PinkuBentoBox

It’s finally over. Another excellent episode caps off what was a brilliant season to an excellent anime. My only hope is that they make more of this stuff, it deserves a third season.

If you’ve been following ~haru~ (and if you haven’t then you should) then you’ll know the situation we were left with in episodes 11 and 12. Something has been up with Sachiko, she’s been avoiding Yumi completely, hanging around with Touko instead, and all that. For more discussion on that aspect, I’ve already written a huge rant on how much I dislike Sachiko’s behavior, so I won’t go into that again.

Sachiko hasn’t been coming to school, and we’re given a hint why right at the beginning. Someone has died, and Sachiko is too sad to come to school. It becomes apparent right away that this is indeed the reason why she has been distant and everything, though it doesn’t yet excuse her behavior.

After Yumi finally decides to go back to the Rose Mansion, she meets up with the old lady that Kei lives with, Yumiko. This ended up being a really nice addition, symbolically. Yumi and Yumiko are so alike in so many ways, but Yumiko made the mistake of throwing away her friendship, while Yumi decided to persevere. Yumiko annouces that she’s decided to go and visit an old friend of hers. The whole thing leaves you with very little doubt who that could be.

Yumi decides to enlist Touko’s help with the festival preparations, and manages to patch up the rumors that she and Touko have been fighting over Sachiko. Which in a way was true. We’re also given another important piece of the puzzle when Touko reveals that her family runs a small private hospital. The pieces are falling into place.

Everything comes to a head though when two familiar faces arrive on the campus in a bright red sports car to pick up Yumi. Kashiwage, Sachiko’s fiancee, is a real bishounen in every sense of the word. The more important person is Youko. She was an interesting but underused character, and had somehow found time over the last few episodes to purchase a Suit of Hotness +10.

On the ride to the hospital, Kashiwage reveals he’s a dangerous driver, and Youko reveals that she had tried to help Sachiko, but she couldn’t do anything. She’d instictively known that only Yumi could help.

And that’s just what Yumi does. Sachiko had been tearing herself to pieces it seems, distraught not just at the death of her grandmother, who she was very close to, but at the fact that she had basically ruined things with Yumi. What I really appreciated was that Sachiko instantly admitted that she was the one who was at fault. She assumed that Yumi would be able to tell what was going on, and she couldn’t bring herself to actually say it because she was so afraid she’d lose control and bawl her eyes out. This really went to show just how close the two are, Yumi is the only one it seems that can really get close enough to Sachiko that she feels safe enough to show emotions like that.

The other thing I really liked in the ending was duality used with the revelation that Sachiko’s grandmother had been Yumiko’s soeur. It was like Yumi and Sachiko had been playing out how the two older women had ruined their relationship, but in their case Yumi and Sachiko were able to fix it up. Sachiko’s grandmother had died just after her soeur finally came to her and they patched thier friendship up again, which was really nice.

The way everything was wrapped up was reasonably conclusive, but there’s no reason that they can’t do more. There’s a good chunk of novels left, I believe. I know one completely unexplored subplot at this stage is Touko and unintroduced character Kanako competing for Yumi’s affections. There’s certainly enough material there, I just don’t know whether there’s enough demand in Japan for a third season. I really hope there is, though.

Probably what would seal the creation of more of the series would be if a US distro picked it up. To be honest, I’m surprised that no one has, its one of those series that if you like it, you become hopelessly addicted to it. Maybe the whole lesbian angle is considered too risky for the US or something, I just don’t know. All I know is that I want more and I hope I get my wish.