Review | Kono Oto Tomare! - Chapter 3

 # 3 The koto club is reborn
The koto club needs new members not to be closed. The quota is completed with three friends from Kudo, Sane, Kota and Mittsu, who arrive at the club deceived by the facade of Hozuki.
Kudo tries to approach Hozuki while she helps him with his plectrum (or spikes), but the girl again takes a sharp distance.
Kudo's friends are discovered by the deputy director playing cards at the club. He demands that they play a little, but Hozuki appears to convince him to give them a month to prepare a presentation for the whole school.

 After hearing the deputy director speak badly about Kudo, and remembering when he defended them from criminals, the trio decided to take the club seriously. With this new arrangement, Hozuki abandons his facade and explains how to play.
Hozuki proposes to start working on a piece, and for that he invites the group to go to a presentation. There, everyone is overwhelmed by the "Ryuuseigun" of the children's group of the Hozuki school, but Satowa herself persuades them to try that song.
Hozuki also agrees to bring a 17-koto koto from his home, rejecting Kurata's help. He is the one who sees the children's group next to his teacher, the mother of Hozuki, but she says that it is not necessary to greet her and she leaves.

Hozuki has difficulty loading the 17-string koto so Kudo approaches to help him, but is rejected with brusqueness.
The strict teaching of Hozuki leads her to clash with Kudo. The girl reflects on her sayings, while Kudo, after a talk with Tetsuki, makes a cardboard koto to memorize the strings.
Hozuki observing Kudo's dedication makes peace with this one.

 Prejudices and how to break them
It is interesting how prejudices play an important role in the initial stage of the anime. From the incident in which Kudo's grandfather died to the vision that everyone has of Hozuki, practically all the characters are condemned to receive a bad preconception, which generates a disposition for the development of the same: to break that erroneous perception with their actions, with your words and of course, with the koto.

This is where the outcast character of the anime, Kudo, comes in. The boy who still carries the guilt for the death of his grandfather, but based on his crude but honest actions ended up earning the trust of Kurata and the old woman in the music store, (something quite close to the average shounen protagonist ). But Hozuki seems to be another topic, because the girl, at least during this chapter, tried very little to try to understand Kudo. Indicating it as a source of the club's bad reputation, responding in a hostile manner to any attempt to approach the boy and constantly questioning Kudo's will regarding the koto, and it was only in the end that he was able to break the idea that he had of him when he saw him practice with a handmade cardboard koto.

 But thinking badly of Hozuki for having prejudice towards Kudo turns a whole vicious circle, since the girl herself is more than that facade that she usually shows, and I do not speak of the false smile with which she attracted the trio of fools.
Hozuki's situation is not good. This chapter told us that indirectly through small details, such as: when Kudo asks who he learned to play from and the girl responds in a hostile way, something that is later complemented by Tetsuki's deduction, that his way of teaching Strictly derived from a similar education and memories of the Hozuki herself. Another thing that made everything a little more evident was his refusal to say hello to his mother.
All this speaks of a complicated environment for the heiress of the Hozuki style, and explains quite a bit of his way of being, but it seems that this could change now that he has found a club full of people willing to help him, that is if he decides to break his prejudices and open up to them

 Final opinion
The chapter had tense moments due to the clashes between Hozuki and Kudo, something that has been commonplace since the arrival of the girl, but also had fun moments like everything concerning the trio of fools introduced in this chapter: Kota, Sane and Mittsu, characters who obviously have to bring something more comic, but also gave us one of my favorite moments in this chapter: Sane flashback where Kudo defended despite being friends with his friend.
The execution of the chapters is still correct, and even improves some scenes that in the manga lack an adequate context and are more understandable being animated, like the scene in which Hozuki sees his mother.

 I really liked the music of certain sections. Making the moments in which Hozuki showed his true personality or showed anger were made with koto was a great success because it gave more comic value to these scenes.
A good introduction of the new characters, accompanied by a significant reinforcement in the chemistry between Hozuki and Kudo, which despite quite colliding begin to understand each other better, made this chapter enjoyable, on the negative side we could also say that a pole could have fulfilled the role of Kurata this week.

Finally the group has its first agreed presentation, one that will decide the future of the club, and will be in a month, (literally, and if the anime does not have any delay), the song will be Ryuuseigun, in the words of Hozuki, a simple piece but with enough force for the club to prove its worth, something I hope to see and hear, and you?