Kimi no Iru Machi used the flashback route to tell this part of their story. It was effective in many ways and could bode well for the future path of the story. There are some issues with the show, but it is still a story I adore, so I am really enjoying it.
Impressions: The art in this series is frustrating. At times it is fantastic, especially the background art, but the character animation is spotty and sometimes jarringly bad. The best aspect of the art in this week’s episode was the backgrounds. There was a consistent soft focus to the backgrounds in the flashback parts of the episode, with a watercolor-like quality that really made the scenes more dream-like. There were also several still drawings used to enhance this effect. It made for a moody, atmospheric episode, which fits the story with the way it is being presented. However, the suspect character animation that I noticed last week, but didn’t mention 
due to the relative lack of stuff to animate in the episode was more glaring in this week’s entry. There were many times that the animation seemed off, including minor things like off-model character designs when shown at a distance, which happen in most shows, but also some spots where it was just poorly done, like the part near the end of the episode where Nanami comes running out of the bath and she seemed to jerk up and down for some reason. One area where the animators seem to have been successful is in depicting small changes in facial expression in order to express emotion. This is something that Seo-sensei uses to great impact in the manga, so it is good that they have retained this style in the anime. (See the recap section for a good example.)
However, most everything else about the show is going very well so far. I really love the music used in the show, and, unlike many comments I have seen around the web, I love the voice actors. In particular, Yoshimasa Hosoya’s Haruto is perfect, with the right amount of gruffness and, for lack of a better term, rural character. Also standing out, now that we have had a week with her actually speaking a few lines is Megumi Nakajima’s Yuzuki. She is spot on. Of course, these two are reprising their roles from the OVA, so they are familiar with the material.
Plot wise, I see what the director is doing with this story at this point, and I approve wholeheartedly. In episode one, he start with Haruto’s seemingly inexplicable move to Tokyo chasing after a girl who cut off contact with him, dumped him (through a letter), and says she has a new boyfriend. Why would anyone do this? Well, it all has to do with the kind of person Yuzuki is. So in episode two, he takes us back to when they first met and shows us one example of what Haruto knows is one of Yuzuki’s driving personality traits: she puts other people’s feelings ahead of her own, without fail. With that, let’s head to the recap…
Episode Recap:
We begin with some playful banter between Rin and Haruto, with Rin even going so far as to suggest that he try stalking her, since her sister doesn’t want him anymore. When Haruto presses on, she gets a little angry and tells him that he is going to make her sister miserable, and wonders if that is really why he is here, revenge. Haruto indicates that he doesn’t want to play games and kind of scares her a little. She says she will go get her sister. When she goes inside, Haruto see’s movement in one of the upstairs windows. It is Yuzuki, peeking out at him. The look on her face is positively painful. She seriously did not want to see Haruto, but you get the distinct feeling that it isn’t because she hates him, but exactly the opposite.
[Note the subtle change in Yuzuki's face in the 2nd and third images. Very effective use of facial expressions to show how sad/worried she is!]
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Yuzuki moves to Hiroshima from Tokyo and lives with Haruto’s family. Their fathers are old friends and her father is originally from Haruto’s rural Hiroshima town. Since they will be in the same class in school, Haruto’s mom suggests that he take Yuzuki to see the school the day she arrives. He agrees grudgingly, thinking to himself that she is such a bother and grousing that she can’t even ride a bike, so he’ll have to take her places, since it is far to long to walk. When they approach the 
convenience store that is on the way to school, Haruto sees Nanami Kanzaki, the girl he has had a crush on for the past three years but has never had the courage to even talk to, coming out of the store. He pretends that there is a problem with the bike, and hopes she won’t notice them. She does, and Yuzuki trots off to meet this beautiful, short haired girl who looks like she is about her age. Haruto freaks about Yuzuki announcing that they are “living together”, and makes sure Nanami knows that it is a favor to her parents.
On the way home, Yuzuki asks Haruto if, perchance, he likes Nanami? His reaction tells her that she was spot on. He then asks her why she moved from Tokyo to Hiroshima. Her answer is that she visited the town a few years earlier and really liked it, so she wanted to come here. His response indicates that he doesn’t really buy that as the whole reason, but she indicates that she isn’t going to give him more detail. When they get 
home, Yuzuki is looking at the fish in the koi pond and falls in. Haruto brings her a towel and gets a nice glimpse of her form through the shower door, much to his embarrassment. When she gets out, she asks Haruto to take her 
to the store. He asks her what she needs to buy and she is very reluctant to tell him, but eventually whispers it to him: underwear. He takes her to the store, believing that she had no underwear to put on after falling in the pond and his old friend Takashi rides along on his bike. Haruto is rather rude to him, in order to keep him from riding next to Yuzuki and seeing up her skirt. After they leave the store, she asks Haruto if he doesn’t want his friends to see them together. He says that it would be bad, for both of them. She doesn’t really understand why, then a breeze blows and her skirt 
flies up, showing that she is wearing panties after all. Haruto stares for far to long at them, getting a well deserved convenience store bag to the face for his troubles. Yuzuki finds it hilarious that he thought she wasn’t wearing any panties, telling him it was that she didn’t have clean ones to wear tomorrow because her cloths haven’t arrived yet. However, she thanks him for trying so hard to protect her.
On the way to school, Haruto parks at the convenience store, making them walk to school from there so he doesn’t have to deal with the embarrassment of riding double all the way to school with her. He also asks that she not tell anyone that they will be going home together. At school, she meets Haruto’s other childhood friend, Akari, and is surprised that there is only one class per grade in their high school. After school, he goes to meet her at 
the convenience store, but she isn’t around. Nanami comes out of the store and they talk about Yuzuki and about how Haruto would always look away from Nanami when they were in middle school, making her think he disliked her. She says that she wants to become better friends now that they are in high school. Then they hear Yuzuki scream. She is back by the sakura trees and some bugs were crawling on her. When he asks her why she was back there, she says it was because Nanami came and she didn’t want her to see that they were going home together. Nanami comes to make sure she is OK and Yuzuki has an idea. She asks Nanami to go with her to the local Hot Springs bathhouse.
At the bathhouse, Yuzuki is very exited and she asks some embarrassing questions to Nanami about things like cup-size. (And there is some well done placement of objects to prevent having to obscure nudity. Not quite to the level of humor as the bathhouse scene in Hyouka, which I suggest you watch if you haven’t, but it made me chuckle none the less.) Haruto is 
mortified that he can hear everything from the men’s bath. After getting out, Haruto is making airplane noises with a fan and is startled by Nanami. She obviously thinks it is cute and sits down to do it herself. They talk a bit, she gets them drinks, and they appear to be getting along pretty well. Nanami then checks on Yuzuki, since she hasn’t gotten out of the bath yet and it turns out she has passed out because she stayed in too long.
On the way home, Haruto asks why she was so silly as to stay in the bath until she passed out. Yuzuki starts to answer, then asks if it OK if she leans on him for a while. She then tells him that she was working hard to make sure he and Nanami had more time 
to talk. The look on her face as she leans on him tells the viewer that seeing Nanami dating Haruto is the last thing that Yuzuki really wants to happen for herself. It is obvious that she has feelings for him. Yet she was willing to go so far as to put her own health in danger to make him happy by getting him closer to the girl of his dreams.
The scene shifts back to Tokyo and Haruto looking up at Yuzuki’s window. That behavior, Yuzuki’s tendency to put other people’s feelings before her own and even do things that were not only not in her best interest or what would make her happiest, but to do things that were potentially harmful to her at times, in order to make someone she cares about happy. That is the root of the reason why he moved to Tokyo. He was afraid that she was doing something like that again, and if he could help her, he wants to.
