ホワイトアルバム Episode 16
White Album Ep. 16 review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Touya spends the night with Yayoi at some western-styled hotel where the following morning, Yayoi reveals that with Rina and Yuki pitted against each other for a slot in the Venus Music Festival, Touya should consider his romance with Yuki to be officially over for the sake of Yuki’s career. As Touya makes his way slowly back to his apartment, his father has to be returned to the hospital and Akira blames himself for the man’s relapse. Touya attempts to downplay what happened to his father to Misaki, but she later overhears his conversation on a phone and learns it was worse than she thought, leaving her to also feel responsible for Touya’s father’s condition. Her apology to him is responded to by Touya’s father telling her to forget about Touya and focus on Akira.

Ogata calls a meeting to discuss having an entry in the Venus Music Festival. Rina realizes that her brother intends to have Yuki enter despite the years of keeping Rina out even though she wanted to enter. She quits Ogata Productions on the spot and orders her managers to drive her home as a final act. Yuki gets Yayoi to do the same but before Yayoi goes, Ogata quickly discusses the situation between her and Touya as well as pictures taken by one “Hiraki-kun.” Elsewhere, Haruka asks Mana why she was at Touya’s that one night before the two of them end up at Echo’s, where Mana is surprised to see Misaki there.

Thoughts/Review:

Unfortunately, though not unsurprisingly, Touya went with Yayoi to bang her again, this time from the comforts of a nice, western-styled hotel. What surprised me a bit was Yayoi returning to her role of keeping Touya away from Yuki. I still think she has other reasons for sleeping with Touya beyond keeping him away from Yuki. What Touya will do about it is beyond me since he wouldn’t answer the phone and then cried like a baby again. Ugh. He really is scuzzy.

Speaking of Yayoi, I’m not sure exactly what’s going on. I don’t know who Hiraki is but it seems he has photos of what I presume are Yayoi and Touya, but that wouldn’t be blackmail material in my mind. Maybe this Hiraki has photos of Touya with Yuki or Touya with Rina. Ogata asking if there was anything between Yayoi and Touya suggests that he only suspects something is going on between them OR that he knows and wants to see what Yayoi will actually tell him. Either way, I found his warning to her to not hurt Yuki to be most interesting. Yuki would be hurt by Touya rejecting her and Ogata’s words could be telling Yayoi to not interfere in Touya’s and Yuki’s relationship (such as it is).

I had the feeling that Rina was out and this week kinda bore that out. I don’t think she’s out of the series but now she and Yuki are not working for the same company. I’m not sure if this will mean that she gets to enter this Venus thing or not, but I’m guessing it will. It may also mean that she will rotate back closer to Touya’s orbit but who knows for sure. We’ll see how Yuki and Rina’s friendship handle this though.

This episode left me with the distinct impression that Misaki and Akira had sex at Touya’s house. The way both of them acted, Akira blaming himself for Touya’s father’s return to the hospital and not wanting to face Touya as well as Misaki’s apologies to Touya’s father, it seems that Misaki gave into Akira’s request for sex. I was also left with the notion that they may have gotten a bit too loud, excited Touya’s father, and caused his collapse. I could be completely wrong about this though. I did like how Touya’s father advised Misaki to stay with Akira and forget about Touya.

We didn’t get much progress on Haruka’s and Hana’s story, though Haruka did ask as to why Hana was at Touya’s place. Now that they’ve gone to Echo’s, it will be interesting to see how Misaki reacts to Hana’s big deal of pointing her out.

So, there are some changes with Rina’s departure from Ogata Productions as well as apparently with Misaki and Akira’s relationship. However, things are still the same with Touya. *_*