Hitohira ep08 -  一人じゃない
The day of performance has come…

The arts festival is finally here and the students are excited, the main event held at hall is none other the drama performances by both drama and drama research club. Before the performance starts proper, the members have to help out for their class activities. For Kayo and Asai, their class were involved in some maid cafe. Asai was embarrased to be in the maid costume while Kayo-chan was pretty bold and daring. The students saw the cute looking Asai and starts to surround her, as usual, she gets nervous again. Luckily, Kai appeared and protects her (awww.so sweet). Kayo and the others look and joked about them. Nono appeared along with Risaki and Takashi, she grabbed Asai and rushed to the hall to get a peek on how the drama club is faring. Asai noticed Chitose was on the stage as well and her performance was good. This made Asai to start to lose her calm as she grow more and more nervous.

As the club members prepares to dress up and gets ready for their turn, Asai stones on the chair as her nervousness starts to overcome her. Luckily, Risaki calms her down telling her she is not alone and tells her that escaping from herself will only leave her with nothing but bad memories. Asai calms down and starts to believe in herself and her fellow mates around her. An unexpected visitor turns up in the club room - Mirei.

The ultimate worry is not with Asai though but rather on Nono, everyone is aware of her health condition and yet she is going to appear on the stage and project her voice to the audience. Takashi believes that a backup plan is needed if Nono loses her voice. Asai is confident (wow) that they will be handle the situation by reacting accordingly if Nono loses her voice. Risaki agrees and suggests Nono to give an obvious hint when she lose her voice. Mirei listened to them and left shortly, Nono noticed it and outside the room, she thanked Mirei for visiting her. The performance prepares to start, Kayo is worried for her best friend and hopes she will be alright. Mirei approached her and tells her to have faith in Asai as there is nothing much they could do now but to believe in her. The curtains starts to undraw as Asai stands on the stage.

All seems well but Asai’s voice was not loud and she wasnt talking properly. When it was Nono’s turn to talk, she remains quiet while walking slowly towards Asai and gave her a slap on the face as if it was part of the performance. The members that it was not in the script and  realised that it is an “obvious” hint that Nono had lost her voice. Asai starts to panic..

Nono remains calm on the stage but in her mind, she was pretty devastated and asks herself why this would happen at such a crucial time of the performance. She starts to think about her club members who went through the times with her. Risaki, Takashi, Kai and Asai were her dearest friends who gave confidence to Nono and now all seems lost as she is unable to project her voice. She starts to think about the words Mirei had told her - to give up on drama performance. She disagrees as she loves drama dearly and those were the precious times that her dearest friend, Mirei had gave her the determination to fight on and continue to be involved in drama despite her health.

Asai knows the burden now rests on her shoulders, Nono’s determination drove a boost of confidence for Asai and with that, she takes a deep breath and projects her voice loudly, the audience looked in awe as Asai finally shows her true talents. The club members were happy for her as well.

Kayo was very happy that Asai finally made it and was able to project her voice out with such confidence, everyone was happy for her. The episode ends while a different Asai stands on the stage, ready to take on the coming parts of the show. Will she be able to make it ? ;)

Yet another nice episode of Hitohira, pretty loved the scene when Asai musters her confidence and speak out loud. Development of the plot is not much as it concentrates on what happen during  the preparations  and start of the show. Nono lost her voice now and I wonder how is she going to handle the later parts of the performance? Pretty curious if the makers of this anime will show how the story of this performance gonna end. Gambatte Asai Mugi !