White Album – 22 (The Soap Opera Returns)

ホワイトアルバム Episode 22
White Album Ep. 22 review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

White Album - 22Tamaru attempts to blackmail Misaki into writing an article for him after showing her the photos of Touya with Yayoi. Tamaru’s is frustrated with Hiiragi for selling the negatives but his plans are changed when Menou shows up and offers him something more — a photo shoot with her in bed with him (his face obscured). Menou convinces Misaki to write an article about her to save Touya, explaining that Touya is a childhood friend of sorts.

White Album - 22Meanwhile, Mana strands Touya with Haruka at the cabin, where he remembers how Haruka trained here in high school. Mana pays a visit to Touya’s father that night and he mistakes her for a young Yuki. Meanwhile, Haruka attempts to get Touya to sleep with her, but he refuses. Later outside, she apologizes to him and to make up to her for always using her, Touya sleeps with Haruka. The next morning, he bikes to town, leaving Mana’s bike at her house before seeing Rina, who’s upset at having been left alone. She won’t let him touch her and as she makes her TV appearance and pretends to be happy, Touya realizes he hurt her.

Thoughts/Review:

White Album - 22Recently, White Album had become kinda tedious. The soap opera elements that made the series interesting enough to watch were still there to a degree, but frankly I was sick and tired of Touya constantly banging Yayoi and the story wasn’t moving anywhere interesting. That started changing last episode and with this episode, I found myself fairly engrossed. Then again, it was rather light on Yayoi.

White Album - 22For starters, Misaki is insane to even have agreed to meet Tamaru in the first place, much less agree to be his “slave” of sorts. What is so special about Touya that she would agree to do whatever Tamaru wanted to protect Touya despite seeing that he’s banging Yayoi when he’s supposed to be dating Yuki. In the visual novel, I know Touya banged Misaki, but that element was not present (that I’m aware of at least) in the anime. I have always had the impression that Misaki was not truly over Touya and that Akira was just a mere substitute for Touya, but why keep hanging on? Makes no sense.

White Album - 22This leads me to Menou. I still don’t know her connection to Touya but she too wants to protect him and agrees to sacrifice herself rather than let images of Touya and Yayoi be published along with a story about them. I get the feeling that Menou isn’t just doing a sacrifice for Touya though by doing a photo session to make it appear she’s sleeping with some dude. I feel she’s likely going to get at Kanzaki with this (her friend, who’s name I forget, playing the song plays into this). Still, now we have two girls lusting for Touya who are now working together to protect him. *_*

White Album - 22It was strange that Menou knew Tamaru though. He addressed her as “Me-chan” and she addressed him as Kenichi-kun. She was in complete control of him though, which was also a bit of a surprise.

As to Mana, I was surprised to see her pay a visit to Touya’s father. She too has some deeper connection to Touya that I can’t explain. Why Touya’s father saw her as a young Yuki, I don’t know but it did reveal that Touya and Haruka apparently were a couple of some sort and Yuki had a crush on Touya back in the day. Weird.

White Album - 22Moving on to Haruka, I laughed when Touya initially refused the naked Haruka’s attempts to get him to sleep with her. I thought, “Haven’t we seen this before where Touya acts angry and offended by sexual overtones from some girl and then bangs her anyway?” Oh yeah, that’s how several of his and Yayoi’s acts of sexual congress started. So I was pretty sure that he’d end up banging Haruka and sure enough when he’s smiling at her outside and offering to make things up to her, I knew the jig was up (and gone).

White Album - 22Finally, there’s Rina. I guess Rina had been hoping to ride the Touya train to Ecstasy-ville. Well, there’s still time to get your fill, Rina-chan. *_*

Again we have another girl desperate for Touya despite knowing that he’s a 2-timing so-and-so who’d sleep with any pretty girl who comes into his line of sight. Its something I can’t understand because Rina White Album - 22is otherwise a pretty sharp cookie. Considering how Touya was reflecting on how he’d hurt her at the end of the episode, I suppose Rina will be next to get some Touya lovin’.

Despite my head hurting over it all, I will say I wasn’t bored at all with this episode which managed to keep my interest quite well. Isn’t that what a soap opera should do?

White Album - 22

 

White Album - 22
White Album - 22
White Album - 22
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4 Responses to “White Album – 22 (The Soap Opera Returns)”

  1. evgenidb says:

    Offtopic: [Hakubi] Isekai no Seikishi Monogatari 09 [480p] [h264] is ready. Have fun watching!

  2. Anonymous says:

    I wondered when you’d get back to blogging this. I’m looking forward to seeing your reaction to the ending. I’ll say no more. 😉

  3. arimareiji says:

    Reading one of your comments about how inexplicable it is that women jump into Touya’s bed reminded me of something from years ago.

    This was back in the dark days of the Internet, and the MUCK I hung out on was almost a full-fledged community instead of a random collections of acquaintances. So everyone knew, for example, that one guy by the name of Thumper was pretty much like Touya.

    There were a few friends who I’d call from time to time, and while I was talking to one friend she mentioned that she’d slept with him once. I was baffled and asked “Why, when you know what he’s like?” I could almost see her shrug on the other end of the line, and said she thought it might be an interesting experience. But her next grumbled-half-under-her-breath comment said a lot more:

    “You know, for someone who’s done it so much, you’d think he’d be better at it.”

  4. AstroNerdBoy says:

    Guys like that are solely in it for their own satisfaction. In my experience, few of them actually “worry” about the girl. Despite that, these kind of guys never seem to come up short on the women though and in the case of your female friend, if you’d said that she slept with that guy again, it wouldn’t surprise me.

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