Recap: It’s stamp rally day in Sakura Newtown, and Kana and Mina run into an unlikely participant. Meanwhile, Akina and Hime are summoned by the Council of Elders.

Aqua’s thoughts: Yozakura Quartet wraps up some plot threads left hanging and opens up some new ones in this slice-of-life-y epilogue to last week’s action-packed finale. It’s a solid romp, consisting of two halves, one showing Eiji hanging out with his fellow daemons in Sakura Newtown, and the other picking back up on Akina’s responsibilities as the Dutybound. The Council of Elders, the organization representing human interests in the greater Tokyo area, seems hell-bent on purging every single supernatural creature from the face of the planet, and if anything, their antagonism is a great way to provide Akina with some depth.

That is where it becomes obvious that the first half of the episode mainly served to show why Akina is so opposed to sending all the daemons back over to their own dimension. Even if that world is “100% adjusted to them”, as opposed to the “80%” of this world — as Shiidare so nicely states — the detrimental factor for Akina is that he doesn’t know whether that is true or not. He cannot risk to essentially kill all his friends when he is not 100% certain they will be better off. Besides, even if the other world were a better place for the daemons to live, it still wouldn’t be home. Despite the fact that the Council does not seem to care one bit about the daemons’ wellbeing, it’s an interesting ideological battle being waged here and one that is oddly reminiscent of modern-day discussions on immigration. With extremist views coming from both sides and the risk of overpopulation looming behind every corner, Yozakura Quartet‘s dynamic may be more familiar than it ever hoped to be.

It is this conflict that the show skillfully employs to show off Akina’s darker side. Even though he’s an overall nice guy, the rather radical means he uses to convince others of his cause — remember what he did to Touka in episode 3? — gives his character a rather disturbing, albeit self-righteous edge. If anything, Akina is not your generic everyman. He merely plays that role for the sake of his friends, keeping most of his doubts, anger and fear hidden from view, to the point where even Hime was afraid of him when he snapped. Nevertheless, this incident beautifully showed off what their relationship is all about.

Hime and Akina need each other — not only because their ideals support each other to work towards a common goal, but also because their personalities keep each other in check. Akina watches over Hime, and Hime is there to make sure he doesn’t lose track of what he’s fighting for in the first place. No scene better displays this as the one in which the two of them walk home from their confrontation with the Council, and Hime tries to cheer Akina up. Initially he ignores her, but eventually he sighs, smiles and and walks back up to her for a hug. It’s absolutely adorable, and shows that these two have a lot more going on than the standard “girl falls in love with generic male protagonist because the plot requires her to” trope that has defied genre convention and is seemingly heading straight towards genre prerequisite. Luckily, Yozakura Quartet is still around to prove that there is no such thing.

Random observations

• Someone needs to take Kotoha out shopping. She needs to ditch that atrocious, vomit-coloured skirt.
• Speaking of alternative outfits, who dressed Hime today? I wonder why she never wears her uniform jacket in this series.
• Pretty interesting to see the Senate guy mention only four daemon hunters: a vampier hunter, a dragon slayer, an exorcist and a necromancer. That’s kind of weird, since that’s different from the daemon hunters we got to meet in the manga. I wonder what’s up with that.

Important notice

In the post-credits stinger, the show seems to be teasing the so-called “Sea of Stars” arc, yet the actual preview hints at next week’s episode covering material that takes place directly after that arc. The answer is simple: the “Sea of Stars” arc has already been adapted into a 3-part OVA series, by the exact same cast and crew, and it seems to be the case that Hana no Uta is simply assuming that everyone has already seen these, or is aware of their existence and knows that this arc is up next. Not the most new-viewer-friendly method if you ask me. In other words: Make sure to watch the three Yozakura Quartet ~ Hoshi no Umi ~ OVAs before watching next week’s episode. They’re good!