Amnesia - 8

"VIII"

How curious that the darkest arc is centered around the most cheerful love interest.

We never got to see much of Toma before this arc, though he did pop up more often than the other interests, excepting Ikki. My first impression of him was that he was rather carefree, and probably the most realistic of the four. We already knew that he, Shun, and Shujinko were all childhood friends, but this episode has made me rethink some of my earlier judgements about both Toma and the situation at large. For one thing, while Toma is certainly the better-natured bishounen (at least when it comes to dealing with Shujinko), he's not carefree in the least. He's also not as one dimensional as the others were, though he's not perfectly well rounded either. So far, however, he does seem to be the most complex character outside of the mysterious stalker (who has become a different person again, rather how Waka does every arc).

The circumstances of this arc are fairly strange, to begin with. Toma seems to be overly protective of Shujinko, to the point where he tries to hide the fact that she's being bullied from her so as not to worry her. Interestingly, this may have been going on since before she arrived as an amnesiac, but he seems to have taken advantage of her disorientation in order to better "protect" her. Of course, letting her wander around without any idea of the danger she's in is clearly a bad idea, and it goes to show that Toma is just as controlling as the others were when it comes to being a boyfriend. However, I have my doubts that things are as black and white as Toma tries to paint them. Why, for example, does Shujinko meet with Ikki once a month in a back alley, and why are Ikki's fan club after her in this world? If it's true that Toma is her boyfriend, why does he hesitate when she asks him if that's the case?

If I had to venture a guess, I'd say that Toma probably isn't really Shujinko's boyfriend, or, if he is, that something happened to their relationship before August 1st that changed the game and caused Ikki to become involved. It could even be that Shujinko was cheating on Toma with Ikki, for all I know, though it's probably not that extreme. Still, for Toma to be waging war against the fan club behind Shujinko's back and for the fan club to be as openly violent as they prove themselves capable of being, something is clearly not right in this version of events. Then there's the fact that the mysterious stalker has become more involved than ever. Unlike his momentary appearances in other arcs, this is the first time that he's been actually belligerent toward Shujinko, even using physical violence while he taunts her about her upcoming death. I'm not really sure what's wrong with this stalker, though he's certainly an interesting figure, one that I'm sure will figure prominently in the last few episodes of the series.