This week our team was pretty much on the bench as we got to see other schools like Eidai Fuzoku and Himesaka perform, a taste of Hakuto’s koto club members, and even get some backstory on our mysterious advisor Takinami.
Eidai Fuzoku’s koto club are freaking hilarious, I love them. The club consists two members, made of up Sen and his buddy Haru. Sen has a complex about his short height due to constantly being picked on, and ridiculed for playing the koto. He was the one who revived the club that was about to be disbanded because not only he loves it, but similarly to Chika, his grandmother had be the one who founded and taught the club at his school, and he hopes to be able to carry on his grandmother’s legacy of leading his team to the nationals as she had. As a duo, the two of them put on a fun and wild performance of Sarashi, a fast paced piece with difficult techniques. However while the music was fantastic, it was a bit hard to take seriously when I couldn’t help but laugh at everyone’s reaction to how it was as though they could hear Sen’s sheer determination, and the the imagery of the alpha and omega due to the overall personality of the two.
Funny enough, Eidai Fuzoku and Himesaka feel like the complete opposite of each other, despite both being in single gendered school. Kazusa is afraid of boys, where as Sen simply can’t handle girls because he’s not used to being around them. Chika got his ass handed to him by none other than Satowa herself when he laughed about Sen getting a nosebleed when he saw her— and justifiably so. But while Chika and Sen started off on a bad note with Chika’s misunderstanding and Sen’s hostile retaliation to his comment about being a middle-schooler, I imagine the two of them could certainly get along if they knew both of them shared a common background of wanting to protect the club that their grandparents brought up.
I was a bit bummed out that we didn’t get to hear Himesaka’s full performance of Two Personalities, especially since we only got a snippet of it during the joint-practice at Meiryo. But what I found interesting was how a student (Mio) from Hakuto commented how he didn’t want to hear the performances because they sound boring to him, and not long after that, we hear how Chika’s aunt Isaki shares the same opinion. Hell, she freaking fell asleep! It offers an interesting insight of how while the level of technical level competition is definitely high, delivering the pieces to the audience seems to be an overall struggle, aside from Meiryo (at the moment) who nailed the execution. That particular detail depends whether or not it’s part of the various club’s coaches priority and vision.
Speaking of vision, it was thanks to Isaki that we finally got to get some insight on Takinami’s character. The two of them went to school together and he was an upperclassman of hers. He comes from a famous family of elitist musicians. But unlike his parents and sister, Takinami was never interested in picking up an instrument, nor was he ever forced to. Instead he enjoyed composing them, that is until his abilities was discovered by his father’s friend, and it went downhill from there. The fun of composing pieces was sucked right of out him due to being a prodigy at the age of seven, and the pressure people were putting on him to suck him into the world of music. It’s no wonder why he adamantly denies his involvement and history with music, but nonetheless it’s sad all the same that the pressure has warped his love for music into believing he wouldn’t be able to genuinely love it if he were to step into the musical world everyone wants him to be in. Ironically, it looks like he is finally succumbing to the koto club by actually doing his part for a change! Takezou who is so used to Takinami slacking off on his responsibilities was shocked when he had actually already gone ahead to register them! That’s certainly a step in the right direction!
With the fierce competition, its an understatement why everyone is getting the jitters. The boys all had a unique way of dealing with their nerves, of punching themselves in the face, while Hiro (who is the only one who has not performed in front of an live audience yet) is so overwhelmed, that the koto the had been holding ended up wobbling over and was about to hit Chika’s koto! Both Satowa and Chika were able to react fast enough to prevent the instruments being being damaged, but Satowa having putting Chika’s koto over the safety of her own ended up being shielded by Chika, who unfortunately gotten injured in the process! Crap. My poor boy, he worked so hard to get to this point and he’s injured!
Next week is the final episode until the fall, I am looking forward to hearing Kuon’s full piece (please give us the whole thing)! <3 Man I’m going to miss this show until then!
PS: Q___Q Kiryuuuuuuu and his one-sided love!
