Natsuyuki Rendezvous Episode 3--Not That Simple

I've said it before but it bears repeating; this show's portrayal of the complexity of human relationships makes it one of the best shows airing this season.




Last week I talked a lot about Rokka and Shimao's relationship and that despite the time that has passed since his death, Rokka's grief is not the kind easily forgotten. She needs to genuinely heal before she thinks seriously about moving on. However, Hazuki makes a big mistake in this episode in assuming that new memories will overwrite the old. While I'm not exactly happy with him and his actions in this episode, they're clearly the result of inexperience on his part.

His conversation with Miho was particularly interesting in illuminating this, as well as filling in some more details about Shimao's family. Their desire for Rokka to move on seems to be different from Hazuki's. They had a long time to accept that Shimao was going to die early, but Rokka didn't have that luxury. At the moment it seems like they're hoping someone new in her life could at least make her happy again, but the threat against the flower shop also suggests that they just want to put the event behind them. Whether they'll force the issue or not remains to be seen.

Anyway, back to Hazuki. He doesn't have the benefit of knowing Shimao's backstory like we--the viewers--do, so he only sees Shimao as an obstacle. In the conversation with Miho, he talks about how the first guy should really just be considered the foundation for the second guy, which starts showing that he has a fundamental misunderstanding about how grief works. He seems to be approaching it like re-writing a computer file, using a new memory to override the old. However, human emotion is not that simple. The tickets he offered at the end of the episode is a great example of this. He knew that the park was the last place where she was together with Shimao before he checked into the hospital, and by extension, should be aware of the connotations the place holds for Rokka. But he went and offered them anyway.




Hazuki needs to do some thinking. If all he really wants is Rokka to be happy (which he continually states), is forcing her into a relationship really the best way to go about it? And even if their relationship does work out, what then? What does he really want? I'm starting to wonder if he's really just more interested in "winning" over Shimao, since it was his appearance that caused Hazuki to act. His comment about "always being second" seemed to be about a lot more than just his current romantic life. Once again, I think that we need the same level of backstory for him like we've been seeing for Rokka and Shimao to put this into a better context, since at the moment he just looks like a jerk. All of my sympathy is going to Shimao at the moment.

Hazuki's actions are driving Shimao into a corner at this point, making him take on poltergeist tendencies--creating extremely localized earthquakes, throwing objects around, etc. Who's to say that he won't be able to actually touch someone by the end of the show? His dispair is going deeper, and with context it makes sense why he's asking to borrow Hazuki's body, but I also don't blame him for refusing. If a ghost just threatened to kill me, I wouldn't lend them my body either.

The threads are becoming more and more tangled, and I have no idea what the endpoint will look like, but I've become extremely invested in whatever solution the characters find for themselves. I just hope that it doesn't portray "pushing people out of the grief" as the answer.

Images from Crunchyroll.com.