meimichi

And now, my week-late post for Hanadan's second episode.

SO MUCH PAIN. WHO KNEW MY SWEET, ULTIMATELY CHEESETASTIC DRAMA WOULD DECIDE TO STOMP ON MY HEART FOR ITS SEQUEL. Which is to say, I'm loving it. This season is far superior to the first. It has layers now. The first season was lovable in its sweetness and straightforward attitude, but the second season is making the characters infinitely more real. Honestly, there's been so few cheesy comedy scenes these first episodes. It's been all about the heartbreak.

My favorite scene in S1 is the final one between Tsukasa and Tsukushi beside the plane. Then the premiere came, and I thought the baseball diamond scene topped that. Then came this week, and I thought the keitai conversation topped that. So even if they don't keep outdoing themselves, they're in awfully good shape already.

The keitai conversation...god. I felt like my heart was twisting inside. There was when I realized how totally fantastic this season is. S1 had Tsukasa being almost too straightforward for his own good with his feelings, but still he always got misunderstood. In exchange, Tsukushi has trouble communicating at all, and she couldn't tell Tsukasa her feelings until the very last.

Now, S2 is bringing us a Tsukasa who's forced to hide his feelings, but he's no good at hiding, so he mostly just stays painfully quiet. He can't talk to Tsukushi, even looking at her is too much of a challenge. Every time he lets himself look at her, he looks so desperate to pour out all of his feelings, and so every time he has to stop himself and look away. The only consolation I'm getting these days is the opening credits bow, where it's like a confirmation that Tsukasa only wants to look at Tsukushi every moment he possibly can.

Meanwhile, Tsukushi finds herself forced to put up a fight to keep him, and now she has to overcome her difficulties in being honest with her own feelings. She was never good at that before, and all through the premiere we see her burying her heartbreak with a put-on smile. It's not all bad, because she's found her dream while Tsukasa's gone. But she isn't honest with anyone where her feelings are concerned, until finally Tsubaki was there to watch her break down. Even then, she still kept hiding her feelings...she tried to deal with him by punching him like she had at the very beginning, but he wouldn't play along. Tsukasa didn't chase after her on the stairs in the second episode as he surely would have once before. Shigeru is also swiftly filling the Tsukushi-shaped void in Tsukasa's life to an extent, and without the accompanying complications Tsukushi brings. And then she wasn't honest with Shigeru, either!

It wasn't until the end when she finally took the courage to dial that number and call him up that I was left reeling. I kept waiting for them to cut away to Tsukasa on the other end of the line, but they wouldn't. They just left the camera on her as she hesitated just to speak to him, and that was just pure brilliance because you could just feel all of her emotions alongside her. You knew Tsukasa was going through some serious hurt on his side: you could hear it in his voice, but most of all in the gaping silences and pauses between their halting words. She started out barely able to say anything, and he could only give her one-word answers. And then you just kept seeing a million emotions flying across Tsukushi's face: relief at speaking to him, fear of telling him how she was feeling, love for him that hadn't faded at all, and the pain of how much things had changed between them.

And as she was looking more and more desperate, and Tsukasa was still silent at the other end, and I was just, "God, Tsukasa, say something." And then finally came that, "どうした?" and she started crying with relief that he would ask, and I was crying with relief that he would ask.　And then... "泣いてんのか。" AHHHHH. And then she started really, really crying, and said she wasn't...and that she was trying to smile even through her tears just made me so sad, like even over the phone she was trying to keep that up.

And when she said she'd been afraid that she would never hear his voice over that keitai again...I totally burst into sobs when she sort of choked out, "ずっと...!" like that. And the more she talked, the more gorgeous it was that she was finally able to say these things to him. But at the same time, it was also terrible, because trying to imagine the state of mind Tsukasa was in, that he wasn't saying anything, was impossible. Then finally, they cut to Tsukasa, and he was just listening to her cry on the other end, still looking like he wanted to tell her everything and like he was hating himself for not saying anything as she was hurting.

Then it was just the perfect close when she pulled his own trick back on him from S1 by demanding a date at Ebisu all over again. There are not words for how much I love this: she couldn't reach him by playing by her old rules and trying to punch him, so then she tried his old methods instead. So fantastic.

Though it's not like I didn't see the ending coming a mile away.

IN CONCLUSION: STOP BREAKING MY HEART J-DRAMA

P.S. where the HELL was Tsubaki this week?!! Did she, like, not get an invitation to the birthday party and somehow pass Tsukasa in the air in an attempt to chase him back to New York?! Because right now it seems like she's the person with the best shot of fixing this mess. It's looking like Tsukasa needs a hand to hold to get through whatever trauma he's been through, and I'm not sure it's gonna be Tsukushi since he seems dead set against blocking her out. Tsubaki delivering a swift kick to the head would be much appreciated at this point.

Plus it seems like we're going to have to sit through Rui/Tsukushi: Round Two before getting to the proper raburabu. Which I'm not particularly warming to, as I like them best as friends in the first place. But all over again, this episode fell back to silly doki-doki moments to base the relationship on...if their friendship just grew more intense, then I could buy it, as Tsukushi's getting put through the wringer by Tsukasa at the moment. But cheap, "Oh noes, our faces are so cloooose!" moments make me cringe at the thought of going there again, since there's an obvious lack of depth present in that relationship, especially in comparison to the keitai conversation scene. Sighhhh.