November 24th, 2009 
AstroNerdBoy ホワイトアルバム Episode 20
White Album Ep. 20 review
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
Menou pays a visit to Touya’s apartment so when Touya goes out to buy beers for the two of them, he contacts her manager to get her out of the apartment. Ogata-san shows Yuki his collection of paintings of the same girl, only they aren’t the same painting nor the same girl. Ogata has a brief mental breakdown and kicks everyone out of his private gallery. Yayoi returns and the two have a long talk in which Ogata orders her to strip naked and lick his shoes. At the end of their conversation, she begins to strip but Ogata stops her, having recovered some of his sanity.
Touya spends the afternoon with Rina as she practices after which he stops by the college and has a brief chat with Haruka. At the Student Affairs Office, he sees Yamamoto, who’d given him the job of tutoring Hana. Yamamoto asks him on a date in the student center and they are seen by Akira and Misaki. Touya and Yamamoto go to a French restaurant where Touya learns that Hana’s mother is in fact President Kanzaki. When Yayoi shows up, Touya abandons Yamamoto with a bathroom excuse and leaves with Yayoi, who asks him not to see other women.
Thoughts/Review:
This episode above all others goes to show what a complete and utter dirt bag Touya is. Good grief. What he’s done to Yuki and other girls is already unforgivable, but his treatment of Yamamoto by ditching her (and thus leaving her the bill) at an expensive French restaurant is just icing on the cake. I guess if Yayoi hadn’t shown up, Touya would have banged Yamamoto. *_*
I’m stunned that Touya didn’t try to bang Menou. Heck, it was pretty clear that she was game to give it up for him but instead, he summons her manager. Maybe he did that because he’s working for Rina and thus indirectly for Kanzaki. As such, banging Menou might not be the smartest move on his part, though that’s not stopped him before. Of course, he may be holding out for a night with Rina.
The weirdness of the series continues with no explanation of what happened between Arika and Misaki last week during their one cameo scene. This week had another scene of Akira yelling at Frankie, the Master of Echos but since we don’t know why he was so angry, the moment makes no sense. Regardless, I can understand Akira’s anger at Touya when he saw him with yet another girl. One wonders why 
they were friends at all since Touya’s wandering eyes bothers Akira so much. Also, I found Misaki’s asking about which girls Touya might be with would bother him interesting, especially after she coyly added herself into the mix and Akira didn’t like that idea. I still think she carries a torch for Touya, though who knows why.
Ogata’s basically being insane certainly came out of the 
blue. Until now, his obsession over a single painting didn’t smack of pure insanity but just strong obsession. There are a lot of people like that but then now that I think of it, it is just a short step from obsession over a person or thing before slipping into total insanity. So maybe it shouldn’t have been that unexpected that Ogata had lost it but was maintaining a facade all this time.
Its weird how Yayoi, despite knowing Ogata’s fragile grip on reality, was willing to strip naked and lick his shoes as ordered. I knew she was willing to do whatever it took when it came to her job, as witnessed when she started banging Touya to keep him from Yuki. This seemed a bit much though, as did much that happened in this episode.
This anime continues to be strange and frankly impresses me less and less. The soap opera aspects of the series are getting somewhat tedious to me but I’ll push this one through to the end.
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I haven’t seen the episode, but what’s so bad about ditching Yamamoto and leaving her with the bill if she was the one who asked him on that date? Maybe he just wasn’t into her after actually spending time with her. I don’t remember what she looks like, it’s been a while since he got that job through her. Sure it wasn’t a nice thing to do, but if it was an awkward date I could understand him wanting to get away quickly. I guess I’ll have to see the episode because it’s a bit hard to understand why this would be worse than all the rest of his cheating behavior.
Your perserverance is admirable, even if the characters’ morality isn’t. (^_~)
I wouldn’t be able to take it; Kimi Nozo was my outer limit for suchlike. I know it’s not terribly logical to be able to wave off protosexual material like Negi’s repeated “accidents” diving into someone’s breasts or worse in Negima, and get squicked out by overt portrayals, but that’s me.
Maybe it’s like the difference between watching Wile E. Coyote getting squished into a pancake and watching an “action” movie where they do their best to make it look like someone really died? I’ll claim that as my defense, since otherwise you could infer I’m falling into the “Luuuuuv makes anything okay” trap of American TV.
@arimareiji — I try to be fair to any anime I watch and plow through the whole thing. ^_^;
@Anon — Yamamoto was dumped only because Touya saw Yayoi. Otherwise, Touya may well have tried to sleep with Yamamoto.
Just clarifying, ’cause it’s way too hard to tell the difference between sarcasm and what people really mean these days…
No sarcasm was intended whatsoever, I think it’s admirable that you have the patience to slog through it despite having a distaste for it. I try to do that as well, but lately I’ve found myself giving up on some after only one disk – or in extreme cases, sometimes even an episode or less. The older I get, the less patience I have.
And I consider my extreme distaste for bed-hopping (i.e. I’m gone after the second or third) while being able to accept Negi’s harem to be my own weird little quirk, not something other people should be required to emulate.
Well to be fair, Negi isn’t sleeping with his battle harem. *lol* Even in the case of a series like Tenchi Muyo! where Tenchi is going to end up with his entire harem, I can accept that story-wise as (1) a cultural acceptance within the story and (2) the girls are all agreeing to this arrangement.
With “White Album,” Touya is just a scum who tries to be a nice guy as well. It doesn’t work for me.
in the visual novel, Touya sleeps with Mana too
@Anon — really? Well, I guess that shouldn’t surprise me. Ugh. I wonder if that will happen in the anime as well or is that too much for TV?
@Astro, check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsikPswAYUM&feature=fvhl
I have NO idea if this is true or not, but… Japanese are strange people… you can expect pretty much everything from them…
The video keeps timing out on me (clocking) but I have heard of things like this. Despite the term “marriage” being used, there was no legal marriage. I wrote a piece on this subject but now I can’t find it to save my life. ^_^; It must have been purged. *_*