To Heart 2: Episode 3

Third episode!

Iincho!

[Game->toheart2-manaka-komaki] – Manaka events
Maybe I should take those animation quirks as a fact of life already. Actually, I didn’t notice them until when I replayed for screencaps. In any case, this episode cleared out a bit of confusion I had when I played Manaka’s scenario in the game. I would also like to thank solgae for the many corrective comments in my [To Heart 2->] project. Please do read solgae’s comments on each character for the corrections.

She’s the ever-lovable Iincho. With the anime focusing more on her rather than the main guy, we see a little more sense of responsibility in Manaka. She’s actually quite reliable, as opposed to what I thought of her in the game, being a slump. Maybe her main problem is that she doesn’t know where to place herself. She accepts to do a library job voluntarily, even though she already has a lot to do with class rep work. When she saw Takaaki and the gang doing a flower viewing picnic, she says she’s quite envious. Yuma pointed it out directly to her, saying that she should learn how to say no, and be in a place that she could be happy in.

A difference from the game is that here Manaka is unanimously voted to be the class rep, rather than being forced into it due to the absence of the real class rep. Aside from class rep work, she still has the library work to attend to, so Takaaki and Yuji offered to help. After helping a bit though, Yuji exits saying her (evil) sister has errands for him. Takaaki and Manaka do the library stuff together, which included putting bar codes and organizing the books. Manaka admits that she is actually not an official member of the group that tends to the library. She’s more like a volunteer, because she likes books I guess.

Manaka gets her key and opens her secret place, that little office where she can drink a cup of tea. She’s quite happy that she now has someone to join in. Here they sip tea and chat a little girlie talk (hehe). We realize that actually Takaaki is not quite good with girls (whaat?), and in the same way, Manaka is not quite good with boys. They talk about their troubles with the opposite sex.

Actually I didn’t mention it before, but Takaaki has an attitude set up such that he usually doesn’t involve himself with too many girls (with the 9 girls he associate with in To Heart 2, that seems unbelievable). He admits to Manaka that maybe it’s the fault of being too close with two girls (Konomi and Tamaki) which could represent a young and elder sister to him. As a result, he doesn’t interact too much with girls at school. Manaka’s problem is that she had a trauma in the past with boys who skip their task of cleaning the classroom. I think she willingly accepts to clean the classroom when being forced into it by those boys. Takaaki advised that she should learn to take a stand, and learn how to say no (that sounded similar).

Since she is just a volunteer for the library, the main library officer starts to bug her into quitting her stint. He says that she should stop helping out and give up that key to the room. Manaka meets up and talks with Yuma again. I’m so glad that Yuma is very concerned about Manaka, we don’t see that in the game at all. It also seems that Yuma already knows about his arch-enemy Takaaki already. Takaaki comes to know about Manaka’s problem, as well as her being envious of the gang when they had that picnic earlier. Takaaki gives advice to her (in much the same way as Yuma again). She would surely find where she can be happy.

So in a library staff meeting, the main officer now forces her to quit. But this time she takes a stand and says that she will continue to do her library work. The guy still refuses, but then the rest of the staff applauded Manaka. She’s quite popular as expected! I guess she finally found a place where she can be happy in. She loves books after all. And so she still has her key to the secret place. Takaaki and Manaka can do their little tea party again.

Very good episode. Manaka is totally cute! The anime doesn’t seem to focus itself on the ‘romance’ part though. Kinda a let-down, especially when you have events like Manaka spilling her tea into her foot. Takaaki wets a towel and cleans her foot. This was supposed to be a doki-doki moment, but in the anime it just zips through like nothing happened. On the upside though, the value of ‘friendship’ is really prevalent so far in the series. Yes, [To Heart->] style. To Heart style is good.

Oh, Ruuko and Karin also appeared. No lines yet though. It also is indicated that Takaaki has already joined Karin’s mystery club.

[Yuma->toheart2-yuma-tonami] gets her spotlight for next week.