Sound! Euphonium 3

Episode 5

Sound! Euphonium is no stranger to looping back to past points and plotlines multiple times. It's not just that the school year structure necessitates the same festivals, competitions, etc., coming back routinely. Students regularly initiate discourse over elements like auditions. It can get to the point of feeling like overt repetition. In this episode, the conversation with Kuroe turns to her apparent worries over causing discordance by auditioning and potentially taking away a slot from someone seen as more "deserving" by the club. It's impossible to ignore the feeling of having been here before. This issue has come up repeatedly in Euphonium—the key difference now is that it may directly impact Kumiko herself.

Some initial teasing for this episode made me think it might fully elaborate on Kuroe, but it looks like that will have to wait. This is an episode directly about Kumiko, though, to be sure, the mysterious Mama does factor into things in key ways. Kumiko, as she often does, struggles with questions about her future. She's making the classic anime move of procrastinating on filling out her post-graduation plans form. Her eye toward the band's future is focused on her presidential duties and broadly managing all the member issues rather than concern about her place. Early in this episode, there's a terrifically animated moment where Kumiko turns to answer a prompt from her father, perfectly capturing the straining awkwardness when you know your parent will ask you a loaded question about your plans. She is putting things off, and she knows it. But as this season has shown, the future bears down, whether we want it to or not.

The cyclical events from the past, crossed with the certainty of the future, characterize much of Kumiko's internal conflict in this episode. The implicit looming threat of Kuroe embodies several of those parallels—she asks Kumiko to attend the Agata Festival, to which Kumiko lies about her plans to decline, mirroring her similar shooting down of Shuichi back in the first season. It indicates Kumiko's avoidance of confrontation, both of other people and her future. It also speaks to her potentially regressing to her previous self, something she discusses later in this episode. The implication, however, from Kuroe's intrusion on Kumiko's practice session to her intercutting on Kumiko's notes and remarks on playing the solo with Reina, seems pretty clear: Kuroe could usurp Kumiko's place playing alongside Reina, something our heroine might finally find herself compelled to fight for.

Because it turns out the biggest classic Euphonium plot point back in the spotlight this week is the gosh-darned Kumiko/Reina relationship. Alright, I've already discussed this in a TWIA column, so not to relitigate it too much, but I get frustrated with the Sound! Euphonium anime's failure to commit to clarifying a proper romantic attraction and the relationship between Kumiko and Reina. The framing, regardless, makes it impossible for me to read it as anything but. This episode doubles down on that, with both girls declining dates to the festival, with Reina inviting Kumiko directly over to her house for the evening instead. Beyond this series' usual cyclical stylings, it comes off as a proper call-back to the legendary eighth episode of the first season. Hazuki and Shuichi even reconnect in the context of the festival, with her razzing him for not getting to go there with Kumiko. Get his ass.

For all the other immobility Kumiko is enforcing on her future out of uncertainty, going from a mountain-top hike with Reina to intimately moving into her home represents the one place she allows herself progression. As the one who initiates this, Reina comes off as more explicit about her plans: she's the one who invited Kumiko to her house, and she keeps non-too-subtly pushing Kumiko to go to music school. Reina's decisiveness has always been at the behest of others in her life, whether that's Taki or Kumiko, so in this case, it feels like she needs her gal-pal to confirm she'll continue onto music school with her so she can finalize that step herself. Kumiko, being Kumiko, doesn't necessarily get it until the very end. Just like the epiphany she had way back before the beginning of the series, she realizes she can conceptualize having a future goal, so long as it's contextualized through Reina.

That lays out the trajectory I speculated on a few paragraphs ago: Kuroe threatening Kumiko's playing with Reina (which Reina bluntly says she prefers) could be what pushes Kumiko to realize she can be personally competitive over something. It's not just about taking the band to the Nationals and winning, it's about playing the soli at the Nationals with Reina. Driving each other, planning their future together, that is romantic, and the how and why of whether Sound! Euphonium will or won't commit to that is a question for its future. In context, however, with this specific episode contextualizing how the seeds of its future lie buried in its past? It is tight thematic storytelling. Some repetitious elements might seem frustrating, especially after so many years of this show. But they pay off effectively and set up for even further cumulative payoff. Unlike Kumiko, Sound! Euphonium already has its plans figured out.

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Sound! Euphonium 3 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Chris was in drama rather than band in high school, but he presumes the dynamics were similar. You can catch what he's conducting over on Twitter, or push your way into the orchestra pit that is his blog.