Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate Ep 10: Underneath the Surface

Summary

Chisato suffers a mental breakdown and experiences the trauma of losing her brother fresh from Yuuki’s car accident, while he finally bursts out and asks her not to replace him with Daiki. During a hospital checkup Yuuki glimpses Yakumo leaving the hospital, and overhears a conversation he shouldn’t have, which leads to a series of events pitting him directly against the Public Safety Commission for the first time.

Impression

Heh, the accident thankfully didn’t turn out to be much. Satsuki’s reaction shows that she thought otherwise, though xD Instead, what was much more important was Chisato’s total breakdown from the possibility that she could have lost Yuuki at that moment. I do try to sympathize with her, but in my opinion she’s acting completely out of line. I know it’s painful for her brother to have died, and it’s horrible that she’s going through this, but the trauma she’s experiencing is most probably due to her thinking that it’s all her fault. As such, she subconsciously replaced Daiki with Yuuki, and it’s like all the chocolate Chisato gave him was an attempt to finally share half her chocolate with Daiki – something she never did when she was little, which eventually led to his death. Anyway, it sure hit hard for Yuuki to say outright that he was being replaced, and they did it very well with added imagery like the cracked mirror or the chocolate breaking into two.

The thing over financial aid students seems to have ebbed as well, which is for the best. Yakumo’s order to get rid of that policy wasn’t just to try and help Yuuki win, but for his own good too. Public Safety might be okay towards the financial aid group, but moe Yuina isn’t, and as she’s allied with the Katahira faction its likely that policy might cost Yuuki a lot more than the election.

The harmonica was pretty significant after all. Having little to no development as a character other than her name and use for fanservice, I was sceptical that a Michiru route would even turn up, as we’ve explored the other possibilities to various degrees, the least being Mifuyu’s and the most elaborated on being Satsuki’s. Realizing that the harmonica’s owner and Michiru’s best friend was Kana turned out to be really interesting, and I definitely didn’t expect it at all until Yakumo burst into the room after hearing that melody. Even more surprising was the revelation that Kana, and Michiru herself were spies…quite a twist to pull this late in the game.

With this, we’re well and truly into Michiru’s arc. This is definitely the kind of thing only revealed in a certain route of a visual novel – the complications would have gotten too difficult to put something as intimate as Michiru actually being a spy in the arc of one of the other girls. It makes me wonder how much of all this was planned in terms of Yakumo’s point of view; was Michiru ever truly part of the club, or was she just a spy to monitor Yuuki and his actions? Yakumo himself is now turning from supporter to antagonist, and its very possible that Yuuki will lose the support of Public Safety should he reply with the wrong choice of words. That’s not as likely though, with Kana having shown to have disappeared in the preview, most probably courtesy of Yuina and the Katahira faction.

Things are really getting epic, and most of all I love how almost none of it is related to the election itself.