ED Theme: Yasashii by Chata – I am assuming that this is a once only song however I really liked it as after the really sad episode, it didn’t offer the upbeatness of the normal ending but ended in a calm way as some sort of memorial to the happy times that the three of them shared.
Summary: This episode starts with Reiji and his mother having recently passed away. Despite all of the crap he endured, he finally gains his wish and moves away from his abusive father who his mother had done her best to protect him from all his life. He moves to Tokyo where a young woman named Aki is waiting for him as his new carer with her young toddler daughter Rin. The incidents of his past still haunts him as one night when he is by himself, he starts crying about what would have happened if him and his mother ran away and if she would still be alive, however, Rin wanders in and hugs him. From that point on, he starts to change.
He had immense feelings for Aki and at one point when she offered to adopt him, he chose to decline as he was hoping to marry her at some stage. However, there is trouble in paradise. Aki starts to get sick and Reiji is working harder to keep the three of them living. One night however, he decides to go up to Aki who is sleeping with Rin and decides to kiss her which Rin witnesses. In the hopsital, Aki discovers that she has a rare type of cancer (I think) and that there is a great chance she will die without treatment
After a trip at the beach which Reiji takes care of Rin, he finally finds out what was happening to her and that she was getting weaker and weaker. This also shows the only censored scene this episode which you can um… guess with the two of them. When Rin notices something is wrong with Aki, she starts making paper cranes, with the well known belief that making a thousand paper cranes will make a sick person better. However, like the tragic Sadako story, 1000 paper cranes were not made and when Reiji goes home one day, he finds Rin sitting near Aki who is now dead with a small note written in her hand saying, ごめんね (I am sorry). The episode ends here.
Review: As I have mentioned before, this was my favourite chapter in the manga and it remains at this point, my favorite episode in the anime. As with the manga, it is a really sad to see what Reiji had to go through finally finding a happy family to live in and than have it all shattered to pieces. This episode also demonstrated the seriousness of Kodomo no Jikan which is what originally appealed to me and shows that the series is not just a whole bunch of fanservice packed in with censorship.
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