Summary:
With a majority vote, Tomoyo and the student council decide to let Koumura be the adviser for both the choir club and the drama club. Nagisa is grateful for everyone’s help in officially establishing the drama club, though Tomoya reminds them that they can’t relax because they want to be a part of the upcoming school festival. In the meantime, he has some troubles of his own in the form of his teacher wanting to visit his home to talk with his father about his future plans. His teacher tells Tomoya to wait in the faculty room while he gets ready, but Tomoya instead tries to run away. Nagisa goes after him, and after she hears an announcement over the PA system calling for Tomoya, she drags him back to the faculty room. His teacher is amused at the fact that a girl can control Tomoya and invites Nagisa to come with them, but she can’t go because she has stuff to do with Koumura. When they arrive at the Okazaki home, Tomoya’s father isn’t around, and the teacher decides to wait, much to Tomoya’s dismay. Tomoya uses the opportunity to run off under the pretense that he’s going to search for his father, but he doesn’t get very far before running into Nagisa again. It seems that Koumura couldn’t meet with her, so she was bringing Tomoya his bag, and she makes him walk back to his house with her.
As he turns the corner near his house, Tomoya realizes that his father has returned and is now talking with his teacher. Tomoya’s father is in the process of saying that Tomoya’s future plans are for Tomoya to decide and that this isn’t something he should butt in on. Tomoya interprets this as his father not seeing him as a son, and he tells Nagisa that his father has acted this way ever since the argument that ended up with Tomoya hurting his shoulder. The two of them live under the same roof, but Tomoya feels that they haven’t been family for a long time. As a result of this, Nagisa offers to let Tomoya stay at her house because she thinks that some distance between him and his father will make them realize how lonely it is without each other. Tomoya agrees to the idea, and as he packs his bags, he thinks that he probably won’t ever return home again. He tries to wake his sleeping father to tell him that he’s leaving, and though his father doesn’t immediately get up, he manages to do so by the time Tomoya is ready to step out of the door. When Tomoya claims that he’s going to stay with a friend and doesn’t know when he’ll be back, his father says that he’ll be lonely without Tomoya, but Tomoya leaves anyway.
At the Furukawa bakery, Nagisa’s father acts like he didn’t know that Tomoya was coming to stay with them, though he eventually admits that he did after Nagisa’s mother warmly greets Tomoya. Being treated as part of the family and living a normal life here takes some getting used to for Tomoya, especially when Nagisa makes him say
ittekimasu to both her parents when he leaves for school in the morning. Along the way to school, Nagisa admits that it’s thanks to Tomoya that she’s more confident, and she vows to work her hardest from now until the school festival. Later that day, Koumura shows everyone in the drama club all the stuff they have to coordinate in order to pull off a play, including costumes, lighting, and sound. The problem is that although Nagisa knows what kind of play she wants to do, she doesn’t yet know which one specifically. When she and Tomoya return to the bakery after school, they find a bunch of kids there for what turns out to be the cram school that Sanae teaches. Tomoya ends up asking Akio about it while he helps out with the bakery, and Akio reveals that Sanae used to be a junior high school teacher. Akio, however, is vague about why she stopped teaching.
That night, Nagisa pays a visit to Tomoya’s room, and the two talk about how it feels strange to each of them that he’s staying here. For Tomoya, it centers around how he never got to know his mother and has a strained relationship with his father, so he’s not used to seeing a family that gets along so well. Nagisa concedes that her parents really do cherish her, but she also notes that she thinks that there’s something she hasn’t apologized to them for. Though she doesn’t know what it was, she thinks that she did something terrible to her parents, and she wants to know what they’re not telling her so that she can apologize to them for it. In any case, Tomoya then decides to go pay a visit to Sunohara, and his friend is shocked to find out that Tomoya is now living with Nagisa. Sunohara takes it as a sign that Nagisa’s parents approve of Tomoya, and he can’t believe that Tomoya still insists that he doesn’t have that kind of relationship with Nagisa. Meanwhile, in the other world, the robot has gathered more junk so that he can create another doll. The girl who’s with him thinks that he wants a friend and apologizes because she realizes that he’s lonely by himself. The robot explains that the actual reason is that he thinks that if he can increase the number of existences like his, then things would be more fun. Picking up one of the pieces, the girl suggests that they try even if it might turn out to be useless.
Preview:
The first thing I noticed about this episode is that there was a ton more distance shots than usual. The overall animation quality wasn’t horrible or anything, but it’s not like KyoAni to need to cut back on animation budget. I just hope it’s not an indicator of things to come. As for the story, if there were still any doubts, this episode confirmed that we’re now past Kyou/Ryou and Tomoyo since none of them played any significant role here. It looks like the episodes from now on will focus solely on Tomoya and Nagisa, especially now that Tomoya has moved in with her family.
Speaking of which, the latest TV schedule listings have revealed that there are only three more regular episodes left before an extra summer vacation chapter as the finale. That sheds a little more light onto the brevity of Kyou/Ryou and Tomoyo’s stories, and it means that they’re probably only going to have time to cover the important plot stuff in the remaining episodes like Tomoya’s relationship with his father and Nagisa’s past, the latter of which is the topic of next week. However, the main thing I’m still curious about is how the robot stuff ties in to the normal story…