Sora’s arc gets into full swing by finally putting the axe to Haru and Nao’s relationship by having Haru sexually assault Nao in his desperation to rid his mind of his sister, er scratching where it itches (you can find any number of euphemisms here), unsurprisingly causing her to break things off.  After Sora gets a fever and Haru cleans the seat off her body, Sora stand stand it no more and finally seduces Haru and they get it on, and their relationship improves.  In fact, it improves so much that Nao and (especially) Kozue, who caught Haru reading up some books about incest, become concerned that there is more going on.  After Haru leaves his cell at school, the pair go to Haru’s house, only to find Haru, er,  sticking his sausage into Sora’s basket

Why did you leave me out?

In the conclusion, both Kozue and Nao confront Haru, with Kozue basically saying that she was mistaken about him and will never talk to him again.  Nao is more open to hearing what Haru has to say.  Haru and Sora end up getting into a fight and Sora runs away.  Haru thinks she’s run to the lake behind the temple, as there is a legend one can “restart” your life in it.  After nearly drowning, Haru decides to stay with Sora, and the pair move away to another city.  All they do is leave the others with a text message that they’ve left for overseas.  Nao is willing to give them a chance because they love each other.

I guess this arc went about as well as one could expect.  Shows involving this topic usually tend to result in either the pair throwing themselves off a bridge or moving out of town in the end.  There are countries (like France, among others) where the act of incest isn’t criminalized (though there is no country where they could actually get married), though the show doesn’t say where they went.  In fact, I actually think it’s technically legal in Japan (though frowned upon, though I don’t know where it’s not).  So if they want a future where it’s legal, they have some choices.  Still might need to hide the fact though.

I’m glad we finally saw more of Kozue, though I wish it was in better circumstances than her giving nasty faces all the time after walking in on Haru and Sora.  It’d been nice for her to have her own arc, but oh well I guess.  One of the few beefs I had with the final arc is that it didn’t give much time for Haru and Sora’s relationship to develop.  I guess one could argue that it was being developed all along during the series, but things still seemed to happen in rather quick succession.

Overall for this series, I’m not necessarily a fan of the rebooting every 2 and 3 episodes because it makes the series less, well, episodic.  Things from one arc don’t necessarily impact things in another arc, so it’s not like watching Akira’s arc is necessary when watching Nao’s arc or something.  One can just Watch episodes 1 and 2 and then skip to 7, then 10, 11, and 12 if you wanted just Sora’s story without missing anything.  It just makes the series feel disjointed.

And while I understand that the sex scenes were supposed to highlight Haru’s intimacy, shows can still get the point across without it, and much of what was in this show was purely gratuitous, I thought.  Sora and Nao’s arcs may be the only arcs where the sex scenes are actually important; Nao’s because Sora catching them  is an important story element, and Sora’s because it puts an exclamation point on what they’re doing.

I think there were some good elements.  Some of the arcs – especially Akira’s – I thought were very good.  However, there are just some things – the reboot nature and the sex scenes, makes this have pretty limited rewatch value, for me in the end. Decent little show, but it could have done a lot a lot better.  The rebooting was certainly unique in a sense, as it was done much like a visual novel, but I think the show would have been better with out it.

Nao’s arc ends when Sora goes from angry to depressed when she sees Nao give Haru mouth-to-mouth CPR after he almost drowns in the ocean.  Sora ultimately tries to run away, but Nao finds her in the bus station.  Sora spills her feelings out to Nao about being afraid of being forgotten by Haru when the bus station is hit by lightning, catching on fire with Sora’s stuffed bear in it.  Nao risks her life to save the bear, as it’s Sora’s sole remaining memento of her mother, and this finally softens Sora up towards Nao.

You and Nao can go get it on now if you want

As expected, Sora’s arc starts up where episode 8 started up, the difference being that Haru decides to tell Sora in episode 8, but is hesitant to in episode 10.  Sora tries to use the fact that Haru doesn’t want to tell her about Nao to her advantage, sometimes working (in getting Haru to walk with her to school) and sometimes not (unable to prevent one of Haru’s dates with Nao).  However, one night he catches Sora getting off…over him.

Well, I guess Nao’s arc ended about as well as cold be expected.  It ended up Nao doing amazing for Sora that finally brought Sora around, and I guess it wasn’t anything too weird, though Nao and Sora were lucky not to get zapped by the lightning, just through the ground when it hit.  Otherwise…there isn’t that much to say really.  I think Nao saving Haru’s life perhaps started Sora coming around, but she was still too stubborn to go all the way until Nao saved her bear.

As for the start of Sora’s arc, Haru is obviously conflicted over Sora an his feelings for her, seeing his relationship with Nao as a way to finally get past his feelings, though Sora is doing everything she can to not make that easy.  And I’m not sure what Haru was crying for at the end when he caught Sora.  If he was crying over his guilt for his feelings for Sora or what. (that would be my guess).

I would say that finding out that Sora has those feelings for him, Haru is going to find it a lot more difficult to resist her temptations, though he was go through rejecting Sora almost completely first, before finally succumbing.