**This thread will probably contain spoilers of the VN as well as the anime**
TL;DR: I'm on team setsuna and I feel so sad that she's so misunderstood. I consider Haruki and Touma detestable in all storylines. A small part of me is glad that there isn't a season 2 because I don't want to watch such a character repeatedly get dumped on
So, a couple of weeks ago, I was looking around for a normal slice of life anime that was perhaps more realistic than your average anime. I've been watching anime long enough to despise your typical romance between flustered high schoolers and I was sick of all the needless fanservice that made people keep watching them. On one of these boards someone mentioned School Days as a good option for a realistic romance anime and without scrolling down further to see that he was kidding I started watching the series. You all know what happened next. With the exception of one of Kotohana I hated all of the characters in that anime. All of them. Despised them. Hated the ridiculous FS. But didn't hate the story. Because of the way it developed I consider it a subversive, while traumatic watch. I can't believe I had never come across before. But that ending.....
I then moved on to White Album. Loved the first season (unlike most) and really liked the second. It took me a while to get into WA2 though, because while in the same universe, it didn't have the characters from the first that I had grown attached to (even though I hated most characters in that too by the end. WA2 was different though, in that I didn't hate any of these characters. For the first 7 or so episodes, it was just pure friendship - I will admit to being drawn in during the performance of white album at the school fair. Then the relationship stuff started.....
My initial assessment of Setsuna was that she was selfish. Not manipulative, but selfish, even before she got with Haruki. I identified with Touma and her self-denial of her feelings and felt so strongly for her when she pushed him away. I mean Touma wasn't admired by other students in HS, her mother abandoned her, she had no friends and even her piano skills had deteriorated somewhat. To make such a character lose the character she loves was cruel....or so I thought. I grew to hate Setsuna, because she, more than anyone else, knew how Touma must have felt but insisted that they all stay together.
But that all changed in the last two episodes. We're made aware of Touma and Touma's longstanding affection and even Setsuna is aware enough to say that she stepped between them --- but where I lose compassion for them is how they treat Setsuna at the end. Haruki knows Setsuna's trauma when it comes to getting and keeping friends and yet both he and Touma effectively cheat on Setsuna and Setsuna is the one that apologizes? She brings Haruki, with whom she'd always been honest about her feelings, to the airport to say a proper goodbye and Touma and Haruki hug and embrace and essentially give a big middle finger to Setsuna in the background. My initial thought was that this was a scene more traumatic than anything I'd seen in school days, including the ending. I've seen people's bodies explode into a mound of bloody flesh in more fashion than these two broke Setsuna. I mean, my goodness. They just SHATTERED HER TO PIECES.
In these final moments of the anime, I lost any remaining affection I had for Haruki or Touma and realized that of the three, the most profoundly miserable, the one most isolated despite the circumstances of her life, was in fact Setsuna. She loved someone who she KNEW would never love her in the way that he loved another character, but she thought to herself: "why can't I grasp happiness too"? And this was the result. Ive never flipped so quickly in terms of story allegiance before. I realized, in fact, that it wasn't Touma I identified with but Setsuna, because even while she was with Haruki she was still on the outside looking in.
I read a summary of the VN moving forward and all I can think of is that none of the endings end well for Setsuna. The only ending in which she grasps happiness seems contrived and all other times she's essentially just dumped on. I just want to give the girl a virtual hug. |