Wednesday 28 October 2009

White Album - Episode 17

After a bit of a slow start to this second half of White Album, the end of the last episode finally looked set to start bringing together the numerous disparate threads that have made up the series of late. Episode seventeen continues this trend to some extent, although I have to confess not quite in the ways that I was expecting.

While the last instalment seemed to give some credence to the possibility that Rina's threat to quit was simply part of a bigger plan to push Yuki's career in the right direction while also slitting her ties to Touya, come this episode it seems that there might well be more to it than that, with Rina seemingly genuinely looking to move on - A feeling that it seems no amount of tears on Yuki's part will change.


Elsewhere, we see jealousy and rivalries spring up elsewhere, with the situation between Haruka and Mana that has been bubbling under the surface coming out in force (although why all these girls are squabbling over Touya continues to baffle me, quite honestly), and it seems that Eiji's painting that he loves (or should that be loved?) so much is going to be used against him to extort money or other assets from him... again, it's tough to call who is outsmarting who here exactly.

While all of these goings-on are keeping things relatively interesting, I can't quite shake a feeling of unease that I've been having around this series of late - The almost but not quite sensation that they're simply making things up as they go along with no real plan in sight, throwing in new plot points when there is nothing else around to fill the gap and progress the story. In reality, I doubt that's actually the case, but it does suggest to me that perhaps the plot development and story telling used here could have been a little sharper and more concise. Still, as long as Rina is around to start making things interesting (as she invariably does) there are still reasons to watch White Album, even when the overall tone of its soap opera becomes overly frothy and spills out of its proverbial washing machine.

Wait, did I just make an anime/washing machine analogy? It's been a long week....

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