We’re already at the penultimate episode of Mix.  And more than likely ever, if I were betting my own money on it.  That’s a sad thought, because this story still has legs.  There’s a lot to do here, and Adachi-sensei is the guy to do it.  He’s not someone who hurries, which is why his series are as compelling as they are.  But being unhurried on a weekly basis is a little different than doing so on a monthly one.  And the calendar makes no allowances for anyone.  We’ll still have hope when this season ends, but that’s different from expectation.

In the eternal tug of war between past and present that’s the spine of Mix, the past has strongly asserted itself these last two episodes.  And that’s not surprising considering what just happened.  We have Shouhei, who seems to be finally coming to grips with his past even if not with remembering it.  He’s terrorizing his old boxing club, and he heads off to meet Nishimura-san and learn what he can from him.  Isami seems keen to keep his son from hearing certain things about his youth, especially where a certain young lady is concerned.

Of course the main  focus here is on the Tachibana house, as it should be.  It’s both frustrating and moving to watch them sleepwalk through their grief.  Suddenly losing someone like this would be difficult for any family, but this one has a complicating factor that makes it even harder.  Maybe it shouldn’t, but it does.  Nagisa-san has stepped in to try and help Mayumi through the worst of it, and thank goodness for that because she’s a real load-bearing wall here.  Nagisa invites her on an onsen weekend, and Haruka reckons that maybe Mayumi will be able to cry in front of her mother, which would be more cathartic than crying alone.

Haruka doesn’t know that Mayumi wasn’t always crying alone, of course.  But that makes things worse in a way, because she feels thee distance between herself and the boy she thinks of as her son, and can’t do anything to close it.  Last week I said “at some point something has to clear the air in the Tachibana house, because this distance between Touma and the others hangs in the air like a miasma, and someone is going to have to take the initiative to clear it”.  And so Otomi does, made easier by the fact that Mayumi is away with Nagisa and thus, Touma isn’t avoiding coming home at night.

“I just need to cry” is a theme Adachi has explored before of course.  And with stunning eloquence too, in the premiere episode of Cross Game.  This isn’t at that level, but it’s very powerful stuff indeed.  Adachi is a writer who grows more restrained as the moment grows more outsized – it’s just his nature.  That said, it can be so frustrating watching so much stoicism on-screen.   You just want someone (especially Tou) to break the facade.   Otomi can cry in front of him, because as she says, she’s “crying for two”.  She refers to the father she lost when she was too young to know what was happening, but she could as easily have been talking about herself and Touma, as he refuses to let her see that (and as far as we know, he hasn’t cried even in private).

This is complicated, of course.  These two are in-love with each other – we can pretend otherwise, but for better or worse that’s how it is.  When Otomi cooks, she cooks for Touma (and Sou hates it).  He says she’s the one person he can’t let see that weakness in him, but in truth he hasn’t shown it to anyone else either.  And he can’t keep going this way – no one can.  Whether it comes out in tears or some other way, his grief and anger over what happened will come out.  Touma has always been a guarded person – now his perceived isolation in the house has made that even more so.

There’s a lot to this, as is usually the case with Adachi.  There’s the Adachi factor, the Japanese character, there’s Touma’s male pride, all that conditioning not to let it show.  And then there’s Touma’s essential nature, which is to internalize and plow ahead.  It was a lot easier for Kitamura Kou, he was ten years old – and even for him it wasn’t easy.  Tou may say Otomi is the one person he can’t show that side to, but in truth I think it’s more likely she’s the only person in the world who can draw it out of him.