It’s not as though the penultimate episode of Just Because answered a whole lot of its internal questions – the main job here was obviously to set up the finale to do that.  But perhaps the most pressing question does seem to have been answered – there will be an Episode 12 as originally planned, and apparently it will air on television next week.  That was nothing like a sure thing based on anime precedent, so it represents a considerable relief to me – I’ve really come to like this series a lot, and I want to see it get the resolution it deserves.

It’s more than “like” for me, though – I would say I admire Just Because, and that’s a term I use quite consciously here.  I admire its accomplishments as a narrative construct, of course, but that’s not much different from liking it.  No, what I admire is its accuracy in its depiction of its characters at this stage of their lives, and its trust in the audience to hang with what it’s doing (a trust which, based on the reaction, has been only partially justified).  This series is trying to do something quite different than the vast majority of teen drama in anime, and in the main succeeding quite handsomely.

Accuracy is something I value quite highly in these sorts of shows, not least because it’s so rare in them.  One of the reasons I loved Tsuki ga Kirei as much as I did is because it accurately depicted what final-year middle schoolers are like (which almost never happens in anime) – there was an authenticity to the characters that was unmistakable.  And I see that with Just Because as well – the way it portrays these adult-sized children on the cusp of the great abyss of adulthood is incredibly authentic.  These are not oversized rugrats or underaged adults – they’re 18 year-olds struggling with what it means to grow up and let go of the precious entrapments of childhood.  Just look at the faces of the exam-takers, listen to the tense silence in the exam halls – dramatically speaking it’s a thing of beauty.  This is what being eighteen is really like – it’s worry and uncertainty and a gnawing sense of nostalgia that never quite goes away.

No matter what happens with the romantic entanglements in this series – which really are compelling, no question – it’s this side of Just Because that will always resonate most strongly with me.  And one of the reasons the romance does work, I think, is that it’s thematically consistent with the larger story this show is telling.  These relationships are built around things which the players know they need to say but haven’t been able to, and they highlight the gulf between life in high school and everything that comes after.  I would argue (and have) that they largely represent a desire to hang on to that which the principals can feel slipping away from them, but that’s an interpretation on my part – and one which doesn’t need to be signed-on to in order for the story to succeed.

I don’t know if things are slipping away from Hazuki and Haruto – there’s a sense that she may be trying to let him down easy more than anything else, and I don’t think it insignificant that even these two spend more of the episode worrying about Mio and Eita than themselves.  As for Ena, she embodies the accuracy in the writing too – because she’s in a different place than the others, at a time in life where a year can feel like a decade.  She’s not driven by the same urge to cling to the past that the others are, because for Komiya youth is still her reality.  Ena behaves very much like a person just that much younger than the other principals, only a short time by the calendar but an eternity by circumstance and maturity.

There’s an obvious glitch in the works here where Eita and Mio are concerned, of course.  He’s been accepted into Joei and is taking the exam to try and follow Mio to Seizan; she’s passed the Seizan exam and is trying to follow him into Joei (the real-life context, by the way, is that Joei is the more respected university).  It’s frustrating as a viewer of course, but not remotely unrealistic as far as I’m concerned – and those who think otherwise are either unusually bold or have short memories, I suspect.  What’s materially changed now, of course, is that mutual friend Hazuki knows the truth thanks to Haruto’s loose tongue – though whether she’ll see it as her place to say anything (and the early evidence is that she didn’t) is an open question.

The ending of this episode is not as easy to interpret as it initially appears, I don’t think.  I don’t imagine there can be any doubt that Mio passed the Joei Exam (and Ena won the photo contest, though that’s of secondary importance).  But while I initially jumped to the conclusion that Eita passed his exam as well – as I imagine most did – thinking on his character’s nature, I’m not so sure.  He seems like the sort of boy for whom a wry smile like that might come unbidden at the news he’d failed the Seizan exam – and of course in terms of the story that might actually be for the best, since it’d leave both he and Mio at Joei.

What happens if the obvious read is accurate though, and both Eita and Mio passed?  Do they even still have the option to revert to their original choice once they learn the truth (I would think so), and if so do they take it?  Or (and this might be the most thematically consistent ending) perhaps each surrenders themselves to fate and they go their separate ways – again, he to her original school and she to his.  Considering the romance isn’t the main point of Just Because (and I’ll keep arguing that till I’m blue in the face) it sure is packing a lot of dramatic punch as we stare down the end of the series.