It’s the founder’s festival and Ai and Junichi are on a food stall. Business is booming, until two people who are ‘the wandering tea club’ come to ‘test’ taste causing everything to halt. But it the taste is good so all is well.

The two sell-out completely and get a break. So they go to somewhere quiet to eat and relax. But when Junichi asks Ai why she asked if he was free, she takes him and they catch the last bus to some place that Ai won’t tell him. When they get off and they start climbing a hill.

As they get deeper in the smell of sulphur comes wafting about. They then arrive at a natural hot spring. Apparently the hills are owned by Ai’s grandfather so she often comes.

Everything gets a little awkward when they both get into the hot spring. But after a while, Ai comes out with those words that confirm her feelings for Junichi. He accepts her feelings and tells her his own feelings. And as the snow starts to fall they share their first kiss.

Is that it? That was a… poor ending I’d say. Didn’t give me that finished feeling. Ai’s arc was entirely comprised of slow relationship develop. They dragged out the last three episodes because I reckon they could’ve easily fitted all the main storyline parts into one or two episodes. So I didn’t understand why they couldn’t give us some background story about Ai.

I was so disappointed when the first half of the episode was filled with unneeded parts about the founders festival and that drunk teacher. Could’ve easily done without.  And then the second part, the build up to the confession was so long that it also included a small unneeded scene with Sae and Miya in. However I won’t badmouth the confession or the actual ending scene because I thought both were rather pleasant and heart-warming, if only the delivering was better.

So yeah, I don’t get what was with the first half of the episode. A taste test showdown sorta thing? What was that about? And then the drunk teacher and dragging off. Those parts added a tiny bit of comedy, but that was it…

I was quite surprised about the hot spring. When they climbed the hill I thought it’d be a typical awe-inspiring night view of the town they lived in with the many lit lights. But I’m glad it wasn’t, a hot spring was a good idea. Though I don’t know about owning the hill… does that happen anymore? That bit seems unrealistic, but whatever not bothered by it.

Overall, the arc’s disappointed me. It was very slow paced without much going on. Much of what happened in the episodes didn’t have much to do with the storyline and the ending was very ‘empty’. There weren’t any back-story that I wanted which they could’ve been added in if there weren’t so much unneeded scenes. With that said, I did find the entire arc rather sweet and cute. I’m actually struggling to find other positives about this arc. It just didn’t seem complete…

Well let’s continue, Rihoko next. From what I gathered she seems like an airhead so it could be rather interesting. I think she was in the tea making club and reads a lot of dieting books too. Oh and she’s Junichi’s childhood friend. I wonder if it’ll turn out to be the typical childhood friend relationship then.