The second pillar of this sad little drama is Kazusa Touma, the girl Haruki loves. Granted, Haruki’s not the only passive protagonist here. Others act and he bends to let them, until ultimately he begins following the flow of his own emotions in a similar, almost passive way. And finally, his tendency to treat everyone similarly is a reflection of his greatest weakness – a propensity to go with the flow, to accept the actions of others and maintain the status quo in opposition to either his own desires or even what might be best for others. That tendency to not take himself seriously isn’t just a humble affect, either – from beginning to end, he really doesn’t think much of himself at all.
Though he’s good at convincing people of things, he is generally oblivious to how they actually feel about him, and remains emotionally blind until the end. Unfortunately for Haruki and everyone who cares about him, that confidence does not extend to matters of the heart. “Shadow am I!/Like a suspicion that’s never confirmed/But it’s never denied/Wolf am I!/No, shadow I think is better/As I’m not something/More like the absence of something.” – Mewithoutyou, Wolf am I! (And Shadow) That public confidence and disarmingly earnest manner wins him the support of the school’s idol, Setsuna Ogiso – as she herself points out (Setsuna is by far the most emotionally intelligent of the trio, and thus any overt revelations about their nature tend to come from her), he treats everyone with the same genial courtesy, which disarms Setsuna in a positive way before she ends up eventually wanting more. His skills naturally lend themselves towards achieving his first dream – playing in a band at the school festival. It’s clear why someone might like him – he’s attractive, seems both confident and earnest, and has a sort of boyish charm that implies he never takes himself too seriously. Haruki’s a fairly impressive guy – though he’s not actively on the student council, his public self-assurance and knack for tackling problems directly and efficiently makes him more or less the council’s default problem-solver. Haruki Kitahara is the first character we’re introduced to, the most common viewpoint character, and the instigator of the first couple plot developments, so we’ll tackle him first.
But that’s enough dancing around the story – let’s take these fuckups one at a time.
That third’s also insecure, too, though, which is the main cause of her own acts of cruelty. They’re also fairly weak and insecure people – or at least two of them are, with the third being enough aware of this to use it as a weapon. They’re friends, and they don’t want to hurt each other, but they want these things more than they want to avoid that. White Album 2 is a story about three characters who all want things. Maybe then we can make a little sense of this sadness.
So let’s skip the essay and get straight to the trial – let’s dive right into the Evangelion 25/26 of this series, and see what makes these damaged teenagers tick. “Whatever you need to make you feel/Like you were the one behind the wheel/The sunrise is just over that hill/The worst is over.” – Cursive, A Gentleman Caller In the end, nobody really wins, and the only question you’re left with is the one the characters ask themselves – where did it all go wrong? It’s a hard show for me to square any real intention on, much less enough of a point to actually write a coherent essay. Nobody learns, everyone suffers, the moral is sadness. White Album 2 is, like, School Days dark. Evangelion is optimistic – it features plenty of hardship, but the message it puts forth about its characters is fundamentally a positive one. Not even Evangelion dim, where cruel things happen to broken people pretty much continuously. White Album 2 has a very dim view of human nature. Don’t even know what to say, but I gotta say it anyway. So, I just watched White Album 2, and holy shit you guys. “My bridge is burned, and perhaps we’ll shortly learn/That it was arson all along/Can we just get home, sleep this off/Throw some ‘sorry’s’ and then/Do it all again.” – Frightened Rabbit, Late March, Death March