WH(ADAFUCK)ITE ALBUM

Those of you who know me better will know I'm obsessed with the new OP, and I'm wondering about the significance of the blond girls in the OP. We can safely assume, I think, that it's the same girl that Eiji cries all over in the painting. Eiji states in episode 15 that the "painting is my mother" and "not the girl", which is confusing. It's also difficult to tell whether the blond woman is Rina's mother and the little girl is Rina, or if both of them are the mother or both of them are Rina, in the sense that they are two different sides/aspects of the same person (ie. child Rina and responsible, adult Rina). Perhaps the dark-haired girl young blond girl walks up to in the end is Yuki, which would mean young blond girl is Rina. And if Eiji cries at the painting every time he looks at it without ever knowing why, and if Eiji's relationship with Rina is so poor, it leaves us wondering about what the Ogata family history and situation is like.

I'm interested to know what you guys think.

Let's talk about Rina's relationship with Yuki.

In a stark contrast to season one, when the two of them were practically sisters, Rina's distanced herself from Yuki quite a bit. I think it's safe to say by this point Rina doesn't like Yuki very much at all, but at the same time is confused because she knows none of this was Yuki's fault.

Looking at what has happened thus far from Rina's standpoint, Yuki has everything Rina wants/wanted. Despite being the top idol, she's lonely and is clearly romantically interested in Touya, but knows she will never have him because he belongs to Yuki. Perhaps she simply wants someone to truly care for her, not as an idol, but as herself, but all she is treated as is who she is: a top idol, belonging to everyone, yet belonging to no one. She also can't forgive herself for withholding Yuki's letter from Touya back in season 1, and thus can't face him. Eiji's also obviously quite bored with his sister due to her being "just as perfect as he is", and showers all his attention and expectations onto Yuki, sending Rina off to all sorts of jobs and refusing to hear her out at all. And of course, the clearest example of this occured in episode 16, with Eiji having denied Rina the opportunity to participate in the Venus Festival even though she had always wanted to go, and making Yuki enter instead despite her rookie status. From all this, we can quite safely conclude that Rina harbors contempt for Yuki, but cannot bring herself to openly admit it because she knows Yuki didn't do anything wrong. This point can be seen when Rina initially gives Yuki an angry look but her expression eventually softens when Yuki tries to stop her from leaving in episode 16, and should prove interesting in episode 17 when Yuki confronts Rina.

And of course, poor down-to-earth Yuki has no idea everyone around her is betraying her. Eiji's concentrating all of his hopes for himself, for Rina, and for Yuki herself on Yuki as a star, for Yuki to fulfill all of their dreams, almost to the sense of abusing her. Rina harbors jealousy and contempt for Yuki. Touya's cheating on Yuki with her manager and, as episode 15 showed, Touya and Yayoi are effectively playing Yuki around, keeping her happy whilst putting up a facade so that she can continue to walk the thin road to idoldom.

It'll be interesting to see how this particular love triangle.. no wait, octagon or something, plays out. >_>

We've talked about the significance of the opening, and it bugs me that we can only speculate. I really hope the anime touches on that and doesn't just leave it as an ambiguous element in the series.

The opening really is good, Nana Mizuki sings really well. I also think the song she composed for the opening really fit it well.

You know what? I really don't think Rina "hates" Yuki, or rather as you said "Doesn't like her very much", it's possible to be jealous of someone without harboring feelings of hostility, and I think that this would be one of the cases. Rina hating Yuki just doesn't fit with her personality she's presented up till now.

I mean I totally agree that she has every reason to hate Yuki, as Yuki is taking everything that Rina wants, but I still think she loves Yuki.

I'm curious how episode 17 will play out as well after the way 16 ended. I hope Rina gets more airtime in it cause the last few episodes have been really lacking :(

The Episode starts as Rina is answering a few questions from the press concerning her move to M&M Music. The news of her move finally make it to Touya who is watching the press conference on TV. This clearly surprises him and you can see that it affects him quite a bit.

Yuki comes to the hospital to see Touya's dad but in truth she wants to talk about Rina to Touya. As always their discussion leads to nowhere. However when Yuki asks Touya if he wants to go see Rina with her he declines and says he's busy and he has nothing to do with Rina anymore.

A few noteworthy elements happen before the next scene I will talk about. However I think I'll leave them up so I won't spoil everything.

Touya concerned about Rina decides to go talk with her. This leads to a discussion between the two of them where we can see how Rina's feelings have been discarded by her brother and how she's so sad about it. Touya being there and aknowledging how she can't be fine right now makes Rina actually open up to him.

Rina as a last ditch effort asks Touya to leave, to which Touya at first complies but then decides that he needs to ask her something before leaving.

This leads to him seeing a tear eyed Rina ask him to kiss her.

Both of them then share a passionate Kiss.

In the meanwhile Yuki has left a meeting she had with future sponsors (I think) so she could go and see Rina.

When she finally arrives she sees Fuuji-kun leaving to her total surprise.