Um… what? What?!

I should have known. I should have bloody known. Don’t get me wrong, this episode wasn’t exactly bad. The creators just did it again: as if the current storyline wasn’t already screwed up enough: the long-haired singer girl starts flirting with Touya. Technically though: I can’t fault this series: it was well built up, they both have their reasons (they both want to run away and ended up flirting with the nearest person possible, and just happened to be at the right time and place that made sense in the overall storyline), but holy crap. It’s a good thing that Haruka and Mana are taking a break or else all hell would really break loose. However, that eventual climax seems to be even more disastrous at this point.

But yeah, as much as I hate to admit it: the second season of White Album is actually pretty good. The first season definitely had its issues, mostly introducing pointless angst and emo. In the second season however, the angst is anything but pointless. In this episode, Yuki broke down crying, but who can fault her? She just found out that her boyfriend has been deceiving her with her best friend. It feels like something out of a bad soap opera, but it’s actually well built up. If you take everything that happened in the first season into account, this had to happen. Can this series still be called bad? In fact, I’m actually glad that we might get a School Days-like ending that doesn’t feel forced and instead consists out of genuine drama, and that doesn’t get bogged down by a terrible script, character-development or pointless fanservice.

Out of all eroge adaptations I watched, this one has the most realistic animation and quiet parts. As much as I hate to admit it, this series can only be seen as a step forward in this genre that lives off seeing who rip each other off the most.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Touya… Touya… Touya. What the heck do you think you’re doing? Every time you think this bastard couldn’t possibly surpass himself… he does. WTF.

In any case, let me start with summarizing the major flaws that made the first season so unbearable:
- The set-up itself: how the heck do all these five girls pick Touya of all people to fall for. However, you can’t hold this against the second season, as it’s already part of its premise.
- The huge amount of drama that resulted in people who kept missing each other. This doesn’t return in the second season.Touya bought an answering machine, and he and Yuki actually meet a lot.
- The huge contrast between the drama: it was either incredibly subtle, or totally not. And really, the second season has been much better balanced in terms of drama.

yeah, as much as I hate to admit it: this was a really emotional episode. For the first time in this series, I really felt along with the characters, without being hampered by angsty melodrama getting in the way. The drama was definitely heavy (I mean, Touya kissed two girls WHO WEREN’T YUKI), but it felt much more heartfelt than anything I’ve seen in that first season. Am I going crazy?

Yuki.. finally she too gets suspicious of Touya, thanks to a major screw-up that he made. Or rather, two. First of all, he flaps out about how he’s been meeting Yayoi. Nice one there, dude. On top of that, when Yuki proposes to go and see Rina together. Touya declines and says that he’s got enough to do. ONLY TO SEE RINA THAT DAY, AND KISS HER. Holy crap, what an asshole. On top of that, he also starts ignoring Yayoi, even after Yuki already left, which also puts him on bad terms. Not to mention that some mysterious dude has photographs of the two hitting it off together.

I really feel like this episode was the beginning of the end. And someone shoot me: I’m beginning to like this series again!!
Rating: ** (Excellent)

It’s amazing: Touya only had five scenes in this episode in which he appeared. In three of them, he did nothing, so he only had about one minute of serious airtime. And yet he still manages to come across as an inconsiderate asshole in that time.

But let’s look at the other characters first. A majority of the episode was spent on Yuki’s grief after she found out that Rina would leave her. Can I fault this series for overdoing that? Not really. Yuki always was a crybaby who always sought protection from Rina. She sees Rina as a very dear friend, and thus I can see how she would not accept Rina’s choice of leaving her brother, especially if she was the indirect reason for it. The scene they had together was very nicely done, actually.

And you know, Eiji with his painting, which apparently originally belonged to Mana’s mother. Since he didn’t know it was a very pricey painting, I can see how he in his delusions would have had no reason not to paint over it. I’m now beginning to see the part that that new singer girl is going to play in the whole story. The thing with Yuki always was that she’s weak and can’t protect herself. If Eiji ends up abandoning her, she only has Yayoi left, and we all know what a reliable woman she turned out to be…

Speaking of the devil, she’s getting love-sick. When Touya stood her up, you could really see that she’s not screwing him just out of business anymore. Could it be that she was left by her previous boyfriend and has therefore been looking for someone to fill that void?

A lot more questionable was the bar scene, in which Mana and Haruka both started crying while talking about Touya. I know that Haruka is sad for the loss of her brother, and that Mana longs for her mother, but whether that would result in both of them crying… that scene was a bit too much perhaps, but I know too little about psychology to really say for sure.

But yeah, Touya. He makes an appointment with Yayoi, but goes to his father instead. His studying turns out to have been a preparation for his student tuition work for Mana. He finally puts in some work for something, but to me it’s just a way to escape his relationships with Yuki and Yayoi. On top of that, not knowing what happened between Yuki and Rina, he simply brushes off her tears on television as something that she does to ask for attention. When he finds out that Haruka cried about him, he starts laughing. Oh boy.

There is no doubt that Touya is one annoying SOB. However, is he a bad character? I’m still not sure, to be honest. In technical terms, he is well developed: he’s been inside a downward spiral ever since the start of the series, and the end of this episode only makes this worse. White Album asks an interesting question: if a character isn’t likable, does it make this character automatically bad? School Days did this before but it failed horribly with its badly executed development and script that just seemed geared to getting to that bad end. White Album however is much more subtle, and while we have to wait a few more episodes to find out whether or not it actually paid off, I’m still having problems to determine whether this series is bad, or simply annoying.

I think that the first season had its obvious flaws, but those were in its set-up: as an adaptation of an eroge, the creators had to create a scenario in which all of the five girls would have feelings for the lead characters in a certain way. But accepting this set-up, I’m still not sure what to think of this series.
Rating: * (Good)

Surprisingly… I found very little to rage about in this episode… Instead of that, I should congratulate Touya for finally getting himself an answering machine. Damn, if he had that thing, how different would the first season have looked?

However, the cast of characters still are a miserable bunch. The premise of it was about a new performance for Yuki, while Touya’s father collapsed again. To start with the first, Yayoi makes a bold move: for once, she invites Touya without the intention to kiss or screw him, but rather outright tells him to stop seeing Yuki for her own good. This seems to contradict her behavior up till now, in which she kept calling Touya more and more often…

Later, Eiji indeed reveals that he’s planning to star Yuki in some big event. However, the rule is that each production can only be allowed to submit one idol, so yeah: he pushes Rina aside for Yuki. In response to this, Rina declares that she’s going to start her own production, and move away from her brother. Rina indeed seems like the most stable member of the cast (okay, that’s not saying anything, really), but that also may have been because she’s the most mysterious at this point. We hardly ever know what she’s thinking, are we? Did she work with her brother for so long because it were his connections that allowed her to grow big in the first place, or is there something more to it? I mean, there has to be a reason why she’s the focus of the OP, hasn’t there?

Then there’s the matter of Touya’s father collapsed again. He seems to be fine according to Touya, but it’s gotten much harder on Misaki, who somehow ends up staying longer with him than Touya while Akira leaves prematurely. On top of that, Misaki later discovers that Touya was outright lying to her, and he’s in much worse shape than he said, even needing a pacemaker.

But yeah, one of the big complaints about the first season was simply the following: ANSWERING MACHINE! As it turns out, the creators didn’t forget this at all, Touya just didn’t have one. I wasn’t of course born in those days, but in a way I can imagine a poor student in those days, not being able to afford one. If I recall correctly, the first answering machine was marketed 3 years before. I don’t think that at that point, they were as common yet as ten years later.

And yet, even with the answering machine ready, the problems still aren’t as easily solved, like the end of this episode showed. That yelp of attention of his in the final scene can have a lot of different meanings: is he afraid that he’s going to lose Yuki? Does he finally feel remorse for his father? Or is he just lonely because he can’t see Yuki? Anyway, considering the things he’s done so far…
Rating: (Enjoyable)

As for the shows I’m not going to blog:
- Out of the onslaught of moe comedies this season, Seitokai no Ichizon definitely stands out as the best and funniest. Nevertheless, I see no potential in blogging it weekly.
- Kuroko’s lesbian siscon fantasies in Railgun were just painful to watch. Even Index was better than this!
- For a while I thought that it would be fun to blog Blacksmith, with Manglobe behind the animation and an excellent soundtrack and all. But in the end, it’s just too much generic fantasy in which a band of teenagers has to go face an evil army of demons and evil adults. I want series that take risks instead of playing it as safe as possible.

Which brings us to White Album: love it or hate it, but you can’t deny that it was one of the most unique romance and eroge adaptations of the past years. While it has moe, it never tries to present the characters as such. Instead, it wants the viewer to hate its characters. Not through crappy scriptwriting as in School Days, but instead because of the characters’ actions, while still keeping a very solid script.

I mean, when you ignore the melodrama, the writing and direction is incredibly solid. The dialogue is meaningful and deep, the drama is often incredibly subtle and the creators really have an eye for detail. Just take a look at how Touya played with the condensation on the windows, or how incredibly well animated Mana was when she met Haruka on her bike. Choosing a generic fantasy like Blacksmith, in which the characters all act like caricatures and wounds magically disappear, over this one would just not sit right.

I really expect that this is going to be my hate/love series of this season, but I’d much rather have this series to rage over, rather than some badly written and lazy show that just feels stereotypical. I think the biggest problem with the first season was that it left an incredibly bad taste: it solved absolutely nothing, even for a show that’s supposed to be continued. Is it bad? No. Did it cause me to hate this series for six months? Yes.

As I watched this episode though, I was reminded more and more of why I started blogging this series in the first place. FINALLY Touya and Yuki get the chance to talk to each other for a good while, and it’s completely the opposite of the stereotypical way that I expected. They just hang out, albeit a bit uncomfortably with Yayoi being near, and then they say goodbye again.

2009 has been an excellent year for romance, so I might as well see and check out how this unique series is going to play out.
Rating: * (Good)

A Cetain Scientific Railgun

Short Synopsis: Our lead character possesses a godmode beam and fights crime.
Well, I now see why Solaris wanted me to blog this series. Talk about something completely different from A Certain Magical Index. Instead, this series takes place in a magic academy that is the most scientifically advanced city in the world, and whose 2,3 million population consists 80% out of students (they seriously expect us to take that seriously?). Overall, the only thing that impressed me here was the animation, which is indeed very smooth and a lot of time went into it. The rest failed to stand out though. Here we have yet another group of teenagers that fight crime, while the police is pointless and non-existent, and it’s another one of those series with a “teens rock adults suck”-mentality. The characters… well, they aren’t bad but overall they feel pretty bland and failed to catch my attention.
ED: Decent J-pop song, but nothing special. This probably is going to be the OP in the future episodes.
Potential: 30%

White Album II

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is well on his way to become the next Makoto Ito.
At this point, I’m really debating whether or not to blog the second season of this series. The first season started off so well, and I loved the subtlety in the storytelling, only for the characters to start incredibly overacting during the dramatic parts. Especially after Aoi Hana showed how to do such a premise properly. This episode really seemed to continue the series in the same veins: some of the subtle parts of this episode were really good, that sea was animated beautifully, I loved Kouta in the hospital near his father, but the dramatic parts were just too much. Considering that the shit hasn’t even hit the fan in this series, I really wonder whether it’s going to be able to deliver properly. It can still turn out to be a great series, the question is just whether or not I want to blog it if it does end up as a bad soap opera.
OP: Like the first, simple yet pleasing to the eyes with a nice song to boot.
ED: Slideshow, but a nice song nonetheless.
Potential: ??%

Koi Shigure

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters get dumped by the ones they’re in love with.
Ah, why not? I might as well write a short blurb about this one. Remember Vanessa from Michiko e Hatchin? Well, her voice-actress stars in what basically is a narrated slide-show about a bunch of love stories. The first instalment features three stories of about five minutes long, which tell about different women as they tell about their experiences in love, and how they were disappointed by it. If you’re not into these things, then Koi Shigure probably isn’t going to make you see the light, but nevertheless the short stories are nice to relax to. They’re nicely build-up considering their short length, and the background songs gave it a bit of a serene atmosphere. It’s a shame that after each story, this atmosphere gets brutally broken by an appearance of the song’s composers that tell about their experiences with this project… or something…
Potential: 40%

I really wanted to like White Album. It had so many good ideas and concepts for a romance show. It had such a wonderful style and execution, it had the potential to be an incredible series. And yet… I just can’t. Beware: this series is very, very easy to dislike.

White Album is a harem series, but it immediately sets itself apart from the rest of its genre by its execution. The pacing is slow, and instead of focusing on silly comedy, this show is driven by the characters’ emotions, portrayed with a wonderful sense of subtlety. Often, we get small glimpses of what characters are thinking, either through short flashbacks, or their thoughts written on the screen. For a fan of subtlety as myself, this series really started out incredibly promising.

The cast of the series is very daring: Touya himself is far away from your typical paper-bag male lead, and instead he is an incredibly flawed character. Throughout the entire series, you’ll be screaming at him for the things he does. In fact, the rest of the cast is also pretty flawed, and it’s one of the driving forces of the series. Kabitzin wrote an excellent article on that matter, and even though it caused many people to hate this series, I consider it at one of the show’s strengths.

But in the end I just can’t recommend this show. I hate to say it, but it’s just too ambitious for its own good. It wants to do too many things and sacrifices the time it needs to build these up. Characters start crying and weeping way too easily in this show, and in most of the times it just feels too forced and directed. The show also has its share of plotholes here and there that only serve to increase the huge drama, but it never really seems to take control of where the drama goes to.

So in the end, the best parts of the show are the quiet bits, in which the drama subtly unfold without any forced crying or yelling. It’s a bloody shame; this show could have been amazing, but in the end it failed to live up to the expectations. I really appreciate the effort, but not every experiment goes exactly according to plans. I’d love to see a series that takes this series’ formula and does pace it properly, though.

Short Synopsis: It’s finally time for the three concerts to take place.
Episode Rating: 7/10 (Enjoyable)
Well, talk about an anti-climax. This episode didn’t resolve anything and was basically one big “please watch the second season to find out what happens”. There’s lots of stuff that happens in this episode, but this is what you’d expect from a building-up episode, not a major one as this one. In this episode, I really expected something that would make me long for the second season, but in the end I’m not really anticipating it.

In any case, what basically happens is that Yuki and Touya still haven’t broken up, but they hardly got any time to talk to each other. Mana shows that she’s interested in Touya (this was really bound to happen considering the harem roots of this show…), Haruka once again nearly breaks down but this time Touya seems to notice it but before he can really talk to her Akira magically appears from out of nowhere (seriously, how did he know where Touya was at that point?) with the message that Touya’s father collapsed. Oh, and Mana ends up in the hospital as well because she kept waiting too long outside of Touya’s house.

Also, I know absolutely nothing of the J-Idol business because I’m usually not that interested in cheesy J-pop and the things around it, but is it common that after a big performance every staff member spontaneously starts crying?

I’m not sure whether I’m going to blog that second season. It’s all going to depend on how good the upcoming Autumn season is going to be. When I started blogging this series, it was basically one big experiment because I hardly ever blog these sorts of romance shows. It’s a shame I picked this wrong one to experiment with, especially since it went off with such a great start.

Short Synopsis: Rina reveals Yuki’s letter to Touya.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
Ah, there you have it. The whole reason why Yuki didn’t attempt to contact Touya was because she wanted to show him how much she has changed at her Christmas concert, and forbade herself to talk to him in the meantime. Way to go, girl.

Still, that doesn’t quite explain this series’ very mysterious lack of postmen. Seriously, I may be mistaken in this but it feels like every single letter has to be delivered in person. Because Yuki’s schedule is so hectic, the two of them could easily have decided to exchange letters with each other. Why didn’t they? The whole reason Yuki decided to stop talking to Touya was because she couldn’t contact him when he was on his escapades with Misaki, so why couldn’t she have sent him a bunch of letters instead? It’s very annoying to see that my suspense of disbelief with this series is constantly shaking, especially since there are so many good ideas stuffed into this series. it’d be a shame for them to go to waste like that.

But yeah, the big event of this episode seems to be that we finally know who Touya is going to end up with: Yayoi. In a way, it is a very original approach: you’d never see this coming at the beginning of the series, but it still just feels ludicrous and hard to believe how much the relationship between the two has spiralled out of control that way. I can understand Touya being seduced by her and all, but I still am in no way convinced about Yayoi’s actions. Even the reason she originally gave in order to hook up with the guy just feels weak: to prevent Touya from distracting Yuki. Was that really the best she could think of?

But the most pathetic scene in this episode was seeing Misaki confronted by the head of the drama club. For some reasons his minions are gone, he has gone insane, he stabs her with a knife but she is saved because she conveniently had one of Touya’s books at the place where she was stabbed. I mean, come on, that really was the best they could think of? Has there been any situation in which a conveniently placed body armour really worked at all?

I really don’t know what to think of that second season. The next episode really has a big climax in store, and it actually looks like things could get al resolved in the next episode, even if there wasn’t a second season, which leaves lots of potential for the second season to evolve into a completely different direction. But if it’s just going to have the same soap opera plot as the first season, then I really don’t know whether I’m going to feel like blogging 13 more episodes. I really tried to love this series. There is lots of great stuff in it, but in the end it’s just too much like a soap opera for me to take it seriously….

Short Synopsis: Preparations for the upcoming concerts commence.
Episode Rating: 7/10 (Enjoyable)
AlexS has a very good point here: the characters here don’t behave like they are in 1986, they behave like modern day characters who have somehow lost their mobile phones and computers. Interestingly enough, answering machines were already invented and on the market in 1986, so why aren’t they used here? Having an huge focus on realism is a double-edged sword: on one side it’s awesome, and really allows the characters to shine, but the flaws become much more noticeable this way, and that’s what currently is happening with White Album.

Because it’s seriously getting harder and harder for me to like this series. I really want to be a fan of this series and its subtle execution, but these melodramatic scenes are getting harder and harder to take seriously. When I started this series, I guess I was hoping for a sort-of more dramatic version of Natsu no Sora, and the drama has really been excellent when it just involved characters talking to each other, but hwen they started crying and whining, I just couldn’t take them seriously.

The one crying in this episode was Touya, and this was really the most pathetic scene of the entire series. Idiot, if you want to see Yuki so badly, then go look her up! You’re daily making out with her manager, for god’s sake. Couldn’t he at least have asked her when she has a small break in her schedule? Besides, after all his flirting with Rina, Yayoi and Misaki, I’m surprised that he’s still genuinely missing Yuki.

But yeah, i guess that these characters are really meant to be hated. I’m going to wait until episode 13 before really labelling this show as overambitious, but that midway climax had better be damn good.