Maon and friends say goodbye and thank you for watching

And this series ends as it largely began: as a laid back slice-of-life series. As I thought when they first came up with the idea, they ended the series with the exhibition, which was done probably as well as you could expect. I’m kinda sad that we didn’t hear all of Maon’s new story, though. The rest of the episode was pretty much the four girls being themselves, with a trip with Sayomi, who apparently learned how to drive from Yukari-sensei, thrown in.

For whatever reason, this series gave me the feeling of a series made in the early to mid-2000s, which is fine since it seems like series from that era seemed to be better in my opinion anyway. Maybe it’s the way that it can be cute without going overboard on moe. Maybe it was the animation style. Maybe it was the music. I don’t know, but whatever it was, I liked it.

Even though previews of this series make it sound like it’s all about photography, it really isn’t, even though photography is a major part of Fu’s character. But you don’t need to be a photography nerd at all to enjoy this series. I certainly know this series isn’t for everyone, but if you’re a fan of slow-paced shows, I’d definitely recommend it.

There is also an OVA, which apparently is supposed to take place between the first two episodes of this series. I don’t know if I can find it anywhere or not, but if I can, maybe I can sneak watching that in somewhere.

I don't always say no to Maon, but when I do...oh who am I kidding. I can never say no to more Maon

Another Maon episode, yay! This time Maon tries to add to her myriad of talents by wanting to do a recital of a story that she’s written. It’s nice to see Maon, who probably at the start of the series would never have even dreamed of doing such a recital, being able to do one in front of so many people. If there is any character that has developed more during this series, it’s probably Maon.

It’s hard to say if this is the best episode so far, because there have been so many good episodes, but this has to be up there, I think. I’m sad that the next episode will be the last one. This has been such an enjoyable series to watch.

Enraged Mode Norie thinks Kaoru is thinking too hard

We finally get a Kaoru-centric episode. I’m not really sure if we had really gotten one yet, which is strange since she’s really the center of the group. In any case, I thought this was another good episode. It’s nice to be able to learn more about Kaoru as, I just noted, she is really the one person of the group that we didn’t really know all that much about.

As far as the exhibition, I would expect us to see it before the season is over. Since it’s supposed to take place on the next to last day of the year in the series, probably seeing it in the last episode as a way to close out the series would be my guess. And that would be a pretty good way to go out I think as well.

Next, the girl that Fu and friends heard was going to confess to someone back in episode 7 in the camera shop, Shimako, shows up at Hoboro’s on an eating binge and eats too much. Hoboro and Sayomi bring her back to Fu’s house to stay the night. The next day Sayomi decides to take everyone on a road trip, where Shimako’s friend Manami helps her sort things out.

Hoboro is going to make you tons of okonomiyaki and you ARE going to like it!

We get another double-episode episode, though the parts in this episode aren’t related like they were in episode 6. First, we get a glimpse of the mysterious life of the pink cat Momoneko-sama, which was definitely entertaining. Giving emotion to a blog of fluff that isn’t very capable of expression emotion is always something that can be entertaining.

The second half of the episode just kinda felt like filler. It was centered around a character we had met for maybe 30 seconds two episodes ago, and while it was based off of the conversation we overheard her having about confessing, it seemed to be more about trying to create humor by being over the top than any sort of real story. And while I suppose it was funny, I’m used to this series having an episode which also has a good story, so I was disappointed in that regard to the 2nd half of this episode.

Unexpected old friends

So this time we get a kind of background episode on both Riho and Hoboro, which includes learning Hoboro’s real name (Chimo Yakusa). This episode was ultimately about, I think, the trip each person takes through life, and how what they want to do is up to each person. Hoboro used to do illustrations, but quit to run a restaurant because she liked seeing the town and the children in it grow up. Her sempai, Chimo, also runs a cafe, but still does a lot of illustration work. Riho has moved on from taking pictures of the sky to taking pictures of lot of other things.

Really, this episode explains the symbolism behind the train ticket with no destination that Riho sent Fu back in the first episode: that life is a journey and you never really know where it will take you, as long as you follow what you want to do.