don’t think we’ve seen Hayase at all except in flashbacks since the 2nd episode, begging that the question be asked: what was the purpose of having an nearly a whole episode dedicated to her if she was going to get ditched afterward?

I figured that Haruka being scared of being a bother to Takayuki was what caused all this, but we seemed to take a rather roundabout way of getting to the end of it – especially when all it took was a short conversation with her mother for Haruka to seemingly get over it.

That’s not to say that this series wasn’t OK (I’m kind of loathe to actually call it “good”). I was afraid at the end of the last episode that much of this episode would be Haruka being back in a coma and going through all that stuff again, but luckily that didn’t happen (though I was right about Akane being all angsty over Haruka collapsing again). Maybe I need to watch all 4 episodes at once to get an overall feeling for the series. It has taken about a year for all 4 episodes to come out, after all.

As for overall thoughts for this episode speciically: it was nothing particularly grand, and there wasn’t any real big dramatic “big choice” ending. It’s not like I actually expected Haruka to be in another accident, though it may have actually made the episode a little bit more interesting if it almost happened again. I just think that this episode, like this series generally, has largely ridden the rail of mediocracy pretty much all along.

January 20, 2009
009-1 – Box Set
Bleach – Volume 14
Darker Than Black – Volume 2
Kiba – Set #1
Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi – Box Set
One Piece – Season 1 Part 3
Tsukihime, Lunar Legend – Box Set
Wallflower, The – Set #1

January 27, 2009
Ah My Buddha – Volume 1
Aria The Natural – Set #1 (sub)
Baccano! – Volume 1
Blood+ – Volume 4
Doujin Work – Volume 1 (sub)
Fullmetal Alchemist – Season 1 Box Set
Naruto – Volume 32 (dub)
One Piece: The Desert Princess and The Pirates: Adventure in Alabasta (BluRay)
Panyo Panyo Di Gi Charat  – Box Set
Story of Saiunkoku, The – Season 1 Set 3
Str.A.In.: Strategic Armored Infantry – Box Set
Utawarerumono – Box Set

Manga

January 20, 2009
Reborn! – Volume 10
Case Closed – Volume 27
Classical Medley – Volume 2
REAL – Volume 3
Rurouni Kenshin: BIG Edition – Volume 5
Suihelibe! – Volume 2

January 21, 2009
Akihabara @ DEEP – Volume 2
Fujoshi Rumi – Volume 3

January 27, 2009
Air Gear – Volume 11
Fairy Tail – Volume 5
Gon – Volume 7
Hell Girl – Volume 5
Kamichama Karin-chu – Volume 3
Papillon – Volume 2
Parasyte – Volume 6
Princess Resurrection – Volume 5
Tsubasa, RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE – Volume 20
Wallflower, The – Volume 18

January 28, 2009
Berserk – Volume 27
Manzai Comics, The – Volume 1

January 29, 2009
Dark Edge – Volume 10
Metro Survive – Set (Vols. 1 – 2)

January 31, 2009
100% Perfect Girl – Volume 7
B. Ichi – Volume 2
Crown – Volume 1
Spiral: Bonds of Reasoning – Volume 6
Sundome – Volume 4

Okazaki comes to ask permission from Akio for him to marry Nagisa, but before he’s allowed to ask, Akio tells him that he has to be able to hit one of his pitches first. Okazaki tries, despite his lame shoulder, but keeps failing. Realizing that Akio is testing him to see whether he is strong enough to truly enter adulthood, Okazaki continues to train as hard as he can. Akio finally gives him one last chance to hit his pitch, which Okazaki finally does, and then immediately asks permission to have Nagisa, which Akio grants.

Then over winter break, Nagisa once again gets sick and misses the entire winter semester, but this year she has enough banked attendance to allow her to graduate, even though she can’t attend the actual graduation. This leads Okazaki to organize all their old friends together at the school in order to surprise Nagisa with her own high school graduation.

Finally, Nagisa and Okazaki go and get their marriage license, formally making Nagisa Mrs. Okazaki.

After the deal with Akio testing Okazaki by making him hit one of his pitches, the second half of the episode was really sort of a time warp episode, pretty much skipping half a year to Nagisa’s high school graduation, and then Okazaki and Nagisa’s marriage.

In that sense, nothing really dramatic happened (it’s not like there was any doubt that Okazaki would eventually hit Akio’s pitch), though having said that, this is obviously still a major episode given the graduation and the marriage.

I was also happy to see all the gang back together, as it has become rarer and rarer for us to see anyone from Okazaki’s high school life anymore. I’m sure we’ll see them again, but they’ve really fallen to secondary character status. Yoshino is a bigger character than most of them now.

I guess we head into yet another arc of the story now that Okazaki and Nagisa are now married and will, presumably, start living together. I’m just wondering what Nagisa will do now that she’s graduated, or will she essentially become a housewife?