The White Eden Tournament has officially launched and of course our finalists were more or less the obvious, with one fodder Harry, and a party-crashing guest, Snake!
I was pretty happy that they spent time showing us more about Adam’s up-bring, which explained a lot about his current behavior. His toxic idea of love was something that he was conditioned into believing. Since childhood, his aunts severely punished him under the pretense of “love”. You can tell from an early age, if not the moment he was born, they were prepared to turn him into a weapon used to strengthen their family’s influence. This family is so messed up. So it was great to see Miya expressing the horror and acknowledging just how dangerous and deranged this man is when he shared how he loved every one of the people who were candidates to be Eve.
Based on what we know so far from Cherry and Joe, he wasn’t always like this. If anything, I suspect the moment his father destroyed his board, demanding him to quit and then being sent off to America all played a part of his spiral into the madness we see today. Both of them tried to stop him, but they couldn’t. Joe wants to win so he can punch Adam in the face, and Cherry, I’m not fully sure about this one, but when he says he wants to take something back, I think he’s really talking about Adam himself. Needless to say, it is pretty admirable how both Joe and Cherry haven’t completely given up on Adam. That said, I wished we had been given a bit more time to learn more about their relationship.
Unfortunately as much as I would love to see Joe win, I suspect Langa will probably take the crown for this one. That kind of sucks since I would have liked to see Joe VS Adam, but it looks like we’ll probably be seeing Cherry go up against him next week in his steed. It’ll be interesting to see whether Adam will show off some more hidden cards up his sleeve in their match-up, as Cherry has proved he has the ability to keep up with his time.
In the mean time, we have yet another face rising to the challenge to take Adam down, and it is none other than his secretary Tadashi. Honestly I am not surprised to see him join the tournament, even before we saw Adam’s reaction, I knew the man in the cap had to be him. If Cherry and Joe can’t take him down, then it will be interesting to see whether it will fall onto Langa or Tadashi. Langa is obviously the opponent Adam wants to skate with, while Tadashi is the one he hates.
In more ways than one, it is pretty sad how this relationship between Adam and Tadashi has turned into a hostile one. Back when they were children, Tadashi was the one who taught Adam how to skate, and now today he told Adam that if he were to win this tournament, he wants him to quit. At this point I don’t know if it’s because Tadashi is trying to do his job of making sure Adam will focus on work, or he recognizes that Adam needs to be stopped, or maybe both. Either way, Tadashi showed us that even though he says he has no opinion, as soon as he picked up that board, that changed. Furthermore, he appears to be a force to reckon with. If it comes down to a match-up with Tadashi VS Langa, I am curious to see who would win. Tadashi proved to us that he is a talented skater, and even set the tone with breaking a new record, beating both Cherry Blossom’s and Adam’s (tied) time of four minutes by two seconds. Sure enough, Adam was not happy to see him crashing the tournament, and swears to make him pay for disobeying him.
If that wasn’t enough to set him off, I suspect there is more trouble coming his way. I have my doubts the investigator will let Tadashi take the fall for Adam. If anything, she is probably expecting it. She seems to be a competent and keen on carrying out her form of justice even against the most influential families and individuals. I wouldn’t be surprised if to see her crash this tournament. It would certainly be a sure way of shattering Adam’s world into pieces.
As for Langa and Reki, oof things were rough, but they also gave us a glimmer of hope. Reki pretty much took the back seat this week by pulling up a wall between them and refused to go to the battlegrounds. But it appears Reki’s decision to pull away wasn’t completely for naught because thanks to that, Langa came to realize that skating is not the same without his best friend. It made him think back to being alone on the snowy hills. This feeling of loneliness was probably similar to the time after his father had passed. Everywhere he turned, he hoped and expected Reki to be by his side, but instead it was nobody or someone else, such as Adam, who he completely tuned out when he went about his charade of love. But the fact that Langa came to terms with this on his own so soon just proves that he and Adam are not the same. While Langa is passionate about skating, if his friend isn’t there beside him, it isn’t as fun and his heart isn’t in it like it usually would be.
It’s good that Langa understands how he messed up, but he didn’t know how to fix it, so he decided to consult his mom about it. Hilariously she had mistakenly believed he was talking about a girl, but her advice is still sound. Just be honest about his feelings and express how much he cares about him.
So when Langa realized that Reki had likely finally showed up to watch the tournament, he was so happy, and Joe was relieved to hear that as well. I’m sure once Miya hears the news, he will finally seek him out too since he had been worried about him the entire episode.
But we definitely need to give some credit to Joe, because without him, I don’t think Reki would have showed up to the tournament. Joe came across him at one of the shops and reached out to him. He wanted to make sure that Reki didn’t find himself alone.
While Reki is still stuck in this pit where he feels like the odd one out of the group, he just needs to discover that there are other ways for him to be a part of this world. Just like the man who spoke on the program about specializing in making shoes for athletes, Reki has something to offer. While he might not see it as a special now, we know that his fortitude is building the skateboards. The personal customization he had made for Langa came in handy so many times today, such as when he was ambushed by a rogue group of skaters looking to take him out of the tournament by playing foul. The front wheels being able to spin 360′ allowed Langa to protect himself and more. So I hope Reki will be able to realize that he too has something special.
Fingers crossed that Langa and Reki will have the chance to talk things out next week! Until then, see you all next time!
