Let’s roll on into the next ef – A Tale of Memories! There’s usually a pretty significant break on my end between watching these episodes, but right now I’m carrying on the momentum from yesterday’s writeup and rushing right into episode eleven. The show’s last episode didn’t feature the Chihiro-Renji story at all, and instead focused on resolving a great deal of Hiro’s conflicts. Having slept with Miyako and been confronted by Rei, Hiro was finally forced to make a definitive choice about his life course. Ultimately, while acknowledging he really had loved Kei in the past, he chose to actually pursue Miyako.
This choice fits perfectly in line with ef’s overall heart-on-sleeve infatuation with living for your art, and turning yourself into a monument to creativity. While Rei consistently urged moderation and making sure to balance his work and school life, Miyako was absolutely ready to join him in self-immolating for some wild ideal. I frankly don’t think picking Miyako was the healthy choice for Hiro, as not only is Miyako herself an incredibly unstable person, but Hiro has already demonstrated that pushing too hard in his career has left him burnt out and exhausted. But Miyako is still probably the “right” choice for this story, which overall takes an extremely romantic view of the artist’s plight. And the actual evocation of Hiro’s choice was one of the show’s standout moments so far, a thrilling mix of well-built character turns and evocative aesthetic tricks. Of course, we’ve still got two episodes left and a sequel besides, so I can’t imagine Hiro and Miyako have reached any sort of happily ever after quite yet. Let’s see what episode eleven brings!
