True Tears, episode 6
What kind of joke is that?
Well, here it is: I’m caught up, and not a moment too soon. If you were looking for True Tears to get moving a little faster (I personally wasn’t, but not complaining), it all kind of explodes here. Might be minimal spoilers.
Girl by Girl
Aiko calls herself an idiot, and true enough, she has been. She finally realizes that she’s been doing something pretty horrible to Nobuse all this time, and of course not doing herself any favors in the process. When she tells him, this show’s phenomenal skill level is put on display in his face: he goes from confusion to realization, from abject horror to desperate heartbreak in that scene.
If you peruse the underpants of the internet, you’ll find what seems to be an enormous hate-on for Ai-chan that I think is totally unwarranted. True Tears has impressed me with the believability of its characters’ actions, and if you think this doesn’t happen in real life you’re fooling yourself. And if you think only horrible people do horrible things, even in anime, go back and watch School Days again. I feel bad for her, because she’s made a terrible mistake. She’s not going to win this match by any stretch, and I hope Nobuse can swallow his pride because Aiko’s self-belittling, and her eating the candy, shows a lot of maturity and compassion. On a side note, I love that the best friend is not just integral to the storyline, but a victim of the tragedy as well. That may not be totally new, but this angle feels fairly fresh.
Noe was somewhat minimized here in favor of her cold, cold brother Jun. The aforementioned internets are ablaze with more love for Noe than for Clannad’s Kyou, but I’ll agree with them for once. She’s a lovable character with only one person seemingly incapable of loving her: Shinichiro of course. I mean, she’s not just cute in anime-world, the other characters constantly seem to be mentioning it (and not loli cute either, so enjoy without ickiness). She’s inspiring more paintings than Hiromi, and she’s — gasp — fun. He’s outright rude to her, probably thanks to his regret at setting up his crushy-crush with Jun.
As for the crushy-crush, the main thrust of this episode is that Hiromi knows what we previously assumed to be viewer-only information. Her mother’s face cut out of the pictures, the mistreatment. It’s all there. In fact, everyone seems to know — once again, Shinichiro seems to be the only exception. I instantly forgave her actions of the past couple episodes when I found out she knew; turns out there weren’t really mixed messages, or at least not ones with malicious intent. I still don’t like her that much, but remember: A long past together is an anime shorthand for very deep feelings, so don’t bash Shin too badly.
Anyways.
I still don’t hate Shinichiro either. He is starting to become a little one-track with his Hiromi bent. But I think his ignoring Noe is still marginally forgivable; her gestures of affection are genuinely backwards, odd, and tend toward embarrassing — and what’s more, I don’t think she quite knows the extent of her feelings for him. For us, it’s the curse of viewers’ omniscience.
Shin didn’t do a horrible thing by setting up the date with Jun; I think he seriously thought that getting Hiromi together with someone else would drive it all home for him and let him get on with life. And there’s a very good chance he really thought it would make her happy. I don’t catch terribly selfish vibes off of him. Dumb ones, sure, but no more so than your average hero of a show like this.
Speculation
Looks like next week brings us a girl-fight, but is it about Shinichiro, Jun, or what? Hiromi seems pretty angry about the corrupt little deal that Shin and Jun made, so it could involve that. But shouldn’t someone be beating Shin, rather than fighting over him? Pretty sure a couple people could lay claim to that about now. I really want to know what Jun’s hiding, and I want to know how far Noe is going to go. She’s pretty resourceful.
But all in all, it’s interesting to see how wide they’ve blown everything open at the halfway point. As others have speculated, this is either the part where it gets really great or goes totally downhill. I’m voting the former because this show is really impressing me so far. Then again, what does it matter what I think: the rest of the world seemed to like Clannad 17 best of all so far, and I loathed it.
Final Thoughts
In spite of the fact that a rollercoaster is probably about to drop from the big hill, I am still loving the easy-breezy-japanese-y, dreamlike and gauzy feeling of this show. It echoes Air still very much for me (the seaside probably helps), but without the big-eye overload. I don’t need two of those at once with Clannad going on. I think if True Tears is really serious about making people cry, their gorgeous look and creative directing will give them no problems. It’s just plain mesmerizing to me, I don’t know what else to say.
- otou-san out!
