White Album 10
ホワイトアルバム Episode 10

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Misaki spends the night in the hospital and leaves with Akira the following morning where they go buy clothing and eventually spend some time at Echos. Tamaru is blamed for the Theater Club’s poor performance. Yuki asks Shinozuka-san to deliver a letter to Touya, whom she hasn’t seen in ages. Shinozuka-san accidentally destroys the letter having intended to destroy a letter from Hiiragi, Rina’s former manager, who has been harassing her. Shinozuka-san continues her relationship with Touya while Rina manages to get Touya on her personal staff as her own standing as an idol starts to fall while Yuki’s is rising. Rina discovers that she is now in a competition with Sakura-dan and the members of that group no longer pay Rina respect.

Thoughts/Review:

It seems that Touya does recognize that he seems to have lots and lots of babes around him. I know he’s used the term “goddess” when talking with some of them (as he did with Haruka in this episode) but his confession on the subject to Rina went a lot deeper. Having all these girls show up on different days and become his “goddess of the day” is something Touya knows in not normal, but he enjoys the attention. Heck, he is smart enough to know how that there are so many fans (and I think Touya was thinking more about other men mostly) who would want to get close to Rina but can’t, yet here he is having a hot beverage with her and being asked by her to work as a member of her staff.

Shinozuka-san and Touya. Man, I thought for sure that would come to an end once Touya was out of the picture. Touya has abandoned poor Yuki without even a word, but apparently Shinozuka-san is still doing the nasty with Touya. Maybe her continued involement with him sexually (and I’m going to assume that sex is going on because of the ages of the characters even though nothing is shown) is an insurance policy — make the premium payments and keep the horn-dog from Yuki. Rina bringing Touya onto her staff may also play a role in this, but eventually I see Rina making a move on Touya. Anyway, the surprise here is that Hiiragi is sending Shinozuka-san letters and calling calling her. So is she frightened or no? Hard for me to say but maybe that’s another reason for her to lose herself with Touya.

Poor Yuki. She wanted a letter delivered to Touya and Shinozuka-san accidentally destroyed it. I’m actually surprised that Poor Yuki. To think that Shinozuka-san was actually going to deliver it. She’s a cool customer though, not revealing anything when she realized she still had Hiiragi’s letter and had destroyed Yuki’s. Does she lie to Yuki and say she delivered it? Rina found it and obviously thinks it is all over since the only reason for the letter to be destroyed is to keep Yuki and Touya apart. What does Rina do about this situation especially with her now having Touya on her staff and Sakura-dan at her throat, to say nothing of Yuki’s star rising?

Poor Haruka. I believe Touya was about to tell her he sees her as nothing but a friend before Rina came up. Actually, that whole scene was a bit bizarre. Haruka is talking about Zashiki-Warashi (Mana), Touya is thinking Yuki while apparently about to give Haruka the friends speech (cause he has to know that Haruka wants a game of “one-on-one” with him), then suddenly he says something dumb and Rina is there. Weird. Haruka did save Touya from a confrontation with Tamaru.

I hope that Misaki and Akira are becoming a couple. She was pretty happy to see him in the hospital and wanted to go with him to buy a change of clothes for himself. They were at Echos together where I like to think they were talking about a great many things including that smeg head Touya. Akira’s reaction to Touya coming over to chat with them was good — Akira has JUST started to finally make progress with Misaki and his idiot friend whom Misaki had (and likely still has) feelings for comes thundering over. Of course Akira is going to be irritated and fortunately Touya had the good sense to get out.

The surprise for me in this episode was how Rina’s star is falling and her brother is up to whatever it is he’s up to. This is something that happens to all idols but I do wonder how this series will handle it. Clearly, Rina is not going down without a fight, but while it may be easy to battle the brats in Sakura-dan, can she save her own career without sabotaging Yuki’s career? I like to think that she won’t go that far, but I also think that somehow she’ll take a consolation prize in Touya (if you can truly call him that). We’ll see what happens.

Some questions — will Tamaru attempt to kill Misaki and Touya for his disgrace? Did Touya’s father have a heart attack? Where the smeg did Haruka go to? Did I miss an explanation of “Happizu?” Will Hiiragi try to attack and even rape Shinozuka-san? I ask some of these darker questions because I get the feeling dark times are closing in and I can see this series having an attempted murder or two as well as an attempted rape.