透明な夜に駆ける君と、目に見えない恋をした。

It is hard. I had two thoughts when she said she wanted to die. First was I hope she hasn't let her Mom hear her say that. Second is that makes it even harder to beat. Before some one says it yes I know it is hard to go through it. It can make both sides feel and sound selfish. How can you want me to continue when I feel like death daily. The other side is why don't you want to try to be around for those that love you. Very hard topic and personal for many people.

Not exactly the same in the example I'm gonna give but my dad is a pulmonary biologist doing research on how second hand smoke affected flight attendants before they banned smoking on planes. I grew up with him showing me his research. He even showed me actual lungs that were fucked up by cancer. Yet I still smoke. (I find further irony in it because his baby brother is the one who got me into smoking. Like, not intentionally, more like he raised me and I could smell the cigarettes on him after he smoked and it just felt nostalgic because he was the father figure my dad wasn't lol).

Well, you gotta give our bro Kakeru a break too. He has pure intentions, but remember that he was also a loner before all of this, and everything is a first for him too. Now, the first person he’s ever liked is pushing him away, just like what his dad did to him, while also dealing with his girl dying from cancer. But instead of just giving up and fading away into his corner, which his older self probably would have done, he’s now fighting back with what little he has. His comment might come a bit off handed but it was out of good intention.

she has about a 5% chance to survive the year Me as a gacha player: "Wow! Those are pretty great odds! You hear that guys? She will make it through! 😭" So she wasn't acting, huh? Trauma induced memory loss? So either the fireworks or the confession video will trigger her memories by the end of next episode or the one after that (since those were the last two things on her bucket list), then we have an episode where they all make up and spend time together again. God, waiting each week for the next episode is going to be brutal but we are so close to her getting her memories back.

I'm imagining now that the moment she saw the confession video was after she'd gotten the terminal diagnosis and it shocked her so much she destroyed her phone and mentally forgot because she couldn't handle the fact that her feelings were returned by the guy she loved and she'd never get to experience a real romance with him. It's probably why she's so insistent he "forget" about her and leave her because she can't handle having him around as a reminder of what she's lost and trying to forget herself because she's lost hope.

Some thoughts on Koharu: If she's even having memory loss with her mother, then she's most likely not faking it and it really was a psychological breakdown It must be really creepy to have some unknown man who claims to know you following you around. And her memory loss seems to be the kind where she's unaware she has any gaps in her memory, so she can't even be sure he's telling the truth about that Her breakdown at the end felt like whiplash after how cheerful and optimistic she was in previous episodes. It could be the result of her deteriorating condition, that she always felt that way and hid it, or the consequence of losing so many of her happier memories. But tbh, it's more surprising it took this long for her to have a justified crashout. And the trigger of "just 2 more months" is a pretty long deadline when your clock is ticking that fast.

What a painful episode. I admire how strong Koharu's mom is. With her daughter being blind, I can't help but imagine the pain she is going through. However she does not want to cry since she knows it will only weaker her daughter's resolve. Assuming that what the doctor says is true, that Koharu is blocking her own memories, and her amnesia is psychological in nature, her response to Kakeru's invitation is expected. With her condition worsening from time to time, she almost gave up living, as what she said about wanting to die. With one of her wishes being to see fireworks, Kakeru essentially gives her hope that things might get better for the next two months. But, Koharu is already in agony, and dreaming to recover might be much more painful than what she is suffering right now. Is Kakeru's invitation insensitive? The invitation itself might not be, but the way he opened it could be. But Koharu's reaction in the end is quite expected. PS: Choosing a Monday primetime sched for this painful series is certainly a choice, huh? What a painful day to start the week. This could be a great Friday or weekend series.

Also that she on some level blames herself thinking that she's at fault for birthing Koharu with a body that's failing on her, even though there was nothing she could have done. But we really see how much Koharu takes after her mom in all the best ways and it's clear she came from a loving home. I have a feeling that the "amnesia" came after watching the confession video. Which is why she wants Kakeru gone from her life NOW when she's caught up in how hopeless her situation is. It's good of Kakeru that he's trying to inspire/motivate her again but it's easier said than done in the situation she's in. But there's still that 5% chance...

The time line i think is she kisses him and then after that has an event that puts her in the hospital they find the cancer is back and bad, she then gets the video after she gets told she is just about done and w/e she does for amnesia is then/smashes phone etc. I know anime likes to have these fantastical i locked my memories away things so i assume that is the plot device they are using just to make the story.

Yeah, show/book is good, but there’s a few of scientific and narrative issues with how this story could play out a bit differently (and honesty a bit better), both later on in the story and in real life. But, I also understand poetic license is going to be used (and well, show’s still good) and Japanese writers seem to be required by law and under pain of firing squad to “Japanese writer” all over our hearts. Shrug, I guess?

Oh, the hysterical amnesia I totally understand. I think that’s a great character aspect that really reinforces that she loves him beyond mortal bounds as well. No, what I’ve beefed with since the novels debuted is how some aspects of the way her disease and its progression is treated, especially later on, in relation to her being a symbolic totem of hope, triumph, lux vitae, psyche and pneuma, and unio mystica central to the narrative and themes of the story. Especially in such a blatant, direct, in-your-face manner as this story is choosing to go with — on top of the typical Japanese penchant for melodrama and more surface-level characterization styles (the spunky blind girl who like fireworks is the ‘divine light/light of life’ in the romance story! Get it? Get it?!). As for scientific aspect that could bolster these themes and characterization (and give us more volumes to read or watch!), I feel it gets very hand-wavy with current-to-near-term medicine, research and emergent technologies for the sake of preserving a boilerplate —for lack of a better term — genre formula. But despite its flaws overall, I love the story (and don’t appreciate it sending me into don’t love how it’s sent me into an existential spiral for the past week!)

Kakeru spent hours trying to decipher what Koharu had written, they were simple things anyone could do, yet they were part of the process of overcoming her struggles. We met her mother, definitely a strong person who likely realizes Kakeru shares a close bond with her daughter. I hope she appears more often. The ending was tough once again, but you can see how Kakeru prepared himself for this situation, he has really grown since the first episode.

Yeah, that alone felt weird last time which is why I started paying attention to stuff like this a little more with this show. After the doctor scene this episode, it really became clear to me that this is just the show's way of doing its drama - get the real (or rather, logistical) issues out of the way to focus on the emotion and drama of the human interactions. It felt a little jarring at first since the interactions and Kakeru's initial reservations of how to act around Koharu felt very real (speaking as a disabled guy who has been on both sides), so I expected real consequences for the actions after the cancer reveal. But I've come around on the show's "selective realism". (also because it weirdly helps me cope with my own medical history, so I'm very biased, admittedly)

Oh yeah, I felt the same. And, having been through this story through it’s other releases and this stuff in real life myself like you, it seems, and as a JD/MChD professional who interacts with this discipline of medicine and adjacent technology from many sides, just keep in mind as the narrative unfolds where and wonder where the heck modern advancements we’ve made — like even within the past week, literally — and the fact that low-grade astroblastoma, which is what Koharu’s tumor in her head likely was, is extremely survivable, would totally make this drama a nonissue (and probably make for a better story and moral). It’s also super frustrating because the story does itself a disservice and leaves so much on the table! It’s always terrible to do (otherwise good) stories as these heartbreak-athons. Compounded by the fact basic check up screening would have cut out the last third to half of this story, possibly. That’s because when a character is a trauma sponge it removes agency from the characters when they just degrade into reacting to bad things happening instead of making active/proactive choices, fatigues the audience by replacing and deflating real narrative tension and actual high stakes and their payoff, hollows out the emotional themes and beats by not showing the slow hardship of recovery — and the valuable scenarios to build upon, and causes a poverty of theme by reducing complex social or personal struggles to gratuitous shock value as opposed to meaningful messages. This is also frustrating because it ends on a super important point of the story, too. Like, a third of the way through the top of the narrative bell curve. But I’ve noticed this happen in several Japanese properties before and, frankly, it’s never not infuriating.