PinkuBentoBox

I’d almost finished this entry when I bumped my mouse’s fucking ‘back’ button and Firefox killed it. This is try number 2.

Anyway, Episode 3 of Uta~Kata is a beach episode. As expected, it also involves some swimsuit fanservice antics (though actually not as much as there could have been). Apparently the fanservice in Uta~kata makes a lot of people squeamish, but I’m not really sure why. It’s not as if the usual animu fapping material (such as Rei Ayanami) is any older than Ichika and co…

The episode opens out with Ichika announcing to her parents that she’s been invited to go out to the beach with her three friends from episode 1, Michiru. Satsuki and Keiko. Manatsu is extremely excited about this, as apparently she’s never been to the beach before (I guess the dream at the start of episode one doesn’t count). Ichika’s father loans her his watch, which is waterproof, because she can’t use her cellphone in the water. The watch will be important later on. Incidentally, it says that its an ‘orga’ but it’s quite clearly an expensive Omega watch.

We are subsequently introduced to Nao. Nao is an old friend of Ichika’s from primary school, but she had to move away. She’s come back to the town with a friend and their respective boyfriends, so that they can go to the beach. She doesn’t really seem to be too happy to be back.

Manatsu and Ichika meet up with Ichika’s three friends. Ichika introduces Manatsu to them, and Keiko and Satsuki take her at face value. Michiru, however, can see that there’s something up with her, and says so to Ichika. Ichika had previously said this, and reinforces it again, Michiru is an ‘amazing’ person. I have some official art which shows Michiru in a miko costume, so I suppose she’s the sort who sees deeper than the surface.

The girls arrive at the beach and disrobe, changing into their swimsuits. We also find out that Keiko is pretty well racked for her age. Believe it or not, this is a minor plot point in a later episode. This is a very fanservice-laden scene I suppose, though they could have been a lot more overt with it than they were. I suppose if you’re one of the aforementioned people who get squeamish over this sort of thing, then you probably shouldn’t be watching the series (your loss).

After a brief scene with Nao and her party, complete with Saya watching them from atop a telephone pole (seriously, how do people balance like that, and why does no one notice her?) we return to the girls. They’ve finished their swim, and are now looking for lunch. Satsuki reveals that her older brother is managing a beach house nearby, so they all decide to go. In predictable anime fashion, they end up getting pressed into working for him. It seems that whenever an animu character goes to the beach they get pressed into helping out at a friend / relative’s beach house, either cooking or waiting tables in a swimsuit. What the hell is up with this clich�? Does every Japanese kid have some kind of mandatory service period they have to go through at a beach house before becoming a citizen or something? Like military duty in some countries?

Nao and her group arrive at the beach house with the ‘cute girls’, and Nao recognises Ichika who is waiting tables. She straight away asks the rest of her group if they can go somewhere else for lunch. Evidently there’s some bad blood or something between the two girls, or perhaps just some regrets. Satsuki’s brother recognises the watch that Ichika is wearing, but he doesn’t do anything about it. He gives them lunch as a reward for helping him out. Because the lunch cost less than they expected, they are going to go somewhere and ‘be consumers’ for a while. At least, they were going to until Michiru pointed out how much they just ate. Being 14 year old girls, they go and swim to work off the calories first.

Ichika and the girls walk off past the school, and they bump into Nao and her group. They all grab a drink together, but it’s obvious that Nao is a bit uncomfortable being there. She tells her boyfriend not to flirt with them, because they’re from a ‘rich girls school’. Incidentally, in this scene one of the boys she’s with looks a hell of a lot like Tolle, the snivelling coward from Gundam Seed. What the hell is he doing in Japan hitting on little girls?

Anyway, Satsuki gets a bit miffed at Nao’s attitude, and accuses her of not being smart enough to get into their school and taking it out on them. Ichika sticks up for her old friend though, explaining that Nao did get accepted but she had to move away anyway. She wasn’t able to go to the school that she really wanted to go to. She walks off with her friends.

Later on, Nao is lying in the ocean, remembering. In her flashback, we see that her father wouldn’t let her go to the school, even though she had put in so much effort in order to pass. It’s obviously a regret that’s been festering away with her for a long time. A ghostly arm appears and grabs Nao’s leg, pulling her down under the water. No one notices as she’s pulled under, and she exclaims that she didn’t want to come to the beach here for this very reason (not the drowning, but remembering her disappointment)

Ichika dives down and rescues her friend, and she and Manatsu pull her back up to the surface. Meanwhile, Saya is watching, and her arm is wet. It’s quite obvious that she was responsible for the attempted drowning. She says something cryptic again, this time telling us that “influencing the one taking the test is against the rules”. What is she doing then?

Anyway, they get Nao back to the beach, and then realise that Ichika’s watch is gone. She seems to have dropped it in the ocean while she was rescuing Nao. Nao offers to compensate her for it, but Satsuki’s brother informs them that the watch was an “Omega Divemaster” and was worth several thousand yen. Everyone rushes back out to the ocean to look for it, but it’s not going well. Manatsu suggests to Ichika that she use the Djinn’s power again.

In keeping with the beach theme, Ichika’s costume this time is probably her most revealing in the whole series. The third costume is that of the Earth Djinn, and was designed by Ueda Hajime, the manga author who did FLCL. This one also probably has the most revealing transformation sequence. Not that I’m complaining or anything, the actual costume is kind of cute. Interestingly, Michiru had noticed Manatsu and Ichika sneak away, and she is also the only one to notice Ichika’s glow as she transforms beneath the water.

The Earth Djinn causes the ground to light up, and the sand covering the watch to part. Ichika hurries towards it, scooping it up just as she runs out of air and starts to drown. Manatsu pulls her up to safety. Despite the fact that Ichika had been so desperate to find the watch not because of her father, but because she didn’t want Nao to get in trouble, Nao refuses to apologize, pointing out that it was Ichika’s own fault for taking something so expensive into the water.

Everyone leaves, including Nao who looks very sad about the day’s events, leaving Ichika and Manatsu on the beach in the dark, and Satsuki sitting with her brother at the beach house. Ichika is sitting, looking at the waves and seems quite sad. Satsuki is watching them, and she’s annoyed at Nao’s attitude still. Her brother tells her not to be so angry about it, and then they talk about things for a little. He asks if his mother is well, to which Satsuki nods and says something about a ‘dig’ which seems to indicate their mother is an archaeologist or something, which is pretty exotic but seems to be the profession of every second absent anime parent. Satsuki then asks her brother about “that man”. It’s obvious that their parents are divorced. Satsuki says ‘If only he’d just die’ which her brother parrots in unison, obviously expecting the response. Satsuki’s obviously grown up with a bad relationship with her father, and I believe this becomes a major plot point down the road. Her brother invites her to come again some other time, as he’s going to be working there all summer. Meanwhile, Ichika has gotten over her sadness thanks to Manatsu, and they’re playing like little kids in the water.

The episode ends with Ichika receiving a quick note from Nao - “Sorry… and thanks” During the final few minutes of the episode they used a vocal backing piece, Zutto sono Machi de by Emiko. The final few bars of this piece are also used in the Next Episode Previews at the end of each episode. It’s a beautiful piece of music, available on the first of the Soundtrack CDs (”Sound Memory - Ichika Side”) and also on the Image album that Emiko did for the series (several of her songs are used throughout the course of Uta~kata). It’s worth picking up. Actually, I haven’t commented on the music here much at all, but it’s all of a very high standard. The Opening tune is one of the best of 2004 in my opinion, and the BGM is very nice, perfectly supporting the series. The whole anime is supposed to have a slightly dreamlike, ephemeral quality to it, and the music supports this goal admirably.