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Just wow. So much to cover and no way to really connect it all. Let's see what we can do.
If you're going to be wrong be spectacularly wrong, and boy was I ever wrong. I knew that there was a strong possibility that we were going to get the Miu ending, especially after episode 9 but I thought the tropes and conventions would win out in the end. I did not at all expect to be this wrong, this fast. Congrats to Miu and as everybody has said already, this was possible to see coming from the start if you were looking for it.
Unfortunately for my ability to forecast things, my mindset was always trust the tropes and look for flags. As our friend Keima from TWGOK has taught us, it doesn't really matter if they're good or bad flags, you just want to get noticed. So to me, when Airi was putting up flags left and right in the first few episodes it didn't matter that they weren't necessarily romantic flags and that Shingo had eyes for Miu. Flags are flags, right? That clearly wasn't the case here.
Even the situation with the two cats, which I took as a strong flag against Miu, turned in her favor in this episode. It's as if they knew what I was thinking and said "NOPE, that's actually a mark in Miu's column as well." That was the dagger that ended all hope of an Airi ending.
I feel like it's helpful to use a sports analogy to describe the thought process that went on here. To me, Airi was like the highly ranked team that comes into a big football (American Football for all the Soccer fans out there) game heavily favored. She had all the tropes and conventions and flags pointing to her. But the underdog Miu hung around for the entire first half and when you felt like the favored team should be winning by a lot, instead at halftime Airi had a small lead if she even had one at all. Then Miu comes out for the third quarter firing on all cylinders and everybody says "Here comes the upset!" But I continued to believe that all Airi needed to do was get momentum back and her superior "talent" would win out. Instead Airi never regained the momentum and Miu went on to a convincing upset victory. So that's why, despite seeing all the flags in Miu's favor, I thought that Airi would come back. The indicators in her favor were just so much stronger that I couldn't believe she'd lose until it was all over.
Which brings me to my next point. This genuinely hurts. Usually two people falling in love and coming together like this is supposed to be a happy event. Instead I find myself with an empty, defeated feeling inside. Part of it may be from being wrong about where things were going, and I do hate being wrong, but I've been wrong about such things in the past and it never hurt like this. This show has done an exquisite job, at least from my point of view, of putting us in Sana's shoes to the point where when I saw Shingo embrace Miu it felt like the person I loved was falling for somebody else. The following scene sealed things and for the first time I cried over a love triangle.
And speaking of crying, way to kill the mood with the ED there. Fans of CLANNAD will recognize the feeling I had after this episode with the upbeat ED following a scene of utter despair. It was quite jarring.
I did like seeing Airi as the voice of reason for Sana in this episode. I always liked her character and even if Shingo didn't see it I'm glad she still had a role to play. Sana was clearly not acting rationally (and who does when love is involved, really) and it was touching to me that Airi was there looking out for her friend even if her friend didn't want her help. I wasn't sure how to interpret Sana's statement that she doesn't see Miu as her rival in love. The way I saw it was that Sana knew that Shingo might choose Miu over her but she couldn't see Miu as a rival because Miu was just so much better than her. "I can't be Miu's rival. I barely deserve to compete with her." (It's possible that she meant that she didn't think Miu had any chance with Shingo but could she really be that dense?) That feeling of being in competition with somebody you just can't compete with is so demoralizing it makes your heart cry out for her.
Bravo to the creators of the game and to Manglobe for putting together something where I can feel this strongly about the characters. I really enjoyed the ride to this point and I look forward to the (probably not as thrilling as this episode) conclusion.
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