天下制覇

I would have preferred davonlaufen.

Impressions:

First off, the OP was back to the original… only upside down. I’m sure that means something, but I have the nagging suspicion that all it means is that Shinbo’s drunk. This wasn’t really the most interesting or compelling episode around since it basically took us right back to where we were two episodes ago. Yuu convinced Yuko to run away with him and live a life as hobos, Akira found them and sent Yuu into another angsting spiral, which made Yuko think that he had abandoned her and sent her into a panic and right back into Akira’s arms. In the present, Kuze just angsted it up hardcore, even bringing up Yuko to Yuu (which earned him a punch… do I see a happy ending coming?) and then gifting his violin to Mizuki.

There was very little particularly creative direction this episode either, which felt a little weird. They did the "put a word up on the screen while a characters uses it in a sort of clumsy attempt at parallelism" for the third time in as many episodes. I prefer Warum to "run away". Probably the best done scene this time around was Yuko going into a panic over Yuu’s disappearance, even though it was a bit silly from an objective point of view. He was a few hours late to dinner, you crazy bint. I’m not particularly confused or annoyed about that too much though as it fits in with her being clingy and totally irrational, which we’ve already shown more than a few times over. Still… you’d think she’d know a little better than to think that he had abandoned her and taken nothing but a broken watch. The entire episode was him convincing her to take a swing at a normal life with him and that was all undone by a couple hours of moping in the streets. I suppose it also doesn’t help that we’ve known from the start that there’s no happy end for these two anyway. On the other hand, I’m not sure why Yuu cares at all about what Akira has to say about anything. He raped your girlfriend. Go report his ass to the cops, you doofus. Don’t get all sad and mopey because he called you a coward.

I still have absolutely no idea what Nagi is doing in this show either.