With that said, I think what made this sequence work for me, as opposed to, say, some of the walking during the date sequence in episode 5, is that it created an emotional mood that I wanted to linger in so powerfully. When I was living in Austin, and I wanted to be alone with my thoughts, I would cue up some ambient electronic music on my iPod and take to the deserted streets at nighttime, letting the calm sounds and the atmosphere of a city at rest seep into my soul. It was a meditative, even spiritual experience, and the beginning of this episode captured the essence of that for me. Even deeper than that was the bond between Kasuga and Nakamura that their walking hand-in-hand spoke louder of than words ever could. Unlike so many of the silences in this series, the silences in the final scene of this episode for instance, it was not awkward, it was not tense, it was souls communing in harmony with each other. It spoke of that desire to be together, that having each other by their side was enough for now. When they got to the end and Nakamura turned away towards her home, I felt the reluctance to part from what had just happened. I would have been happy if the sequence had been twice as long, honestly.
