Plot: Haru and Akira develop a relationship while Haru tries to help Akira determine her true parentage and unlock the secrets of her past.
Breakdown: Akira is my favorite character on this series and seemingly has the most interesting story, so it’s no real surprise that I liked this arc.
The relationship between Haru and Akira isn’t even really put front and center, either. In fact, if I had one real issue with this arc it’s that this romance seems even more rushed and sloppy than Kazuha’s. We do find out that Haru and Akira knew each other very briefly as children, which leads to Haru going to ridiculous lengths to fix something from that time.
Akira had lost her mother’s pendant while they were playing. They searched and searched, but couldn’t find it. Haru, realizing the importance of that pendant now, goes to great lengths to find it, even though the terrain has changed since they last time he visited. His efforts are indeed sweet, but after they search in vain for the pendant, they’re already having sex.
They don’t show the sex scene on screen, and it’s possible they didn’t even have sex, but let me break it down.
They both get completely filthy looking for the pendant. Instead of going home and taking a bath in his own house like a normal person, he is invited to bathe at Akira’s home while she washes their clothes. Akira barges in and eventually makes her way into the bathtub with him, sitting on his lap, where she not-so-subtly nudges him into sex.
The scene cuts away after they start kissing, and Haru later explains that they passed out in the bath, but Akira seems to pray for forgiveness for her impure actions and they’re both blushing, which could be due to the bath, so it’s really unclear. Still doesn’t change the fact that they were in a bath together, her sitting on him, him groping her boobs and eventually making out. Mere hours after Akira even realized she liked him romantically….
Doesn’t really help that this entire scene is made a little creepy because Akira is talking about how nice it is to hear other people in the bathroom again because she used to take baths with the old man who ran the shrine/adopted her. And she’d sit on his lap in the tub….She mentions this a minute or two before she jumps on Haru’s lap and feels his hard-on pressing into her back….
Akira takes the reigns in this relationship, which is fine and fairly fitting because she’s so affectionate and physical in her emotional expressions, commonly hugging people and putting her arms around them.
Haru is somehow more pushy than he was with Kazuha, though. In her arc, he supported her and gave her space when she needed it but also helped her out whenever he could without overstepping his bounds. Here, when he learns a secret about Akira’s parentage, he decides to go out and get a DNA test to figure it out, even though it seems like Akira doesn’t really want this, and what they learn from the test could drastically affect the lives of both Akira and Kazuha.
He bounces back and forth between being pushy about it because he feels it’s his responsibility to clear this up to try and make her happy, even though this could easily create many more problems than good outcomes, and backing off. I do appreciate that, at a certain point, he admits he went too far and seems to fully relent, letting Akira make the decision for herself.
The storyline involving her family is pretty interesting. At the end of the day, I still have a bad taste in my mouth towards Mrs. Migiwa. I’m not saying she should have taken Akira in or anything, though that would’ve been nice, but she didn’t need to act like such a cold-hearted bitch towards her. Acknowledging that you realize Akira has doesn’t have the ability to choose who her parents are doesn’t excuse treating her badly.
The finale sex scene is very….random. Haru and Akira are sitting on the porch after she resolves the stuff with her family and she proposes sex….and they do. The end. It’s not really random in the grand scheme of things, but it’s just like ‘Oh yeah we end all of these arcs with sex scenes, right. Get naked, Akira.’
Sora’s role in this arc is very minimal. She spends much of episode five brushing her teeth for some reason and really just….existing. She does explain more about the cross necklace, though – that it was a present Haru gave to her when they were kids.
In episode six, they make it a point to show Sora existing sadly at home while Akira talked about how she doesn’t want to end up alone, which was very….disturbing. Were they trying to make us feel bad about Sora in that scene? Like if Haru kept dating Akira, Sora would be lonely and betraying her or something? Why do so many people in this show think that dating someone instantly means neglecting everyone important to you?
The Motoka omakes are getting more graphic. Each one for this arc had a sex scene in some capacity – both of which with Haru and Motoka, of course. I feel like they’re treating this like an extra arc, though it’s all non-canon.
All in all, this is another arc that I could easily see being pretty good as the main arc for the series.
But it’s not, so—
At this point, I was going to make another joke about dumping a previous non-canon arc and moving onto the next one, like I did in Kazuha’s arc….but I can’t.
I thought I’d still get to enjoy a reprieve for the next few episodes considering we still have three episodes (Foundation episode and Nao’s arc) before we get into Sora’s inevitably painful arc, even though the two arcs are somewhat intertwined. I didn’t know anything about Nao’s arc since it was in an entirely different branch from Kazuha and Akira’s section, so I did a little snooping on Wiki, flipped through episode seven real quick and uhm, let’s just say my days of relaxing during this series are over.
I won’t spoil anything, but let’s just say the next arc involves rape…..rape of a minor……perpetrated by a minor….*sigh*
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The Anime Madhouse 