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Summary
A new school year has begun, and Sentarou finds himself in a different class to Kaoru and Ricchan. After an encounter with an art student named Matsuoka Seiji, Sentarou reveals that he has been asked on a date by Yurika, who ends up asking all about Junichi instead. When Kaoru, Sentarou and Ricchan go to the beach, they meet Seiji, who manages to get Sentarou to agree to joining his band for the school festival.
Impression
For an anime, this show is incredibly deep, and I’m forced to analyse stuff in more depth than they’re intended to be viewed at, just because there’s so much to interpret! Unlike how literature you study in school may not have every language device intended by the author or poet, I’m sure than everything in Sakamichi no Apollon was put in on purpose, and to keep us speculating until they reveal something that throws us all off course.
Firstly, we have the new guy that turned up this week – Matsuoka Seiji, that wants to form a band for the school festival. He’s intending to recruit Sentarou as the drummer, but his methods of doing so or the effects they had weren’t things I agreed with. Introducing a Beatles record to jazz-loving Sentarou is like throwing a spanner in the works, and while it’s not a bad thing to open up to new genres of music, it must have really hit Kaoru hard to have Sentarou say that he’ll willingly help Seiji out with his band. Like Kaoru, I felt something really out of place and sinister with him – something about the way he speaks and sweet-talks everyone reminds me of Bakuman’s Nanamine, or Medaka Box’s Kumagawa. It just feels off, and the fang in his mouth isn’t helping either. It’s cute on girls, but with him its just creepy.
I feel really sorry for Sentarou knowing that he’ll end up heartbroken over Yurika, because it’s clear that Yurika’s smitten with Junichi, and could care less about Sentarou in terms of love. The tears added to the painting just confirms it, if you had any doubts from the pile of letters from last week (I’m not even sure whether her canvas is depicting Sentarou, or Junichi).
Kaoru’s caught wind of what’s going on, and is probably trying to save Sentarou from heartbreak, though Sentarou seems too dense to realize. When your date ends up with the girl forever asking about another man, then you know something is wrong. The role reversal with Yurika asking Sentarou to not hold back if he wants anything made it clear that she only sees him as a little boy at most.
On the Ricchan front, things aren’t too great either. It was once again glaringly obvious that Ricchan’s in love with Sentarou, from basic glances and hopeful looks at him inviting her to the beach (until it was more clearly explained as a role of helping out) to references of Sentarou being compared to the Sound of Music – how Ricchan’s always thought it’d be there, but it was gone before she knew it. Pretty much all the love situations are described both by Seiji and the title of the show as something the Greek god Apollo and the main cast have in common – unrequited love. And it’s never been so heart-wrenching.
