ホワイトアルバム Episode 23
White Album Ep. 23 review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Yuki gets into the Venus festival but has a lot on her mind as Ogata prepares her. Rina gives Touya time off as she goes to help Menou finish her album. Touya and Misaki have a talk where she reveals she’s going to break up with Akira because she has feelings for Touya and kisses him. Touya’s father passes away leaving Touya to make final arrangements. He accidentally tells Akira that he and Misaki will be cleaning up his father’s place so he allows Akira to punch him. After going through his father’s empty house, Misaki mentions he could keep it and rent a room to her. Touya asks her to “love” him one more time and she agrees.

Mana informs Touya that she passed her exams and the two go on a celebration date (and Valentine’s day chocolate giving as well) where Mana asks to be praised and not treated like a kid. Touya embraces her and loudly proclaims his happiness for her. The following day, Haruka drops by to give Touya chocolate and he gives her a birthday/early White Day present of sneakers. Akira comes up on an old bike as he and Haruka are going on a date.

Meanwhile, Rina and Kanzaki have a long talk where Rina reveals that Master (aka: Nagase-san) is like a father to her and her brother. Kanzaki reveals that M&M stands for Matsuyama and Mizuki for her ex-husband and herself. That means that MATSUYAMA Menou is in fact also Kanzaki’s daughter. Further, Kanzaki reveals that Yuki is a cousin of theirs, which is why Mana sometimes thinks of Yuki as a sister.

Haruka and Akira’s date ends and as Akira heads home, he’s struck by a vehicle. Touya receives the news in his apartment, where Menou is currently hanging out. On newsstands, an expose on Menou is published stating that she never sang her songs.

Thoughts/Review:

Man! Who stepped on the accelerator over at Seven Arcs (the studio responsible for this anime series)? Seriously, after crawling along time-wise, we basically fast forward through a month or so and end up sometime after Valentine’s Day.  Because so much time was skipped, there were a lot of things that happened which were crammed in here, causing some loss of impact in my opinion.

For starters, there is the death of Touya’s father. There really was no impact to me, mainly because I never really had a sense for how he was. He’d become some smeg head that Yuki and Touya visited at the hospital. There was no emotional connection at all. I don’t know why Mana visited him but Todd told me that once I watched this episode, I should see Kabitzin’s review where he postulated that it was obvious that Mana poisoned Touya’s father with the fruit she brought. *lol* Sad that the only impact from the scene comes from another blogger’s humorous remark.

Mana gets a date with Touya. When does he bang her? *_*

Moving rapidly along, I had expected that Rina would get Touya to bang her next. Boy was I mistaken. Instead, she literally kicks him to the curb. Bad move Rina-chan if you were wanting some Touya-lovin’. His first move is to go to Misaki (whom I noted last episode did sleep with Touya in the visual novels but had not apparently done so in the anime), who’s all over him like white on rice, enough so that he’s totally comfortable asking her to give it up in order to comfort him in his time of loss. That’s some kind of brazen maneuver on Touya’s part and I wanted to vomit when Misaki said OK, providing this was the last time. I guess considering there are only three more episodes, it will have to be the last time.

Then there’s Haruka. When she came by Touya’s father’s place, I expected the traditional “I’m going to look around until I find Touya and Misaki getting busy.” However, when Haruka saw the female pair of shoes in the entry way (ah, how lovely for Japanese tradition of not wearing outdoor shoes in the house), she backed off. Considering her words to Touya later when she gave him Valentine’s Day chocolate (about giving him back to Yuki), I wonder if she thought Yuki was the one who’d come over, not Misaki.

What’s up with Akira getting Touya’s sloppy seconds (if you’ll pardon the expression)? Misaki only dated him as a substitute for Touya but despite EVERYTHING she knows about Touya sleeping with anything female that is attractive and alive, she drops Akira like a flash in order to be with Touya, leaving Akira high and dry. At least Touya was man enough to take a punch from Akira but then Akira goes on a biking date with Haruka after she accepts that she can’t be with him. Ugh. Then the poor guy gets run over for his troubles.

Speaking of Akira, learning that Master’s family name is “Nagase” makes me think that Akira and Master are related, possibly father and son but maybe Uncle and nephew. It would explain why Akira works at Echos and why Touya was able to get a job there so easily.

I digress.

Continuing on the family track, Rina and Kanzaki sure got chatty. Now we know Master’s connection with Rina and her brother. Learning that Menou is the daughter of Kanzaki was not something I expected, but it makes sense to me. It goes to show why Kanzaki pushed to have her be a success and why Menou always felt comfortable to thumb her nose at Kanzaki. Then there’s the whole “Yuki is our cousin” aspect so no wonder I was thinking that Mana might be related.

I suppose that Menou is sleeping with Touya if she was over at his place when he got word of Akira’s accident. *_* If so, not unexpected at all.

So, the soap opera continues. Only three more episodes to wind down everything. I can’t see how things will come to a satisfactory conclusion but I could always be wrong.