Episode 16:
Winter has already hit the illusionary world, and the robot tries to finish the flying machine on his own before the world becomes covered in snow. Back in the real world, Sunohara, Kyou, Ryou and Kotomi pay Tomoya and Nagisa a New Year’s visit. Nagisa’s play suddenly flashes into Tomoya’s mind as Kotomi talks about her theory of several alternate worlds existing alongside our own. Nagisa soon becomes sick again and goes into labor early, and additionally she cannot be taken to the hospital as originally planned due to the snowstorm. She successfully gives birth to Ushio but dies moments after the delivery.
Episode 17:
Five years have passed since Nagisa’s death. Tomoya has been in a deep depression ever since her passing, and Ushio is under the care of Akio and Sanae in the meantime. One day Sanae visits Tomoya, and the two take a stroll, noting how much the town has changed lately. She later invites Tomoya to go on a trip with Akio and her.
The following day he arrives at Furukawa bakery to find out Akio and Sanae are gone and it’s only Ushio and himself. He spends the day with Ushio and slowly warms up to the daughter that he ignored for so long. Akio and Sanae still don’t return the next day, and Tomoya finally decides to take Ushio on the trip by himself at her insistence.
Episode 18:
While on the trip, Tomoya yells at a boy on the train, frightening Ushio. He apologizes and later buys a toy robot for her to make up for it. When they finally arrive at the countryside, they find a field of flowers where Ushio plays. She loses the robot and they search for it together to fruitless results. Tomoya suddenly has a flashback and wanders off on his own and meets his grandmother, Shino Okazaki. She tells him the circumstances that Naoyuki went through raising a child on his own and how he always did his best to provide for Tomoya and be a good father. A surge of memories resurface in Tomoya’s mind and he realizes the hardships his father went through for him. Before they part, she requests Tomoya to tell his father that it’s okay to come back home now.
Tomoya returns to the field, and a devastated Ushio tells him that she still cannot find the robot. Tomoya says that he can simply buy her another one, but to Ushio the toy has a lot of sentimental value because it was the first gift from her father. Tomoya realizes the error of his ways and vows to always be there for Ushio henceforth. On the train home, Ushio asks about her mother, and Tomoya recounts his first meeting with Nagisa to her.
Impressions:
Key tragedy at its finest. Oh man, episode 16 made me choke up… Just a little… Okay fine, I cried like a little girl. Are you happy now? It wasn’t quite end of Air sad, but the collage that played and the shot of Nagisa fading away with the cherry blossoms falling was poignant and really got to me. Perhaps if Aozora was playing in the background I’d weep even more.
It’s strange not having Nagisa around anymore as she was always a big part of the show. We can identify with Tomoya’s loss since we got to watch Nagisa grow and develop from the beginning of the show and become an increasingly important part of Tomoya’s life. Sanae’s persistence to make Tomoya do her bidding got a chuckle from me. The mischievous Ushio is so adorable and sugary sweet that you get cavities just watching her. That Akio is really a piece of work as he made good on his promise to make Ushio call him Akki. She is very much Nagisa’s daughter in appearance and personality, minus the trademark Furukawa ahoge. Not much else to say about episode 17, except that I thought the transition from Ushio skipping along into Torch was very clever.
There was something that I didn’t notice right away when episode 18 ended, and then a light suddenly clicked in my head. It was the common link between Ushio and the girl from the illusionary world — the toy robot. Just something interesting to think about from now until the end of the show. I may or may not have teared up again in this episode.
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