White Album

[Ryllharu]

This series is easily one of the most promising series this season. A lot happened in this episode, and most of it was very subtle looks and motions. It really helps that Aquaplus is animating this with Seven Arcs. You can see a lot of the very fluid motions and subtle expressions they were so good at animating in Utawawerumono here as well, and then it's shined up a bit by Seven Arcs skills brought in from Nanoha A's.

The first episode was a little weaker because they had to bring us into the premise of the story, but they spent no wasted time here.

Touya has already gotten himself quite the number of admirers. Rina hits on him after their first meeting (or so it appears) perhaps aided by all the things Yuki tells her about, Haruka (the bike girl) seems intent on stealing him away, and Misaki (the other girl) seems interested in him as well.

I thought that Yuki was going to get ordered to break up with Touya in order to go forward with her career, but perhaps that is a bit cliche so soon. I much preferred the thought we were left with that when she goes to call Touya, she's going to get a busy signal, possibly more than one next episode. From the first episode, we learned that she usually talks to him for hours, and there really wouldn't be anyone else who would call him.

Rina on the other hand, may be attempting to steal him away...which she is certainly confident enough, and capable of being nasty enough to do so, but it's hard to see her that way from her other actions around Yuki. Rina seems generally kind hearted, so I wonder if what she is actually calling him for is to tell Touya what Yuki clearly didn't want to do herself while they were at the cafe.

That said, I already dislike Haruka (the bike girl). She knows the most about Yuki and Touya's relationship it seems, but she's spending a lot of effort to get him alone with her, thank her (through her deception about being his "goddess of the day") and otherwise talk to her. There's no brother/sister relationship coming from her, though perhaps Touya sees her that way. He was plainly uncomfortable with her taking "Yuki's spot" sitting back-to-back thanks to a little insight from his thoughts.

Lastly, Misaki is pretty much the same, but for some reason she doesn't rub me the wrong way that Haruka does. We saw it from the first episode too. She attempts to ingratiate herself to Touya, like with the poetry book, but Touya is working against her on this, which makes their relationship more interesting. He spends considerable effort giving Akira chances to get with her since they are friends, but Misaki shows zero interest in Akira. The phone conversation between Touya and Misaki was very telling. She openly admits she'd rather talk to Touya on the phone than rest, pushes herself to maintain the conversation as long as possible, and her subtle expressions (mostly through her hands and mouth) revealed a lot about her true aims.

I think Akira knows a bit about it as well. The "shut up" going out of his head showed his displeasure at Touya talking so much about Misaki. He may already know she would rather be with Touya.



The OP is growing on me as well. Can't wait for the next episode.