First of all, I was having the usual chocolate infusion while watching episode 7.
Am I the only one who thinks Sugimoto dresses like a man? You know because that's... that's... so hot....
It was great from start to finish. We start with that little scene of Kyouko at the start, when she recalss about Sugimoto breaking into tears when she was congratulated. I'd think she has a deeper understanding of Sugimoto at that point, but more than that seems to tell me that because she finally does understand how Sugimoto feels, maybe now she knows how to let go.
Which is arguably the hardest part of any relationship's end.
The scene where Fumi checks her cell for text messages when the lady in the other table says she gets tons from a secret somebody was really funny and a bit touching. Goes to show how enamored she is with Sugimoto, despite that fact that she is still insecure about Sugimoto's past relationships.
I personally prefer Akira with her hair down. Don't take it the wrong way of course. She's cute with her hair tied, but she's actually very pretty if she just lets her hair down, if the scenes of her in her bedroom are any indication.
And this all brings me to the biggest question of all... would you exactly bring the person you're dating into your house the moment you decide to tell your family that you're gay? Call me a horrible person if you will but I sort of... ok fuck it I laughed like an idiot when she said they were dating.
But it's really not as if Sugimoto's family acting like a bunch of insensitive twats. They have a point: Sugimoto's being a reckless and emotionally-driven hothead who isn't thinking things through. The mere fact that she had to take Fumi with her to tell them means she's either not thinking it through, or she being a manipulative bitch. I assume she's the former. The mere fact that she began to show her questioning side to Fumi in her room before her sister pulled Fumi out to play mahjong shows me that Fumi's aloof and distant treatment of her relationships (even with Fumi I suppose) is simply her way of avoiding the issue.
And when she does try to face the issue, she clearly doesn't think it through, her feelings aren't as rock solid as she claims it is, and has to drag Fumi into everything just to find the method of saying it her family.
What does this tell me about Sugimoto?
She clearly isn't as she appears to be. She's emotionally immature, horribly unsure of how she really feels about people and herself and clings to people mostly as an emotional crutch.
In other words, she's Catherine in Wuthering Heights.
Thank god for this show. This season gave me Umineko, Spice and Wolf S2, Taishou Yakyuu Musume and of course Aoi Hana. In my experience it's ridiculously rare to find 4 shows in a single season that are truly fantastic. So much so that they're already in my definitive top series for 2009 even if they aren't done yet.