Wow, it’s like the writers who were on their games for other arcs weren’t told to come up with something in ten minutes for the Ai arc this time around. I get the feeling that this is how her arc should have played out from the beginning, without the writers being under the influence of…something. As I’ve said before, two episodes isn’t much time to do things. But the writers this time around have kept things focused on their central theme, in this case, separation and loneliness due to school activities, instead of throwing darts at a wall of the original VN’s content and yelling “ANIMATE THAT NEXT!” While Ai is still my least favorite Amagami girl, at least now it’s because of my preferences in characters and not (mostly) because her first arc was a wreck. Keep it up, AIC, Amagami SS+ is going a lot to fix mistakes made in the first adaptation.
That look on Hibiki’s face, that is the look of a proud mentor.
I’m sure that Miya had a Takarazuka-style Romeo and Juliet planned for some time, provided she could convince Sae to join.
Meanwhile, Ai is not having such a fun time of things with Junichi away on the anniversary of their first date.
Ai is still preoccupied thinking about Junichi when Miya tries to recruit her into her ‘sleepover’ (time: 8pm until forever and ever), and almost goes along with her and Sae until she realizes that she still has to pick up a gift for her little brother. It seems the gods took pity on her for her terrible first arc, and by coincidence Junichi ends up in the same shopping area after escaping the testing center retreat. He rushed to finish his practice exam (after only taking 5 minutes, it seems) and booked it out of there, some hilariously stereotypical hired goons in hot pursuit. They meet up and go shopping, Junichi having already picked out a coat that he wanted to buy her for Christmas. And as they wander about, Umehara sees them in passing as he mopes around, cursing his fate for failing the Amagami Challenge. Two of the cram school’s private investigators ask him if he’s seen fugitive Junichi, and after a moment’s hesitation, he misdirects them. For Umehara did not succumb to petty jealousy of Junichi’s success, no!, he was a True Bro and helped defend his friend’s happiness. And as the gods were watching when they took pity on Ai and Junichi, they were also watching when Umehara performed such a noble deed. He would be duly rewarded, in time.
Yes, just a sleepover. Totally not an attempt to start a yuri harem. You can trust the Nishishi.
Moments like this one were good for driving home the point, since we’re seeing things more from Ai’s perspective this time around.
Have to say, Sae looks a lot better with her hair down.
Junichi must have some money saved up, I imagine a coat like that, in a store like that in Japan, would cost quite a bit.
*Salute*
Yes, nothing unusual going on at the Tachibana residence.
The couple’s wandering seems to take them to their town’s little version of Kabukicho, and things get awkward for a moment in the light of the love hotel signs. It was getting a little less awkward since Ai can be a bit forward, she almost seemed like she was about to suggest they go to one, but then Takahashi-sensei walked out the door of the spa they were standing in front of, prompting them to run. I’m always happy for any scene with Takahashi Maya~ in it, so this was kind of the highlight of the episode for me, heh. Umehara then comes by, directed by the Fates to his reward, and calls out to the beautiful woman with her back turned to him. He hails her as “oujosan”, which grabs Maya’s attention quickly, and turns around while he’s asking if she’s like to go have tea…and then they recognize each other. I like to pretend that after that moment of awkwardness, they actually do go have tea and commiserate about being single on Christmas after the scene cuts away. And then, by the time Umehara graduates, things develop between them into a wonderful ship. The shipping portion of my brain was in overdrive. Elsewhere, you know, at the main part of the plot, Junichi and Ai run until they come to the park overlooking the city and share a moment together. Ai is worried about how much time they’ll have, and what will happen when Junichi goes to university, but he reassures her (and probably himself, if he had time to think with all the cram school) that things won’t change. As the conveniently-timed snow falls, they share a kiss and Junichi asks Ai to hold on to a key for the apartment he’ll rent once he goes to university. As a final denouement, things fast forward to the summer, with the two of them watching fireworks from the window of Junichi’s apartment.
ROMANTIC!
Great minds think alike, and enjoy the occasional spa.
I ship it.
Ah, the naivety of high school relationships.
Ai got her GOOD END last adaptation, but this time she actually gets a GOOD ARC.
And thus concludes the Ai arc, once ruined by terrible writing, now decently produced.
Final Thoughts: – While this arc hasn’t convinced me to like Ai much, I’m glad that it was as well made as the others. Every character has her fans, and it must have really sucked to have been an Ai fan during the first Amagami adaptation.
- Miya’s slumber party antics were…um…yeah.
- Next up is the Kaoru arc, which was a surprise to me (good catch, Crusader, I don’t usually watch the PVs) since they’re deviating from the reverse order they’ve been using. But I’m excited to see her arc, since it was only so-so the first time around and she’s a character, like Rihoko, that I felt deserved more than she got last time.
Crusader’s Come On Man…
I guess that we can now declare that the Ai arc has been redeemed though it wasn’t because Junichi did much. I just want to take this opportunity to congratulate Miy Miya for getting a night of just her and Sae that went on forever and ever. Granted I was a bit disappointed that Miya Miya decided to play along with Junichi’s lame prank. I really wished that they would go for more than redemption and make it EPIC. It would have been most EPIC if Miya Miya had feigned ignorance and called the cops and told them that Ai-chan had been abducted. Junichi has his whole life to make it up to Ai-chan and certainly Miya Miya deserved a night of Sae and Ai, but alas Miya Miya is not that vindictive. Besides what is a little jail time to Junichi anyway Ai gets to see him for a bit and not feel alone or that he did not care; so no loss there on the Ai front. Unlike my compatriot I am not too thrilled with the idea that Umehara and Takahashi-sensei had a bit of miscommunication while I wish Takahashi lifelong happiness and BEST END I am suspicious of Umehara’s ability to provide that for her. He was going after every unaccompanied girl and I am wondering just how he ended up heading to the local Mizu shobai district. Maybe something happened maybe it didn’t, I am all for shipping I am just more discriminating and won’t ship any contraband. Besides if Umehara definitively wins the Takahashi-sensei sweepstakes I am sure there is a legion of fanboys out there who would be none too happy with that. I would prefer that Takahashi-sensei find happiness with Rihoko, and yeah I’d ship that overnight.
Next week is Kaoru and I cannot be more thrilled since at least AIC is tacitly admitting that back to back kouhai arcs amounted to back to back garbage time in the first season. I trust that they will redeem Sae’s arc but I approve of putting Kaoru next since she got short changed last season though not nearly as bad a Rihoko. Also Miya Miya had by far one of the best Romeo roles of all time. Still Umehara you couldn’t remember that timing and location are everything and tried to pick up Takashi-sensei at the red light district? Come on man…
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As I alluded to in the shipping post, I thought this got as close as possible to Ai’s true character. Most of that was because, for the first time, AIC gave her the opportunity to be herself. In the first arc, I thought that they overplayed her brother and swimming issues, so there was that holding her back. And for most of this arc she was depressed. But during their date, I was reminded of why I like this couple so much. They fit together so naturally and effortlessly. They have very good chemistry and I thought this episode showed some of that.
However, I still have some problems. I thought they played up Ai’s depression a bit too much. She’s supposed to be stronger than that. I know that the anime wants to say it’s a front, but Ai has always been more mature than half the cast, so I don’t really buy that. Of course, the biggest reason is that AIC flat out refuses to display her teasing/flirty side, which is a major hook for her character. Ai is way up there in terms of popularity(I always see her in the top 3) so it baffles me that they won’t feature one of her most attractive personality traits. Anyway, I’ll take what I can get. It’s more than I expected from them, at any rate. Also, major props to Umehara. He came through big.
Kaoru should be good. She’s in my 2/3 spot in my character rankings, so I’m looking forward to it. I’ll take it anyday of the week over Sae. Her arc bombed and I don’t care for shy girls. Bad combo lol. I just hope that damn narrator stays away.
The flirty side of Ai really shouldn’t have been a problem for AIC, I mean damn, they had that hot spring scene at the end of her first arc. It’s not like flirting or teasing would boot them from the timeslot or something. On the depression thing, two episodes isn’t much time, the writers likely had to choose just one aspect of her story to focus on to avoid trying to pack too much into it at once. They probably could have centered on two elements if the writing team was up for it and they got the pacing right, but that could have been a big IF.
I never thought that EO of all people would actually like any part of the Ai arc, so to see it being called redeemed is a bit of a surprise. Ai just seemed all over the place as far as mood, you either get cheerful or depressed. This episode was much the same.
It still wasn’t my favorite by a long shot, but I felt that this afterstory finally gave it a decent shot at adaptation, as opposed to what happened in the first season. Still the least interesting to me, still probably less than the original source material (I haven’t played the game), but at least it was decently put together and coherent.
Sorry EO, the only girls that might hook with Umehara are Keiko and Kanae. Why?
The former has some shiptease hinting while the latter is confirmed in one of ‘Tech Gian” bonus routes.
There did seem to be some implying of that during the original Rihoko arc. I’d be ok with that, but I can’t help but want to see a Maya end. Though of the two, I’d have expected Keiko more than Kanae. But that works as a ship too.
Just a question : How do you know so much about the VN ? A english patch is around ? :hope:
I’m not sure if there is one, if it exists I’m not aware of it. Though I’m not really the person to ask about VN’s, I’ve only played some of Katawa Shoujo and Tsukihime before, without finishing them (yet.) I’ve gotten a lot of info on the Ai arc from commenters back when I blogged Amagami SS since they were trying to stick up for Ai and say that it was the adaptation’s fault. Pretty easy to believe too, since that arc was such a wreck the first time around. I’ve also watched a scene or two on Youtube, the ending to the Rihoko arc since I wanted to see what it was supposed to be after getting shortchanged in the first season. They clips are up there, but not translated. But even with getting a bit rusty since undergrad, I still retained enough language ability to watch the clips and get most of it.
Thanks a lot for your answer, EO !
And for your information : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amagami
There is no translation. Only very recently has the game been cracked in such a way as to edit it for translation – and it’s still very hard to extract the original text for some reason. There was actually a thread on this on /a/ yesterday, in fact.
Or rather, there is no patch. I’m sure there are translations running around, but not in-game.
If there’s one arc that lowered in quality from the game to the anime, it has to be the Ai arc. While I found Ai’s antics to be extremely annoying come the second season with her laughing and her hopelessness of falling more and more love with Junichi, they did a fairly decent job finishing off the arc.
I was slightly disappointed that Tsukasa wasn’t the headmaster of the prep school but at least I got my own imagination with Takahashi-sensei leaving the love hotel (if you know what I mean).
I predict that the Kaoru arc will be the best simply because 1) Kaoru and Junichi go so well together as depicted in the first season and 2) the arc was fairly decent compared to the other arcs in the first season.
Then again, I was expecting a bigger Ayatsuji arc for the second season….
Well, Takahashi-sensei was leaving a spa (it was on the sign in English, but only briefly as the camera panned down to her), but I like to think that her and Umehara went to one later. Giggity giggity.
I’m looking forward to Kaoru’s arc. She didn’t have a bad first arc, but I felt that it could have been a lot more than it was, for the reason you mentioned. They’re very natural together.
Other than the Umehara/Teacher shipping stuff, I agree completely with EO.
I do find it interesting that Umehara is never seen trying to hit on Miya at all. We know the Tachibana family is A-OK with their siblings dating their friends, so I don’t think it’s just out of brospect. And Kaoru too, for that matter. Almost surely he tried at some unshown point, and was turned down. Why?
I think we know the answer to that one.
Now Rihoko/Teacher? I like it a lot, but I have never seen a more crack pairing in my life.
Umehara seems to be more for Sae or Keiko, though Kanae could be another possibility (and is apparently in some sort of sidestory with him.)