Glasslip – 12
Stars in her eyes
I don’t claim to be any sort of amazing at figuring out what’s going on in this show, but I think after watching it through twice, I’ve got the gist of what the point of this episode was. I know that I was a bit worried it would be the finale, but thankfully no. Of course, I don’t say that anything I interpret here is definitive, but this is what it struck me as. Certainly if you think something different, this would be a great episode for discussion.
Dream Sequence
A special moment for Touko
I know there’s been some confusion over whether this episode represented a separate dimension created by Touko, but I think it’s more akin to a dream sequence, with Touko falling into one of her “kira-kira” visions during Kakeru’s mom’s recital. That’s definitely how it ended up, and that it relied so heavily on both the fireworks which have been prevalent and the snow that was falling throughout her other vision makes me think that’s really the entirety of it. I also don’t think that it was a perfect swap between Touko and Kakeru, rather it was a construction based on what her mind had been thinking about with Kakeru’s “Sudden but Foreseeable Loneliness”
Kakeru switches to the other group
But I don’t think it’s even that simple. I do think that her worry about a place she belongs with everyone is misplaced, and I don’t think that the fact that the friends who gathered at the shrine didn’t recognize her was particularly meaningful to that end. Instead, I think that the presence of two sets of her friends (yet only one Kakeru) represents more the old way and the new way. One set of friends still meeting at the shrine for fireworks, but the other set pairing off into couples with the person they like. It’s not really malicious, and they even had reasons for not meeting: injury and illness. But it’s still an interesting choice: Choosing the person you want to be with over the presumed rest of the group. And I even like how they all made the choice so easily. It’s not “turning away from your friends” as much as moving into a different friendship. And as we’ve seen throughout the series, everyone is pretty much rooting for everyone else to get together (except early on Yuki and Sachi with Kakeru x Touko). So if Sachi and Hiro don’t show up, noone will ‘blame’ them, they’ll say ‘congratulations’.
I think that she caught your warning about stroking your pole, Hiro.
Projections
Touko finally understands it
The real key is Kakeru and Touko’s talking during the fireworks when they finally meet up. “Something happened” is right, and they didn’t meet up, so the ones that are there aren’t real. They’re a different kind of projection of Touko’s, one that might be some sort of ideal, but isn’t really possible. And the fact that the group that met up at the shrine all looked right through Touko, as if she wasn’t there or if she was just another person, is giving her that taste of the “Sudden but Foreseeable Loneliness”. I think that’s what Kakeru has meant by that phrase, where people he thought he was friends with don’t really notice him because they’re intent on something else. It’s not malicious or intentional, it’s just something that happens, but it still makes the person it happens to feel small and lonely.
Hiro and Sachi becoming closer
The music was just brilliant this episode, with the whole second half of the episode transitioning between solo piano and orchestra. It lent a continuity to the whole sequence, and helped to tie the vision Touko was having into the performance she was listening to and the thoughts and worries that she holds as she sits there holding Kakeru’s hand. How much of this was brought on by Kakeru’s reveal of his mother’s offer just before they got back to the house? She’s just fallen for him, and admitted it, and now he might go away?
This was an initially confusing episode, and there was a lot of meaning wrapped up in it (I think). And while I don’t think that everything in Touko’s dream had a corresponding cause in the ‘real’ world, there is quite a bit that did. Now we’ve seen Touko’s fears of not having a place and of not having those relationships. So I think that the finale will show us Touko trying to hold on to both those things, to convince Kakeru that he should stay with her, and to accept wholeheartedly the relationships among the others.
About Highway
Proving that you don't have to be young to love anime, I enjoy all genres and styles of shows. If it's not hurting anyone else, you should never be ashamed of what you like!
POWUH: 400-499 with 445 comments
And there you have it; Our predictions regarding the visions where pretty darn accurate. At the end of the dat, the snow represents what we thought it did, because in the “visionary world” (that’s what im going to call it), Touko’s worries and inhibitions manifest themselves in one way or another. From the start of this series, Touko had never been seeing the future per se; just a visionary world where the thoughts in her head could be possible; a “what if” scenario if you would. And its her misunderstanding of those “what if” scenarios that made it seem as if it was something else like the future.
During that long piano recital, we see Touko glimpse once again into the visionary world, this being her most detailed vision yet, in which she gets a glimpses of “what if” scenarios regarding her friends coupling up. Id like to note that she saw a version where her friends didnt come to see the fireworks, and a version where her friends did come but paid her no mind, yet she didnt see a version where they could have all went together and still be couples (that would be the situation that she doesnt see as yet possible if the group dynamics change, but now it seems like she is starting to get it little by little that things dont have to change drastically)
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
I think it’s interesting that they came up with both sets of possibilities: That the group did show up and that they paired off. And even the pairing off wasn’t really by choice, but induced by the infirmity of one of the pair, forcing a choice for the other. I thought it was a really interesting ‘People choose love’ message. But I also liked that it was explained without malice. Kakeru, before he crossed groups, explained it just as ‘they didn’t meet up’.
POWUH: 400-499 with 445 comments
And sometimes (as cheesy as it sounds) love causes situations that are out of our control; we can only let it lead us wherever it does. I am really anticipating this finale. Touko’s “dont go” in the preview sounds foreboding
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
Yeah I guess I can see it as a dream vs OH MA GOD MY POWERS AWAKENED so yeah sure I guess that works, but what is the purpose of this dream? Does Touko realize she doesn’t belong to the group or is it more of a connection with Kakeru? I know he wasn’t sure about them getting together cause it didn’t feel right?
As much as I like Touko and Kakeru I find them to be zzzzzzzzz as a couple and prefer the story brewing between Sachi and Hiro, but I keep waiting for something bad to happen to Sachi due to having the role of “character with medical issues” then again we have one episode left so that idea can get thrown out the window.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
I think that Kakeru’s hesitance to commit to being with Touko is rooted in his past experience of being ‘abandoned’ by former friends, which has led to his insular nature. Now here’s this girl that intrigues him, but his past experience is saying “don’t trust these feelings, you’ll get ditched again”. I think that it’s also worth saying that if Kakeru’s other friends ditched him for things like the Cultural Festival, what was he doing? Why didn’t he join them? It seems like a selfish lack of contribution on his part that caused them to bail on him, when he could have participated as well.
I think that Sachi’s medically fragile nature was more of a device to separate her from the rest of the group and pull Hiro away from the rest. Hiro is the one who is more interested in doing things as a group than anyone, so it’s an interesting tension between him trying to pull her along with their activities, him trying to keep the group together, but also him trying to pull back and match Sachi’s pace because he really cares for her.
POWUH: Beginner (20-35) with 29 comments
Thanks for a thoughtful analysis of this episode. I also thought initially that Touko was seeing parallel dimensions or separate timelines and wondered where that ability suddenly came from.
She pretty much dispelled that idea when she talked about her ‘imagination’ at the end of the episode so your explanation is quite likely.
She never had these kind of visions during the rest of the series, which makes me agree with you that it’s at least mostly brought on by the powerful emotions she’s feeling.
One question that’s still on my mind is Kakeru’s brief ability to see the fragments that she saw. Was that a kind of psychic meshing with her, that he lost once he became confused about what he should do with his future?
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
Thank you for reading! As I said, it took me a couple times watching to feel like I understood it (actually, the first time wasn’t even halfway to understanding things, I just watched and absorbed, which feels like it worked out nicely).
The part with Kakeru is kind of interesting to think about: He’s had much more concrete imagination than Touko has, with his imaginary selves to discuss things with and his aural fragments. I think there is a connection between the two, and it’s quite supernatural to think that he can tap into Touko’s imagination to see what she sees. One thing that I think is worth pointing out: the voices from Kakeru’s ‘contribution’ have *never* matched up with the visions Touko sees. It’s not like she’s seen Yanagi saying things to take one example. So perhaps they’re linked but it’s more that Touko and Kakeru are more likely to fall into that fugue state together. And maybe what they see and hear has always been different, it just happens at the same time so they think it’s the same.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10997 comments
There’s been part of me that cannot quite shake all the lecturing I got way back in the day about the Green Light in the Great Gatsby. OMG what did it meeeeaaaan? Here let’s go off on a tangent to explain….
Thankfully, as you have expressed, the visions don’t have to be that convoluted, nor do they have to be that simple. It would be one thing to dismiss it as, “teenage anxiety is hard”…but why dismiss?
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
Certainly, I’m not really a fan of overanalyzing of works of art. There’s definitely meaning in a lot of things, but I think that for some people searching for the meaning takes over from actually enjoying the work. And the high school experience of “Let’s ram the “classics” down the students’ throats and make them hate literature” induced me to drop from the top level class in 9th grade to the second level to get away from that literature analysis (I still have no freakin’ clue what Miss Havisham’s wedding dress is all about, and I don’t care at all). Especially coming up with long-dead authorial intent.
But we do want to find meaning in what we watch. So I don’t think that every bit of analysis is wrong, I just think that there’s a counter-productive nature to it, and when someone has exceeded their limit for it, continuing to force it pushes them away from a work. It’s fine to let people find meaning in things, and I think this conversation here in the comments is right at the right level.