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One Week Friends (一週間フレンズ。, Isshuukan Friends.) is a currently-airing anime series by Brain's Base (Baccano!, Princess Jellyfish) based on the ongoing manga by Hazuki Matcha. The following is technically spoilers for episode 1, but it's also kind of the entire premise of the show, so I won't put it in tags. Hase Yuuki, our high schooler protagonist, is fascinated by a girl in his class named Fujimiya Kaori, who is ostracized due to her antisocial attitude. Boldly, he asks her to be his friend, and although she refuses, lamenting that she cannot make friends, he persists in getting closer to her. In doing so, he discovers that she is a good deal more personable and cheery than she puts on, but also learns a startling secret: every Monday, she loses any memories she had of people she considers friends. Despite this, Hase resolves to become her friend again every week. The comparisons to a certain terrible Adam Sandler movie are obvious, but so far this show looks to be much better. The pastel, dreamlike art serves to help create a lightly dramatic tone that suggests One Week Friends will be a weekly dose of sugary sweetness. Whether or not we'll delve into a more painfully human investigation of what friendship means and the toll of accommodating Fujimiya is yet to be seen. Streaming Information The series streams on Crunchyroll every Sunday at 12:00PM Eastern Time. Staff Studio: Brain's Base Director: Iwasaki Tarou (Episode director for some epiodes of Eureka Seven, Dennou Coil) Series Composition: Suga Shoutarou (Scriptwriter for some episodes of Ghost in the Shell: SAC, Eden of the East) Character Design: Yamazaki Eri (Key animation for various series, including Silver Spoon, Space Dandy) Characters Hase Yuuki (CV: Yamaya Yoshitaka; no other notable roles) Protagonist. Long fascinated by Fujimiya Kaori, he makes an attempt to reach out to her and become her friend, but is rebuffed. Despite that, he resolves to be her friend anyway--and to do it again every week when she loses her memories. Hase is largely a pushover and indecisive, but very insistent about matters regarding Fujimiya. Additionally, he can be very observant and empathetic to others, at times. Fujimiya Kaori (CV: Amamiya Sora; Liliana in Log Horizon) Heroine. Since she loses any memories of friends every week, she intentionally puts up a cold, antisocial persona in school to ensure that others do not attempt to be friends with her. Despite that, Hase does so anyway, and the two become friends, against her conscious wishes. When not putting up a mask, she is very personable, talkative, and excited to be around others. Kiryuu Shougo (CV: Hosoya Yoshimasa; Reiner in Atack on Titan, Yasuri Shichika in Katanagatari) Hase's best friend. Kiryuu claims it's only because not playing that role would cause him trouble, and prefers to laze around sleeping and not get involved with people or their troubles. He is frank and not particularly mindful of others' feelings--though this may just be a mask of his own over top of a genuine care for others. Yamagishi Saki (CV: Ookubo Rumi; Ichimiya Touko in Servant x Service, Yoshikawa Chinatsu in Yuru Yuri) Another classmate. She's very forgetful, regularly failing to remember people's names, faces, even to bring her books to school. She approaches Fujimiya with an offer of friendship, becoming her first female friend. Lives an easy life of just taking it easy, like you should be when watching this show I will update this post with other characters as they appear. First Impressions Although I don't expect this show to have much in the way of meaningful, thoughtful content, the first two episodes have been pretty drat adorable, and I'll take that. Suspending disbelief about the specificity of Fujimiya's condition can be hard, but having read much of the manga, I can say that its justification isn't anything particularly less believable than other health problems you commonly see in anime--and certainly more believable than some (I'm looking at you, Key). I won't say anything about where the show will go (or indeed, whether it will really go anywhere), but given the first two episodes and the manga, I think we can expect a weekly dose of smile-inducing sweetness, and as long as we get that, I'll be happy. GIFs Outer Science fucked around with this message at 17:43 on May 4, 2014 |
# ? Apr 14, 2014 19:14 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 13:24 |
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i hope they get some allergy medicine soon
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# ? Apr 14, 2014 19:16 |
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I hope there not another shoe just hovering around waiting to drop at any moment
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# ? Apr 14, 2014 20:00 |
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Xelkelvos posted:I hope there not another shoe just hovering around waiting to drop at any moment huh? i am actually interested in seeing where this show goes though. if it is going to stay all sweet or if there is going to be some crazy drama thrown in.
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# ? Apr 14, 2014 20:08 |
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I'm guessing at some point we'll see some of her old friends who warn him of how frustrating things are but anime love will conquer all E: I've only watched ep 1 but why doesn't she use a notebook to remind her of important things e.g. who her friends are
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# ? Apr 14, 2014 20:12 |
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Namtab posted:
Watch episode 2.
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# ? Apr 14, 2014 20:57 |
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Namtab posted:I'm guessing at some point we'll see some of her old friends who warn him of how frustrating things are but anime love will conquer all Even better, why not tattoo it on her body? And yes, I'd say there is a 100% percent chance that old friends will show up and talk about betrayal and futility and everything will get pretty depressing. Hopefully I'm just being overly cynical, as there do exist sugary-sweet mental disorder stories like Mahoraba.
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# ? Apr 14, 2014 20:57 |
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Namtab posted:E: I've only watched ep 1 but why doesn't she use a notebook to remind her of important things e.g. who her friends are For some reason it requires the protagonist's intervention for her to do this. Still, given the weird specificity of her issues, I guess it's also possible that she writes down everything else in her life and we just don't see it.
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# ? Apr 14, 2014 21:13 |
So if they start dating will they be not just friends and she won't forget him?
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# ? Apr 14, 2014 21:58 |
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nielsm posted:So if they start dating will they be not just friends and she won't forget him? Who knows? Scanlation of the manga is only to about chapter 14 or so. It would surprise absolutely no one if that turned out to be how the story ends though.
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# ? Apr 14, 2014 22:04 |
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I want to say that she says why she doesn't write stuff in a journal to remember it but I can't find the specific page.
dudermcbrohan fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Apr 14, 2014 |
# ? Apr 14, 2014 22:11 |
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dudermcbrohan posted:I want to say that she says why she doesn't write stuff in a journal to remember it but I can't find the specific page.
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# ? Apr 14, 2014 22:19 |
Guessing at the finale for the anime: Every episode will be some story of how they never get to visit that crêpe stand, but in the final episode they finally succeed!
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# ? Apr 14, 2014 22:31 |
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The little detail that she also forgets things associated with her friends, i.e. an entire weeks worth of lunches, is pretty interesting and has a lot of implications. Like forgetting entire places or skills. I don't know how far a fluffy little show like this would take that, but I'd like to see it try.
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# ? Apr 14, 2014 22:41 |
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Does she forget school or anything like that or is it literally just friends
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# ? Apr 14, 2014 23:08 |
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It seems to be events where she mainly interacted with people. So just sitting in the class doesn't do anything but if she went to some sort of group study show would forget most of it. I bet we'll get some sort of story about her helping the guy with math,since she is good at it, and it will end with her doing worse on a test or something. Though it seems like she sort of recalled their lunches once she read the journal she just couldn't remember any specifics about him.
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# ? Apr 14, 2014 23:15 |
Paracelsus posted:If I had to guess, it's probably frustrating and painful for her to know that there are happy memories that she should have, and to have them described to her but then to lack any sense of emotional connection to them. It has to suck to know how you ought to feel towards something but to be unable to actually have that feeling, so she might just have decided it was easier to let everything go. Even more straightforward: she was pretty specific about saying she forgets happy memories, so isn't this indirectly implying she remembers bad memories? People make mistakes, but if she keeps resetting all the good memories while the little bad ones add up, this explains why she was so against friends and against writing things down. Not to mention, what happens if things go so well for the week, that it becomes essentially one big happy memory? Next week comes by, she's missing a huge chunk of memory, freaks out, starts doubting the written words, etc. There's a lot of space to explore here. edit: uh, I recall the translation saying happy memories, not specifically things with friends, should probably check that. edit: yes, she definitely didn't remember the crepe store. AnacondaHL fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Apr 14, 2014 |
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# ? Apr 14, 2014 23:17 |
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Namtab posted:Does she forget school or anything like that or is it literally just friends It seems to be basically anything having to do with her friends, including any new non-friend related information. So if she went to the movies with Hase, she would forget the entire movie as well as having watched it.
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# ? Apr 14, 2014 23:19 |
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AnacondaHL posted:Even more straightforward: she was pretty specific about saying she forgets happy memories, so isn't this indirectly implying she remembers bad memories? People make mistakes, but if she keeps resetting all the good memories while the little bad ones add up, this explains why she was so against friends and against writing things down. It would be funny if the whole "she's writing down this too?!" bit was because she knew she'd remember that and wrote down "No he's cool don't worry".
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# ? Apr 15, 2014 01:28 |
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This looks interesting. I might follow it.
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# ? Apr 15, 2014 05:11 |
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Dick Spacious CPA posted:i hope they get some allergy medicine soon This reminds me all of Takahaki Shin (Saikano). Every frame was overdone.
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# ? Apr 16, 2014 01:10 |
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I wonder if her memory loss might be a coping mechanism. Maybe something bad happened to one of her friends in the past? That's a totally random guess.
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# ? Apr 16, 2014 05:00 |
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So, a couple things. First, the official website now has (ep 2) a page from Fujimiya's diary to read. Someone on Reddit translated it here: http://i.imgur.com/n3m6fmd.png, and it looks fine to me. I expect every episode will have more. Second, I went ahead and read through all of the manga that's been released, including the parts not yet translated (getting Japanese Kindle to work was a bitch ). There's one pretty glaring issue that had been bogging down the manga in my mind, but I think it'll actually be addressed and resolved--which is big. I doubt we'll get that far in the anime, though. There have also been some interesting changes from the manga to the anime. For example, the crepe store was never closed in the manga. The anime also, if I remember right, glosses over why Fujimiya didn't try keeping a diary. In the manga she mentions she tried it before, but it was too difficult to hide her condition even with it and her friendships fell apart anyway. So it wouldn't have been useful unless someone accepted her condition in the first place, which Hase was the first to do. Anyway, for the people asking about the specifics of how Fujimiya's memory loss works, I wouldn't worry about it right now. We know as much about it as Hase does; when he needs to know more, we'll find out with him.
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# ? Apr 16, 2014 05:31 |
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It takes an above average suspension of disbelief to just accept the premise of the show, but given that, this is cute as all get-out. A diary has sort of power creep issues as well, in addition to the utter disconnect from the events that are recorded in it. Eventually there will be too much stuff to reasonably read up on. I wonder if she re-forgets the diary stories every week, I'm guessing so.
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# ? Apr 17, 2014 22:23 |
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Shere posted:It takes an above average suspension of disbelief to just accept the premise of the show, but given that, this is cute as all get-out. There was a report years ago that I read where it was an interview with a prison that had little to no short term memory and that they would often forget things in a few days out even over night. They kept a notebook where they write all the things down that they did that day but when they went back to read it everything seemed foreign to them. They knew the handwriting was theirs but they felt like someone else wrote in the book not them. At times they wouldn't even believe the stuff in the books and thought that someone else had made it up. I wonder if this show will ever get to that point. Then it'll be all around.
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# ? Apr 18, 2014 00:19 |
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Ef: A Tale of Memories has a girl who can't form long-term memories (bonus: this is actually a thing), and her story is the embodiment of . She constantly writes in her diary, I highly recommend it if anyone's interested in heading down that particular rabbit hole. It also features; great animation, tits, and the most soul-wrenching 5 minutes of any anime ever. Anyway, One Week Friends completely sold me during the last scene of Ep 2. Apparently they're actually going to confront issues head-on instead of tiptoeing around them for episodes at a time? That more than makes up for their ridiculously-plot-contrived version of amnesia.
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# ? Apr 18, 2014 15:35 |
I am really liking this, even if you have to suspend your disbelief quite a bit for the premise to work. Of course there are some really wierd things that can happen with the brain/thinking processes, especially things related to brain damage.
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# ? Apr 18, 2014 15:48 |
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Definite "50 First Dates" vibes. I expect this couple will end up with a child and be on a boat somewhere by the end of the anime with a weekly "catch-up" video for her to wake up to each Monday. The fact that Monday is the magical reset day is kind of suspect. Why not Wednesday or Thursday or some other less convenient day? Exactly what time of the day does this memory reset occur anyway? 4:00am? What if she stayed up all night on the Sunday-Monday transition? Ha! How does she remember her classmates names? You'd expect her to forget them weekly. For that matter, how does she remember what she learned last week in class? Why she didn't keep a daily diary in the first place is a big mystery. I guess this is somewhat answered, but still.... Kind of ridiculous. Since she remembers her mom and dad, weekly, I strongly suspect that as a person becomes more integrated to her personal life, she'll begin to remember them past a week. As a result, our hero will become more important to her and become someone she doesn't forget any more. That's just a guess, though. In episode 2, she does seem to vaguely recall the incidents involving said hero but the hero is blobbed out. I could be wrong in how I interpreted those scenes, though. Still, I think I am going to enjoy this show. I also appreciate how the hero is completely up-front with the girl on his motivations and how she's willing to accept him for who he is inspite of the overall situation.
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# ? Apr 19, 2014 15:51 |
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With episode 3 comes a new page from Fujimiya's diary on the website. Here's a translation. Forgive the stiffness, but this isn't really worth spending the time to make sound nice Kiryuu-kun doesn't speak very kindly of others, and seems to look down on people a lot. He can say whatever rude things are on his mind...it's hard to deal with him. It's a mystery to me why he and Hase-kun are friends. But when I tried talking with him, I think I came to understand a little bit why Hase-kun trusts him. Since he always says exactly what he thinks, he feels like the kind of person you can rely on. A bit scary, though. He's usually sleeping in class, and I've never seen him talk to anyone except Hase-kun. Almost like a "lone wolf" of sorts. He really understands our classmates though, that's amazing. When I told Hase-kun that, he laughed and said that Kiryuu-kun was good at heart, if nothing else. He also said that he'd really be happy if Kiryuu-kun and I were to become friends. *Fried egg recipe for Hase-kun* My family prefers the taste of soy sauce, but Hase-kun said his family prefers sweet things. I think it's really fitting for him to have a sweet tooth. Gotta say I'm not really feeling Hase's voice acting though. I get that he's supposed to be kind of pathetic, but in making him sound that way, some scenes that would otherwise be kind of adorable come off as cringeworthy.
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# ? Apr 20, 2014 18:13 |
Dan7el posted:The fact that Monday is the magical reset day is kind of suspect. Why not Wednesday or Thursday or some other less convenient day? Exactly what time of the day does this memory reset occur anyway? 4:00am? What if she stayed up all night on the Sunday-Monday transition? Ha! The obvious implied reason is that her "childhood event" that caused this condition either happened during that time or was a weekly occurring thing.
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# ? Apr 20, 2014 20:01 |
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Those last words of the episode, that next episode title. Relambrien posted:With episode 3 comes a new page from Fujimiya's diary on the website. Here's a translation. Forgive the stiffness, but this isn't really worth spending the time to make sound nice Thanks for this. It's really nice to get that alternative perspective afterward. Relambrien posted:Gotta say I'm not really feeling Hase's voice acting though. I get that he's supposed to be kind of pathetic, but in making him sound that way, some scenes that would otherwise be kind of adorable come off as cringeworthy. I dunno, I like it. He doesn't come off as pathetic so much as not quite comfortable in his own skin, like he's not quite sure what he wants or whether he's doing the right thing. That's part of why I like him, though--he doubts and he frets and he fears but he keeps pushing forward and trying. There's no "doushio" dithering, even if he's unsure; the scene in the washroom sort of counts, but he gets it together again and keeps on. Even not talking to Kiryuu for a while seems to be because he always planned to bring him along on Monday to show him that her memory loss is real.
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# ? Apr 20, 2014 22:13 |
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"Hey Kiryuu, want to be our official third wheel?"
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# ? Apr 20, 2014 22:16 |
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Oh no, next episode is going to be rainy.
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# ? Apr 20, 2014 23:16 |
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18 drat grams of sugar in a single egg holey poo poo how does Hase still have his teeth?
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# ? Apr 21, 2014 12:36 |
Phobophilia posted:18 drat grams of sugar in a single egg holey poo poo how does Hase still have his teeth? Two eggs, but still, that is a lot of sugar.
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# ? Apr 21, 2014 13:56 |
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drat I like Kiryuu. Seems to just have the most reasonable reaction to everything, and in Episode 3 he didn't continue to suspect Fujimiya after the hallway scene at the end, which is good. Hase could learn a thing or two from him. Liking the show so far, especially because it seems to actually be going somewhere. When I saw the blurb for this show I was expecting 12 more episodes of Acchi Kocchi or Kotoura-san, really glad it seems to be above that.
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# ? Apr 21, 2014 14:41 |
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Phobophilia posted:18 drat grams of sugar in a single egg holey poo poo how does Hase still have his teeth?
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# ? Apr 21, 2014 18:15 |
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This is probably the only 'cute' anime show I've ever been able to stomach. It must be because despite the ridiculous beginning premise all the characters and interactions have been genuine. I still don't like the constant blush everyone has, but it's a tiny hurdle compared to something like oh all these girls love this skinny nerd. fake edit: This show is adorable
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# ? Apr 21, 2014 20:21 |
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Another week, another diary entry: Last week, I lost something extremely important to me. But now I have it back, and it's thanks to the tireless effort Hase-kun took to find it for me. After I got home, I took a look inside this important thing. Written there were many things dear to me, and when I finished reading it I felt a warmth in my heart. What happened today has become something I will treasure. And Hase-kun, who found what I lost, is also extremely important to me. I wonder how he even knew that I lost my diary, though? And also that it was so important to me, it's like he knows everything about me. But I'm fine with that. I'd like to know more about him, too. Contrary to what I wrote last week, I really warmed up to Hase's VA this episode. He pulled off awkward kid with jealousy issues pretty well. Kiryu continues to be a great character, in that you can tell that he truly is annoyed with Hase's awkwardness but is sympathetic to him all the same--I'm sure that's relatable to most people and I haven't seen anything else that really manages it.
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# ? Apr 27, 2014 18:44 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 13:24 |
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Sickeningly sweet as usual but it kind of annoyed me that they didn't really make up, she just forgot about him being a jealous idiot. I know that her moping around and visiting the river and generally being unhappy meant they they would have anyway, but still.
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# ? Apr 27, 2014 19:30 |