TL;DR:
Sakura and Aoba are stuck because of Sakura’s inability to move on from the past. They both want to talk at least one more time though, and they meet where they first met, at their High School. Sakura expresses all his fears finally, but that he doesn’t want to break up, and she doesn’t either. They vow to continue to work on communicating with one another.
Recap:
A flashback to high school, Aoba and Sakura are erasing the chalkboard and chatting. Sakura motions Aoba over, and she goes to him—
And we’re back to last week’s crying. Aoba makes post-its, promising not to laugh or talk on the phone or listen to music, but that when things get hard to bear, she still wants to be with him. He doesn’t write anything and leaves.
Minato shows up for Aoba’s brother, who isn’t there, holding a bag full of stuffed pandas. Some kind of trick has been played on him. Seeing Aoba’s distress, Minato says that Sakura is the one who doesn’t see who Aoba is now, not the other way around.
Nana and Sakura meet up to exchange a book, and he asks after the sign language teacher. After teasing him for being jealous, she signs that the problems weren’t about their hearing. And that Sakura needs to see Aoba now, not in the past.
Sakura goes to text Aoba but she’s already texting him. He has somewhere he wants to meet up. Aoba works on her signing and meets up with their old coach. The coach comments he used to be curious about what they were talking about, but when he’d hear them it was just silly chatter.
Minato is at futsal, and Sakura has bailed. Minato tells his friend that no matter what others say, he’s glad they reunited. Only outsiders will say he’s pitiful.
At work, Aoba has a short talk with her coworker about whether Sakura sees himself as pitiful and turns that thought on herself.
The sign language teacher gets told the nice thing about him is that he doesn’t see deaf people as pitiful.
Aoba goes to her mom’s home and they talk about memories and keeping them. Then she meets up with Sakura at their school. He writes on the chalkboard that he didn’t think she would come.
Aoba offers to stop meeting if it’s too hard, but she’s glad they reunited and she fell in love again. She’s about to leave when he starts writing. He got used to not hearing voices but not hearing hers was something he couldn’t accept.
She goes back to offering not to do things but he frantically wipes it away. He starts signing that he’s worried the longer they’re together, the harder it’ll be, not just for them but everyone around them. She wants to know if that’s it, and he adds that he still wants to be with her. And she signs she does too.
Now she signs about how his slow signing for her makes her happy, but that she wants to improve. She wants them to work on communicating, different people have different understandings, but they can keep trying. She wants them to keep talking, but she’ll be quiet when he needs it.
They go to the auditorium, and Sakura tells Aoba he saw her that day he gave his speech. He recognized her later from her gaze. She has him give the speech, which is all about words and languages and meaning, in sign. He imagines signing to the whole class, but Aoba is there as she is now. They leave, hand in hand.
Sakura goes home to grab something from his room. His mom sneaks out and meets with Aoba. They bond over Sakura’s communication skills. His mother says she prioritized Sakura not being hurt over having a good time but is glad to see him having a good time.
While they wait for the train home, Sakura pulls out the old iPod he grabbed from home. He has Aoba put the headphones on and listen. Sakura’s sister meets with Aoba’s brother and hands over her sign language books.
Sakura and Minato meet up. Minato is worried and Sakura uses his voice to tell him he’s fine.
Nana and Minato run into each other, and Nana is holding a huge bouquet of flowers. She has him pick one. Later at the bar, she hands them over to the teacher as a late gift for becoming a sign language interpreter. She tells him the person in the flower shop explained, by writing down, that flowers make no sounds but contain words. She then tells the teacher to get her a handbag for Christmas.
Minato surprises Aoba by showing up and giving her the flower he got from Nana. Meanwhile, Nana gives Sakura the same flower. He notes that her backpack is now zipped like he knew what she was doing from the beginning.
On their way to meet up, Sakura does the video chat. They meet and exchange their matching flowers, smiling. They go out in the Christmas lights. Sakura signs that he’s happy that he now gets to see her words. Aoba signs, asking if Sakura has anything he wants to tell her. He takes her hand. Then, as he did in the earlier flashback, he motions her over. He whispers something in her ear that we don’t get to hear. She cries and smiles.
We go back to the flashback, and see them whispering back and forth to each other, probably saying silly things like the coach mentioned earlier.
Thoughts:
When Nana signed that flowers have no sounds but contained words, this show really got me. It’s not a perfect show, but what it had to say about words and meaning and communication was really beautiful to me.
One of the most annoying pet peeves I have with romances is when the characters simply refuse to communicate, often with poor motivation. With this show, everything was about communication. The writer knew that people can communicate and still not understand one another.
The show also did a great job of avoiding tropes. Nana and the sign language teacher didn’t get back together again. Minato and Aoba stayed friends, though clearly not as comfortable as they once were.
There were a few places where the conversations felt too pat, in this case going from Minato telling Aoba that Sakura still sees the past version of her, followed immediately by Nana telling Sakura the same exact thing was a bit much. I wish they’d been more subtle. But I also appreciated the show sticking so hard to its themes. This episode hit on how people see themselves or are seen as pitiful, which tied directly into Aoba’s later statements about communication. We talk to one another thinking of ourselves one way, while the other person is seeing a different version.
The biggest downside of this show is Aoba’s character. There was a lot I liked about her, and I think qualities that get undervalued often. She was very emotionally intelligent and insightful and dealt with reality head-on. But I think because of this, her character didn’t end up having much depth or arc. My favorite moment with her is probably her deciding to confront Nana. But when it came to Minato and Sakura it felt very much like she was reacting to them most of the time. I’m not sure how to fix this, but it would have been nice to see her having some self-reflection instead of always talking about herself in relationship to the men. It felt like she never got to get angry either, and she had a few places where she really had that right.
The show ended perfectly for me though. Sakura breaking his silence with Aoba by whispering something we don’t get to hear, and that glimpse into their past. Such an intimate, couple thing to do. This is definitely a favorite show of this year, and one I plan to make others watch.