Disk 1 is about beginnings and Disk 2 is about endings. I’d sum up Disk 3 of Sweet Blue Flowers as somewhere between “what does not kill us makes us stronger” and “time heals all wounds.” Disk 3, is, in fact, about growing up and moving on.
Sugimoto’s sister’s wedding has arrived and with it, the house of cards that Yasuko has built must begin to crumble. When she tries to have it all work one last time, Fumi does something that won my wholehearted admiration when I read it the first time – she tells her to get lost. Not like that, of course, Fumi is kind, but firm, telling Sempai to learn to move on gracefully. Which is what Fumi then does.
To move forward, Fumi turns her thoughts backwards, setting in motion the remaining volumes of the manga. Knowing that very shortly the series will come to an end, I wonder if Fumi and Akira can both move on gracefully – and I absolutely hope they will. The end of the anime reminds me that the friendship between them is a good one. I’d hate to see it end.
I do have one complaint. The translation for Fumi’s lines in this last disk lost her “voice” entirely. She sounded exactly like Akira who sounded like Shinobu. In other words, everyone sounded like a 20 year-old guy. Fumi’s language is very pretty – she’s soft-spoken in voice and words. Akira sounding like Shinobu is one thing – she’s kind of mean to him, but Fumi? It could have been worse, but it could have been better.
This anime is beautifully animated, well-acted by some newcomers to the voice acting world. It was strongly written and has pretty much set a standard for Yuri anime for many that is going to be very, very hard to beat.
I’m once again thankful to Nozomi/Rightstuf for bringing it over and to all of you for supporting them and buying the series. Now we need anime to roll around through the current non-Yuri phase and pick up something of interest to us once again. ^_^
Ratings:
Art – 9
Story – 10
Characters – 10
Yuri – 8
Service – 3
Overall – 10
Whether we want to move forward or not, this disk reminds us, the rest of the world will not stop for us. ^_^
If people have friends who need to watch it first to buy, Nozomi/LuckyPenny has all 11 episodes up on Youtube.
Sadly, given that its a localization license for North American release, I’m guessing that the official YouTube stream is North American only. Sometimes one of those licenses are “English Speaking Countries” (US, Canada, UK/Eire and the Rugby Tri-Nations), which allows slightly wider Youtube region access, but that seems to be the exception rather than the rule.