So I guess The Sound of Music isn’t in the public domain yet…

As anime couples go, these two aren’t quite on the God-tier of some of this season’s pairings for me.  But they’re certainly super likable, and they make quite the interesting contrast.  They’re both cheerful by demeanor, but only one of them really means it.  Or, at the very least, one of them has been suppressing his true nature for so long that he’s not sure whether he means it or not.  As Monymous noted in the comments last week, that almost ever-present smile almost never reaches his eyes.

This school play thing is sort of a crucible for Sousuke.  As he notes in his conversation with Chris-kun (loosen up and have an ice cream, Kid) it would actually have been pretty easy for him to say “no”- even as “the guy who always says yes”.  So why didn’t he?  Occam’s Razor suggests he didn’t want to – acting in a low-pressure amateur dramatic seemed like fun to him.  Ririka certainly doesn’t need to find out (though I suspect she will), and frankly, he shouldn’t give a flip even if she does.

As for Mitsumi, her problem is her usual one – she’s playing the workaholic to the point of exhaustion.  I still find her pretty emotionally indestructible, even if she has a rough moment or two like she does here.  She may be, as Sousuke says, like a child always on the verge of tripping and falling over.  But she’s also the one who dusts herself off and keeps smiling (and means it).  That’s admirable, though in some sense it makes her less of a dynamic character than Sousuke or Mika.  I’m not even sure how good a model she is for them, since I don’t think they’re wired to react to events like she does.  But she can be an inspiration at the very least.

It is indeed The Sound of Music the class decides to put on, even under the alias “The Family Singers”.  It’s the tragic young Gardner Johan that Sousuke is drafted to play, opposite Kinomoto-san as the young heroine Emilia (she certainly looks the part).  His singing is nothing special but the acting is obviously no problem for the old pro.  The show is running long and Mitsumi – feeling guilty about having little time to help out her class – agrees to look it over and see if she can suggest any cuts.  That leads to a bit of personal drama for her when she can’t immediately live up to her commitment – which gets the class rep griping about her – with with a little help from John she does her usual Mitsumi routine and shrugs it off.

I liked the way the scenes from “The Family Singers” were depicted as through from an Impressionist painting – I’m not sure there’s any connection there but it’s a fun artistic choice.  It appears that Sousuke’s mom is going to be in the audience (though that will be a surprise to him) and I’m very curious to see where S&L goes with that.  It’s pretty clear that at one time she and he were close.  She and his father obviously fought, but that doesn’t explain why she and Sousuke have seemingly become so distant – to the point where he seems to feel totally estranged from his family (might the little brother be with her second husband perhaps, and Sousuke reminds her too much of her first?).