Hibike! Euphonium 3 – 09 – A Matter of Balance

What’s done is done, but Kumiko isn’t quite able to pretend that she’s not angry. When Mayu haunts her steps, she turns on her “nice” voice and kindly asks her to stay the fuck away from her. The thing is, Kumiko isn’t sure who she’s angry at: herself, Mayu, Taki-sensei … whoever. The point is that that anger is there and she isn’t quite sure what to do with it.

At least in Kanade she has a venting partner. Kanade is great this week, as she not in so many words tells Kumiko “I told you so.” This whole auditions for every round of competition is ostensibly meritocratic, and something had to change after two years not winning Gold, but the resulting effect on the entire band calls into question the decisions made by the man at the top: Taki-sensei, someone in whom the underclassmen don’t have blind faith.

Also unsurprisingly on Team Kumiko is Shuu, who is clearly down in the dumps about how things went down with the auditions. Kumiko is flattered that he feels this way, but assures him she’s fine and that as vice president he needs to buck up and stop worrying about “silly things”. This season has been super-light on Kumiko-Shuu interactions as they apparently broke up in the movie I didn’t see, so I appreciated this scene with the two.

While Sapphire rejects the “picking sides” concept, it’s undeniable that the band is splitting into pro- and anti-Taki factions, which is to say some trust him and the process without hesitation (most of all Reina, but also Hazuki) while others are more like Kanade, Sapphire, and Shuu, feeling like something is off with Taki-sensei. Reina makes it quite clear she has zero tolerance for criticism of Taki-sensei, storming away when Kumiko blithely tells her she agrees with her over Shuu and being distant the rest of the day.

When Kumiko chases Reina down and they meet on a bridge during sunset, it’s clear Reina can sense that Kumiko has doubts about Taki. When asked directly, Kumiko has to admit that this is the case, and then Reina brings the hammer down, calling her “a failure of a president” and marching off.

That’s high school for you: one day you’re swapping swimsuit tops and bottoms, the next day you’re not going to school together or talking for what Kumiko believes will be a non-trivial amount of time; never what you want with a band president and its drum major, but also two friends as close as Kumiko and Reina!

It’s clear Reina feels betrayed that Kumiko is doubting Taki, but may also be upset that Kumiko didn’t do what was necessary to beat Mayu for the soli they promised to do. I held out hope that Kumiko could just win the audition for the nationals.

But with both the band and the two girls in such a bad place, will they even make the nationals, and if so will Reina still want to do the soli with Kumiko? How do they come back from Reina calling her a failure?

Mushoku Tensei II – 20 – A New Hope

Rudy and Lize run into a bit of luck when Geese is right there in the guild hall. From there, the episode wastes no time reuniting Rudy with his dad, Paul, and it’s everything I was hoping for. While things didn’t go so swell the last time they met, the current situation with Zenith and a mutual desire to make up results in a simple, poignant hug between the father and son. It’s in this hug that Rudy realizes just how much Paul loves him, and how simply being there makes all the difference in the world.

Rudy astonishes Paul not just with his stature, but the maturity, confidence, and reliability inherent in his words. Paul also does a weary Lize a solid by taking a knee and offering a simple but much appreciated apology for what went down. When Rudy learns Roxy fell into a teleport trap in the Labyrinth a month ago and is still missing, the world threatens to fade away to white, but Lize brings him back with a hand on his shoulder. They’ll proceed under the assumption that Roxy, like Zenith, is alive and in need of rescue.

That night, Rudy shares the same room with Paul and Lilia, and it gives Paul no shortage of joy simply watching his son converse with Lilia. Rudy tells them that not only did Sylphie from Buena make it, but they’re married with a kid on the way, Paul wants the details, much to Lilia’s exasperation (especially when he insinuates that she’s actually a tiger in the sack).

The next day, Rudy and Lize join Paul, Geese and the dwarven warrior Talhand to form a party to enter the Labyrinth, now armed with the tome Rudy brought from the university that serves as an extremely useful and time-saving map.

Paul is very aware that this is the first time he’s adventuring with his son in a party, and at least on the first stratum tries to show off how cool he is (something Rudy is already aware of.) There’s also some excellent banter between Lize and Paul that shows how due to their long history they’re essentially family.

The party makes its way through the first and second strata and prepare to teleport to the third, but Rudy hears a drop of water fall from a stalactite and senses … something behind a nearby rock wall. Sure enough, Roxy is somewhere beyond that wall, fighting off massive hordes of monsters but about to run completely out of mana.

When her last earth barrier is breached and she loses her staff, all she can do is back against the wall and recoil in her imminent and terrible demise. It goes without saying that the tremendous talent of Kohara Konomi is on full display here, both when she’s confidently zapping off spells to when her voice starts to break and panic sets in.

While I truly wish we didn’t have to see her wetting herself (which flashed me back to the Linia and Pursena incident Rudy shouldn’t be proud of) the bottom line is that when she’s at her absolute limit and calls out to be saved, Rudy saves her, with an ocean of ice at the last possible moment. It’s such an elegant and beautiful scene, devoid of music, with only Roxy’s breath, the wind, the frigid crinkling of ice, and Rudy’s footsteps forming the soundtrack.

When he appears before her and smiles and we see her face blush with relief and surprise, it’s a perfect cap to the episode, and also exactly how she described to Lize back in the first season how she wanted to meet her future husband. Zenith is still in grave danger, but Roxy is now safe. Rudy, with Lize by his side, has come in and given hope to the hopeless.

Whisper Me a Love Song – 08 – Head Pats and Honesty

After Shiho confronts Aki and shits all over the SSGirls, it’s Yori who ends up getting Aki to consider whether Shiho is actually being honest with her when she says she never liked playing in their band and was only presenting to enjoy herself. If anything, Aki should trust her own instincts at the time that were telling her Shiho was having a blast with them, and with her.

Since Aki took it as a given that Shiho quit because she was genuinely sick of SSGirls and not some other concealed reason, she’d never given the possibility Yori brings up any thought. Now Aki is pretty confident Shiho hasn’t been totally honest with her. If it takes getting more votes at the festival (both bands got a slot), proving SSGirls is the better band, for Shiho to finally be honest with Aki about why she quit, then so be it!

I like how Yori is the one who spurs Aki to stop taking Shiho’s airs at face value; it speaks to what a supportive and caring soul she is. The only one who can surpass her in this department is Himari, who congratulates her GF by getting on her tiptoes to pat her head for once.

When Yori tells Himari about the showdown they’re in with Loreley, she learns that Himari already knows Shiho (through Momoka), and while she’s obviously rooting for Yori in the showdown, she’s also going to be rooting for Loreley. But far from jealous, this is what Yori loves about Himari.

In this second part of Whisper where she and Yori are a couple, Himari isn’t content to tolerate unnecessary drama from her friends, and takes the initiative in paving a path forward for peace between all parties. After all, she loves Yori, Aki, and Shiho, wants them to get along, and more importantly believes they can.

After a shopping trip with Miki, Himari waits for her at a café where Shiho happens to work part-time, against school rules. Shiho takes her break with Himari, and Himari realizes that Shiho isn’t someone who talks about herself a lot. Shiho thinks nobody cares so why should she, but Himari does care. And she becomes the first to really get Shiho to open up about herself; no showdown necessary.

If my theory holds, Shiho left SSGirls not because they sucked, but because she couldn’t bear to be in a band with Aki, with whom she harbored unrequited feelings. But this wasn’t the first time she lost a bestie. That came when she was younger and a violin prodigy aiming for the pros.

Shiho has long believed if she wasn’t the absolute best at what she did, then there was no point in doing it. She became best friends with Kyou, only to dump her when Kyou beat her at violin. This despite it being clear Kyou had no desire to end their friendship.

Watching Shiho befriend and then walk away from Kyou is some truly heartbreaking stuff, as is the montage of Shiho practicing so hard she breaks her violin. While we don’t see her play till hands bleed, it’s clear that the obsessive practice takes a toll on her health, both physical and mental.

Worse still, no matter how hard she practiced, Shiho couldn’t catch up with Kyou’s talent, so one day she set the violin down and never picked it back up. Instead, she remembered Kyou saying she’d always wanted to play the electric guitar, but due in part to parental pressure she couldn’t. When the guitars at the music store catch Shiho’s tearful gaze, she suddenly decides  she’ll become the best guitarist, fulfilling a dream Kyou couldn’t.

Whisper doesn’t have two-dimensional baddies. Everyone has a story and everyone is redeemable. This only marks the midpoint of Shiho’s tale to Himari, but I’m already invested in her despite hating her guts just last week. Newbie seiyuu Nemoto Yuuna delivers an excellent performance, and we get the full Loreley song (featuring Shiho’s singing voice, Mizukami Sui) during the credits.