I hate White Album 2 (Part 1)

Don't get me wrong. Here I will assure you that White Album 2  will always have a place in my heart. That is something that I could rarely say for most things in my life. I have just finished watching the first season of this show not just a few days ago and a few hours just after finishing it a lot of thought and emotion started to grow in me. I was tipped off by my friends concerning the plot and from their vague description I figured something bad was going to happen in this show. I have tried to rant it out but I found it difficult to say what really bothered me so I decided to write it out here instead.

From here there will be spoilers ahead, vague they may be; I highly suggest you watch the show before reading these entries since I will be going over major plot points of the story. Needless to say, I was completely unprepared for this one...


For this entry I will be using pictures from the PC game version of the story. Regrettably I cannot play the game version or else I would in a heartbeat. (maybe in the future *cross fingers*) The way I saw the story was through the anime they did of it which you can watch on your own. 

Forgive my vague summary; A love triangle between the best of friends. Haruki Kitahara, the hard working guy; Setsuna Ogiso, likes to sing; and Kazusa Touma, chill girl.  Setsuna and Haruki start dating, but the three are still the best of friends. Probably the best of friends I have ever seen. They had all hit it off big at the school festival practicing and performing together. Singing some song from the White Album or whatever.

The BFFs...

Now most of my friends already know romance stories were never really my thing. Once in a while I would subject myself to the genre and in this particular case I was feeling adventurous and went exploring outside my normal realm of shows.

Now the set up for this anime was pretty generic at first glance, but I had to appreciate the how the show delivered it. First it is a pretty basic to know that in order to make the reader/viewer feel a certain emotion the atmosphere should start off  as the opposite emotion. If you want them to feel sad later on, the show should have a happy atmosphere at first. If you want the viewers to feel happy and full of hope later the atmosphere should have a sad or dull feeling to it. Strong examples of this include popular anime such as Clannad, Angel Beats, and Attack on Titan. In Clannad and Angel Beats they reel you in with comical situations to get you feeling good about the characters, until later when you just think nothing can really get depressing, things suddenly go south when you are vulnerable and least suspect it. Characters like Fuuko (and of course the other Clannad girls) or Kanade Tachibana (and others in Angel Beats) would not have left such a strong impression without this type of practice. This goes for the story as well since in Attack on Titan we would not feel the valor or hope without the grief and mystery of their situation.

Please don't thank me...

Now WA2 (I'll shorten White Album 2 from here on) follows this practice as well, a bit too well I should say. The way my friends relayed this show to me hinted that shit was going to go down hard. While watching through the first episodes it quickly clicked in my head that the things these three friends had was too fucking good to be true. You can really feel the show setting you up for a big drop with just how happy everyone is, but at the same time you see the subtle hints on the way to Despair Land. You get that "TOTES OBVI! SHIT'S GON HIT DA FAN Y'ALL" (I myself felt it in a particular way, but that's for another part...) So after the ball drops and shit goes down, usually these type of shows end on a higher note regardless and life goes on and everyone can move on forward. That is where this show makes a difference to me.

It totally did not get any better.

It was going so well too.

 So what happens is after all the happy stuff, we find Kazusa acting out of the ordinary. You see, they promised to be best friends and together forever, but Kazusa starts to distance herself from the couple slowly. She gets confronted by Haruki about this and surprise surprise she wasn't having quite a happy time hanging out with the two because she actually loved him the whole time. Yes she said before in the show that she had some feelings for him and she told her best friend, Setsuna, and she was cool with them dating despite that. However, we now found out that she lied about that and was killing herself inside every time she saw them together. This complete with behind the scenes Kazusa flashbacks that show us what she went through to try to get closer to him that we were unaware of. (Details in next part I swear...)

After Kazusa conveys her feelings he also admits that he first fell in love with her first and decides that he actually loved her more than Setsuna. They cheat behind Setsuna's back. Sadly Kazusa already has plans to move overseas at this point so she's leaving regardless. Meanwhile, Setsuna admits that she knew Kazusa loved Haruki before she forced him to confess to him and that she did it to "selfishly preserve their friendship". She drops the line.

"It may have looked like I confessed to you because I really wanted you to be my boyfriend, but that's not true. I'm sorry. I do love you (Haruki), but I'm not as serious about it as Kazusa (loves Haruki)."

Finally, this scene happens.

*angry sigh*

They find Kazusa in the airport right before she has to leave for who-knows-how-long-(forever?)
Haruki, despite protesting to see her before she leaves, makes an uncontrollable instinctive good-bye love dash towards Kazusa.
Kazusa, in her mind screams for him to stop and not give her the kiss of her life because she knows that Setsuna also loves Haruki just as much as she does and she didn't want her to see that Haruki actually loved her more. Setsuna is her best friend and you get the feeling they would do anything for each other. But alas, Kazusa is just powerless to resist the good bye kiss of love because we all know she needed it bad. Kazusa apologizes to Setsuna because the scales of Haruki's love has tipped in the favor of Kazusa and now Setsuna is now technically the third wheel.
From here it seemed okay because the line that Setsuna dropped earlier had a hint of suggestion that she would be okay for them to be together instead...

But then, with the aid of flashbacks of her taking her time in building the special relationship between
her and Haruki, while she witnesses Haruki loving Kazusa more, she admits to us that: "I was obviously lying about all that!"

After the scene, Kazusa leaves Japan since she can't stay now. Haruki may probably never see her again but she will always be the one that he truly loves and says that all value was lost. And now we have Setsuna as a lost cause, now second place behind her best friend for the love of Haruki. Nobody is satisfied, hearts broken, and that's how it ends. Things go bad, and they stayed that way.

Now, it is not really the end, this was the first part of the story (I believe they called it the Introductory Chapter) but at the time I did not know this. So we have another season coming up. At the time I believed this was the ending I was taken aback. Now know that this entry can never do the actual show any justice. I skipped major details that play a big part in the whole story. I recommend you watch it if you have not and you will see how the story plays out, you would enjoy the little things that led to this moment and it would make more sense. To let you all know, it was not the cliffhanger that made me any sort of angry or mad. Actually, I would prefer if it ended this way, as it is a fitting ending and makes a good story on its own. I am under the impression that most of my friends were angry because of the cliffhanger so I needed to bring these series of entries to tell you what bothered me, and that will come at a later date in the next part.