HachiKuro II Chapter 12 ~Season Finale~ "With Honey And Clover"

The last ep of HachiKuro! I finally got around to watching it... Lol, catching up is a slooow process when you're swamped with work and your 24 hours are limited. I don't follow HachiKuro manga so I don't know whether this is the end the end, since I didn't know HachiKuro II would be happening, but if I'm not mistaken, I remember reading somewhere that this is the end? Well, maybe the manga-readers can clarify this for me=)

Anywho~ This season has been more mature, for lack of a better word. 12 leaves off from 11 where there is again an awesome Morita and Hagu moment! You understand that Hagu is in love with Morita and Morita is in love with Hagu but Hagu chooses Shuu-chan, not because she doesn't love Morita but because she chose drawing really. A strong woman=) At the end of the ep, Morita leaves a fabulously huge pile of cash at Shuu-chan's door and gets him to confess (to Hamabi as well inadvertently!) that he loves Hagu! I'm still not clear whether he loves loves Hagu (is it ok?!) but I'm getting the feeling that's the sort of love we're dealing with here.

Especially when 12 opens with Ayu in shock, confronting Shuu-chan. Mayama flies in from Spain, having heard the news from Tange-sensei. Later when Ayu and Mayama talk, she questions whether she may have done something unnecessary in bringing Morita into the picture. She thought Hagu was in love with him but she chose...Shuu-chan? Mayama sagely says that Hagu is in love with Morita, but perhaps her purpose in life is not love, but to accomplish something. And we know this; art is Hagu's life. Rika and Shuu-chan have a moment when she visits their old place that he is leaving due to his Hagu-rehab-induced sabbatical.

Kaoru is looking for a house, and it turns out to be his and Morita's childhood abode. It has been leased for next to nothing to the family of the man he took revenge on by ejecting him out of their father's old company. He sees their family together-ness and realises that this is Morita and Shiroyama's doing and I think, comes to terms with what really matters in life. He calls up Shiroyama and tells him he's coming back. And Morita walks in to the cafeteria (?) to see him eat kare, what their father used to celebrate with=D Later that night, they talk into the early hours of morning at their secret base. Morita says he plans to join Peter Lucas' company, that he enjoys it there and tells of how happy their team is. Kaoru asks what of the girl i.e. Hagu? Morita talks of what she said to him, of how she is a strong woman who saw that he was on the verge of abandoning everything (during that super MoritaxHagu moment!!=D) and tells him not to run away, even if it's easier. That she will watch him...forever. Something about that makes a guy feel he has to do his best, Morita says. As light filters through their blinds, both men start to understand what their father meant about heading to the light.

At Shuu-chan's place after spring has come, the gang are together minus Morita. Takemoto and Hagu have graduated and they are watching a tv show starring Peter Lucas and Morita. They talk of how this is the last time they'll be together, what with Takemoto leaving to join the temple restorers, and there is an awkward silence. Hagu and Takemoto are sent out for ice-cream and the remaining 3 express how close they came to tears. On Takemoto's bike, he and Hagu talk and he assuages Hagu's fears that she won't be able to return anything to Shuu-chan. He says Shuu-chan is a strong man and what he needs he will find. She says that the temples he will be restoring are very lucky. The next day, it is Takemoto aboard the Shinkansen to Morioka. Hagu shows up with a furoshiki containing...something. Takemoto greets her at the door of the train and hugs her. The train leaves. He opens the furoshiki and there are pancakes/sandwiches. He lifts a slice to see a spread of honey with a four-leaved clover in the centre. He lifts the next layer and the next, and he spots a four-leaved clover adorning the centre of all the slices. Takemoto is moved to tears and finds an answer to the question that has been grappling him. Is there meaning to a failed love? Is something that will disappear the same as something that never existed? Now he knows, there is a meaning. There was a meaning (in his heart?) and he's glad he fell in love with Hagu=)

Sigh~ And owari, to the best of my knowledge. The seiyuu for Takemoto did a pretty good job (his original seiyuu was involved in an accident) but it was a little weird, trying to get used to the different voice. The closing scenes show what goes on to happen. Mayama and Rika happy in Spain. Ayu seems to be moving on with Nomiya =D =D =D Kaoru seems to have got his mojo back and Morita is still the CG artist with Peter Lucas' company (check out his and Kaoru's identical grins!=D) Shuu-chan is overseeing Hagu's recovery. She is working with clay like the doctor said would help her in her recovery. And Takemoto is working with the temple restorers he met while on that long solo soul-searching bike ride he embarked on last season. He says that while memories will come to fade, that one memory of all of them searching for a four-leaved clover together will forever remain a bittersweet one for him... *sigh* I feel like I'm letting go of someone close! But I think that this is the end. It says end and they have that credit thing after that which I can't recall them doing for last season. Plus, I'm not sure where they can go from there anyway. Ahh well, we'll see... And it was an awesome journey=D