After sorting through their photos for the coming exhibition, Kanae suggests Potte and the group go on a photography tour. Maon suggests her home island of Oosakishimo, where her parents run an inn, and Kaoru suggests they all use the trip to get inspired for a second We Exhibition down the road. While on the trip, Kanae worries about not having a direction after graduation or a turning point to tell her which way to go and when, but after interacting with the girls and talking with Maon’s folks, she realizes her turning point was joining the photography club, and that she, like everyone else, will “cast off” to their future when the tides are right.
This week the upperclassman Kanae was the focus, as for the majority of the episode she is consumed with feelings of nostalgia and of remaining static and empty as everyone else whisks past her into the future. Of course, she’s worrying needlessly; she’s far too young to be worried about such things, but this is Kanae we’re talking about, who’s no stranger to overthinking things into oblivion. As fate would have it, the very name of the island she and the others visit to get their creative juices flowing provides her with the metaphor she’s wrestling with. She’s worried that the tide will never come for her, but it will; just not necessarily the same time as the others.
Each of the girls is into a craft that locks the past in a form we’ll always be able to sense, whether it’s Norie’s tastes, Kaoru’s smells, Maon’s sounds or Potte and Kanae’s pictures. But those things are only echos of a past we can’t go back to, and we can choose to regard them with fondness or remorse – or heck, both at the same time. Kanae was considering not graduating because it’s easier, safer, and less scary to rewind one’s life, and jump back into those pictures. But she knows that’s not the right way to go. Her tide will come, and the seas may not be calm, but as sure as the sun rises, they’ll take her where she needs to go.
Rating:7 (Very Good)
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