“But at his core, he’s a nice guy…probably.” – Yūki Hase
Impression:
Episode 3 established a dichotomy between the cute and the cruel, the ‘Hase’ and the ‘Shogo’. Shogo represents the slap to the face that these two, surrounded by their “sickeningly sweet atmosphere” as they are, need in order to progress as friends (and as lovers…) However, in contrast to my earlier thoughts and feelings in previous episode, Shogo may not be the ‘voice of reason’ in romantic comedies that I thought he was. Yes, he’s spoken with and helped Hase many times throughout the last two episodes, but in episode 3 he came across rude and not at all introspective like I thought he would. He questioned Fujimiya’s amnesia and cited its selective nature as its most suspicious facet, but prodding further into the cause of Fujimiya’s ‘illness’ more so than Hase’s ever done. The effect of this episode’s feature lunch time had a polarizing effect on me. On the one hand, what Shogo said was blunt, abrupt, and was probably not the best method of dealing with a girl so shyly disposed as Fujimiya. That said, Shogo was simply asserting the truth and using reason to look at Fujimiya’s predicament as a full picture. Fujimiya’s illness is odd. Has is been there since elementary school? Is it due to brain damage? Perhaps it was caused by shocking and or traumatic event involving friends? Either way, Shogo brings up some interesting points.
This in turn brings me to my next ‘interesting’ point – Fujimiya’s selective memory. From the offset we knew that Fujimiya forgets all of her friends after seven days pass – hell, the title even literally translates to “One Week Friends” (so, high concept). So, I suppose, it’s only natural that she didn’t /couldn’t forget Shogo – he’s not her friend! This seems to me to be an interesting piece o’ plot not only because it provides Fujimiya with one person who wont disappear from her memories (although, if he keeps helping her out when she’s being passively bullied, this won’t be the case for much longer), but also because it begs the question ‘how else can the amnesia be subverted’? The obvious answer it to go to hospital and get help for it, but where would be the fun in that? That, or, Hase could just marry her…that way he becomes a relative and she can’t forget him! Problem solved, eh?
Believe in the power of eggs. One thing about that egg memory – strictly speaking, it’s not technically about Hase so I don’t see why she would’ve forgotten it? I mean, remember episode 2 where Fujimiya searched her memories for Hase, flicking through events where he was ‘whited out’? The events (or, at least, the lunchtimes) were still there, only Hase was gone. But there was nothing tying Hase to the eggs other than that they were cooked for him, and the diary already revealed that when Fujimiya awoke in the morning. I don’t know, Hase made such a big deal out of Fujimiya retrieving the smallest slither of a weeks worth of friendships memories and I just couldn’t see what Hase was so elated about. Call me a cynic. But here’s to hoping Fujimiya’s memory is on the mend!
Episode 3 introduced some new elements into the series and attempted to prevent it from becoming stale. Looking forwards, I see many struggles for our main three as the progress with the knowledge of Fujimiya’s illness and the effect it has on them as a whole. I’d like to also make not of the fact that the OP is growing on me… Let it be known.
– Chris.
Preview:
I’m a bit miffed they changed things compared to the manga here, if only because I feel like people are getting the wrong idea about Shogo now. During the meeting on the roof, Fujimiya originally spoke up when Shogo started criticizing Hase, telling him not to say bad things about him- “oh, so you actually can talk” Shogo said (paraphrasing) and went on to tell her that no one would believe her if she didn’t say anything, noting that the reason why Hase believed her immediately was likely because he’d heard it from her directly. His aim was not only to gauge her reaction, but to make her understand that Hase shouldn’t be the one speaking to others about her problems, and that he’d believe her if she spoke sincerely.
Then there’s the classroom scene at the end. When he takes out Kaori’s diary and the girls as what he’s doing, he says, “I’m just picking up something my friend forgot”, not really to say she’s his friend, but to let Kaori know he doesn’t dislike her. Kaori is shocked. “It’s true that I’d think it was gross if I saw someone looking at this and grinning…but people talking about others behind their backs is even worse (paraphrasing again” – and here is the most important part! In this moment, Shogo stuck his arm through the open door where the girls couldn’t see and patted Kaori on the head. When I saw this I was like, “SHOGOOOOOO!!!!” and was just blown away by how great a guy he actually was lol. After that he told her again to speak up about important things and left. The girls spot Kaori and she tells them, “even I have friends!” and goes home. Hase does not appear in this scene at all.
So it seems to me that the anime creators wanted to lessen the relations between Shogo and Fujimiya in order to focus more on Hase. On one hand I understand, saving time and all that, but on the other hand, Shogo is my favorite character so I kinda wanted to flip a table lol. I won’t let my love for Shogo cloud my judgment that much though, the anime adaption is really great- they’re doing a marvellous job with its 4koma origins ^^