Kobato. – 15
After having messed up some origami paper, Kobato tries to apologize to Sayaka, but Sayaka suddenly collapses in front of her. Worried, Kobato rushes over to Kohaku’s house and gets Shuuichirou since he’s a doctor. After examining Sayaka, Shuuichirou diagnoses her with fatigue due to lack of sleep and minor gastritis, and he gives her some medicine. Kobato stays at Sayaka’s bedside until Kiyokazu suggests that she look after the children instead. What gets Kobato out of her funk for the time being is helping the children fold 1000 origami cranes so that Sayaka will get better. After the children go home and Kiyokazu goes off to his part-time job, Kobato returns to Sayaka’s bedside, and, when Sayaka finally wakes up, she apologizes for making Kobato worry. She starts talking about the case where something might happen to her, but Kobato doesn’t want to hear it because it’s too sad.
Kiyokazu then returns and takes over for Kobato, and while back at the apartment complex, Kobato goes to see Chitose. She’s not in though, so Kobato instead tells Chiho and Chise about what happened, and the two girls suggest making rice porridge for Sayaka. They teach Kobato how to do it via a picture, so Kobato goes to the nursery to try, and Kiyokazu finds her failing horribly. He scolds her about it, but that just causes her to break down in tears because she’s concerned about Sayaka dying. Kiyokazu tells her that people don’t die so easily, but Kobato believes that they can, so he comforts her. He also helps her make some proper rice porridge that Sayaka ends up enjoying. In the aftermath, Sayaka gets better, but Kobato doesn’t gain a konpeitou in her bottle. This doesn’t bother her though, and she feels better after having let out her feelings to Kiyokazu.
This turned out to be a much more interesting episode than I thought it’d be. The exhausted Sayaka stuff was decent (and it made me think that she should wear her hair down more because she looks much better that way), but all of the seemingly important bits were about Kobato and how she reacted to it. For once Kobato didn’t gain a konpeitou, and instead there were several hints about her past, including the fact that she doesn’t have all of her memories and that someone important to her died in some unacceptable way. It made me wonder if her goal is to go to heaven to go see or join that person, or something along those lines. The scene between her and Kiyokazu also seemed like it was a big stepping stone in their relationship. Anyway, the end of this episode and the preview for next week appear to indicate that we’re going to be seeing more of the debt storyline and the mysterious man, and hopefully that means more episodes of at least this caliber.