White Album 01
ホワイトアルバム Episode 01

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Touya wakes from a nightmare where the girl he likes, Yuki, is being pulled from him because she’s now an idol. On TV is Yuki, being interviewed and after Touya watches, he realizes he’s late for work. He calls in but is fired anyway, so at college, he actually manages to see his old friend Yuki. She’s breathlessly speaking of things before her manager comes to take her to a recording session. Touya then meets with Misaki and Akira, both of whom he’s friends with. After a brief talk about Yuki, Misaki gives Touya a book of poetry for a report and takes off for the library. Akira stays with his friend even though Touya believes he would have rather gone to the library after the pretty Misaki.

Walking around campus, Touya and Akira talk when Hakura comes up on her bike and asks Touya to go on a walk with her. He has to turn her down but Akira says he’ll play tennis with her. She takes off and is chased by Touya until she stops. He apologizes for Akira before she takes off again. Akira feels bad since it is clear that Hakura has not gotten over the loss of her older brother and thus has a negative reaction to tennis. Touya begins rambling about his “goddesses” — all the girls he knows basically. He’s glad to have seen Yuki today and tries to give the book of poetry to Akira, who wants to read it but is annoyed because Misaki lent it to Touya and not him.

At the studio, idol Rina comes in followed by her manager and is supicious when the Sakura-Dan idol group greet her so politely. Entering the waiting room, she finds that Yuki’s costume has been ruined and that the table is filled with soda cans. Apparently, Sakura-Dan forced Yuki into buying them drinks, then ruined her costume. Rina is a bit annoyed with this, wondering why Yuki’s manager (Shinozuka-san) didn’t take care of buying the girls drinks. Rina wonders if what the group did is revenge for last week, but she has to go. As she does, she thinks to herself how Yuki should not give into the bullying.

Akira and Touya are at their next job, working at the bar The Echoes. There are no customers there and when OGATA Eiji (whom I guess is related to OGATA Rina) comes in from a back room and leaves , Touya is surprised to see him, wondering if Yuki is there. Akira says the Master of the bar tells them they can go home and he’ll pay them. Touya refuses to accept payment but when he tries to call his father for a loan, his father hangs up on him. Toouya goes home and watches a program that Yuki is a model on as well as Rina’s singing. Yuki calls and the two talk for a long time, where the audience is shown that Yuki managed to make lemonade out of her situation and apparent square things with the idol group.

Thoughts/Review:

Ugh. This anime is just too strange for my tastes. I don’t like the jump-about style of presenting the story. It is all over the place. Characters just pop in and out and the anime expects you to know who’s who and what’s what. There are no proper introductions and the flow is just poor. Yet somehow, despite never having played the visual novel, I manged to actually gleam some stuff from this, but it was not easy.

OK, so you have the up-and-coming idol Yuki and her old friend Touya, who has the hots for Yuki and Yuki sees him as a good friend but likely not more. Yuji is good friends with fellow idol Rina-chan, who’s a “senpai,” thus meaning she’s been in the business longer than Yuki. She may be interested in Touya. There’s an idol group named Sakura-Dan, who bully Yuki. There’s Akira, who’s friends with Touya, and may like Misaki, who’s also a friend of Touya’s. He may also like Haruka, who’s also a friend of Touya’s. Haruka is into sports, used to play tennis, lost her older brother, and may be interested in Touya. Oh, and Touya and Akira score a job at a bar that was once a cake shop, but Touya refuses to accept payment for his time at said job because there were no customers. However, Touya is somewhat estranged from his father so he can’t borrow money there but did I mention that he REALLY likes Yuki?

See the tangled mess of things just from the first episode? Ugh.

On the positive note, this episode told me that should I return to Japan, I can buy Mountain Dew. ^_^