To Heart 2: Episode 7

Seventh episode!

Wow. This predominantly original story managed to fit in all known characters so far! Yes! Konomi, Tamaki, Manaka, Yuma, Karin and Ruuko… all here! Even Michiru and Chie. Something for everyone. Not only that, but the animation in this episode is one of the best in the series so far.

Karin and Takaaki talks about some changes in their supposed-to-be star gazing plans for this weekend. Takaaki looks troubled, but anyway he invites Konomi, Tamaki and Yuji for it. Yuji wonders why hold an event like star gazing for the Mystery Club. Tamaki says too that Takaaki may be hiding something, but because Konomi wants to cheer him on, she gets everyone to agree in joining. Konomi also called and invited her middle school friends too.

But it rained that night. Konomi looks worried, so she made up a teru teru bouzu in the hopes of good weather. The next bright and shiny morning, Konomi and Takaaki walk to school when suddenly Yuma shows up and hits Takaaki with her bike again! The usual finger-pointing antics ensue. Yuma tries to annoy Takaaki by offering to join the star gazing, but Takaaki looks pleased, a reverse of what she expected. At school, Konomi tries to reach Takaaki, but gets trapped in the chaos of the canteen at lunch time. She sees him talk to Manaka and Karin though, and figures that he is quite busy with the star gazing event. Konomi wants to do her best for Takaaki as well. As Konomi goes home, she gets to see nyaa (Ruuko’s adopted cat), and eventually saw Ruuko herself from a distance. Konomi doesn’t know Ruuko yet, but then she sees Karin talk to Ruuko.

And so Sunday came and they start gathering up. At first they thought there were few people, but then Yochi and Charu brought some more friends along, and Manaka even had an huge group of girls with her! For Yuji the girl-lover, it’s heaven, but evil Tamaki is there for counterattack.

The event starts, but now Karin is quite nervous, and finally blurted out the truth. This is not star gazing, but this is UFO calling! Everyone is surprised, because they had been tricked. Takaaki tries to apologize and blames himself from hiding the truth. He thought that if he did not sugarcoat the invitation, no one would come. But then Karin herself apologizes, because she was the one with that idea. With her Mystery Club being unpopular, there was little chance for her plans to succeed. The crowd starts to become uninterested and wants to go somewhere else.

Konomi, however, saves the night from being ruined. She asks Karin on how to call UFOs. This conversation starts to spread over, actually making everyone quite interested in it! And so they formed a circle and started shouting chants! What’s more, Ruuko even appeared. And so their chanting continues until… shooting stars start falling from the sky! Karin’s UFO detector starts a reaction, but then Manaka checked her notebook, and said that it may be a meteor shower! And so even though it wasn’t a UFO, what they have witnessed is a wonderful barrage of shooting stars. A sight to see.

This episode puts a closure to almost all of the cross-event happenings so far. Remember that Takaaki invited Manaka to the star gazing way, way back in episode 3. Please do refer to the [timeline->To Heart 2: Timeline] for a more-or-less chronological way of looking at the events. This episode puts all the characters together. This kind of interaction is something I didn’t see in the game too much, and so it’s rather nice to have all the girls together somehow.

Next episode will feature [Sango and Ruri-> To Heart 2: Sango and Ruri Himeyuri].