And they’re off.
Continung the events from the last episode, Minori and Ryuuji look for Taiga, as Minori declares her like for Ryuuji and her wish to see her friend achieve her own happiness.
Ryuuji then sits down with Minori and have a one-to-one talk about Minori’s ambitions at being a major softball player and how it’s their “goodbye” in terms of her liking Ryuuji. Ryuuji then waits up at the cake stand, expectedly seeing Taiga coming over to the location and talk about something important after work, but not after Yasuko and Taiga’s mother meet them in the way.
The former is angered at how Ryuuji lied to her about taking a part time job instead of studying, with him responding about his mother’s failure to achieve what she wanted, while the latter wants to take Taiga back home, with Taiga refusing to stay with her husband and child. These reactions later force them to hold each other’s hands and run off.
Turns out that Taiga’s father has lost his job and told his first wife to take care of Taiga, but Taiga’s mother herself got married to someone else and expecting a baby. Ryuuji then mentions how he wishes he wasn’t born, as Taiga scolds him for the rather stupid remark.
Later on, he yells about how he’ll be 18 soon, and suddenly pulls off a marriage proposal to Taiga out of nowhere. Taiga being surprised then tells Ryuuji that she had also something to say at first, until a phone call from Kitamura interrupts them, telling him how both Ryuuji and Taiga’s mothers are looking for them.
Instead, Ryuuji and Taiga crash into Ami’s place, where Kitamura and Minori were at as well. The newly admitted lovebirds then admit to them that they want to run away from it all, giving everyone else an expression of shock and disbelief. Minori then decided to help by giving them her life savings, while Ami gives them the key to her villa and Kitamura a few train tickets.
Ryuuji and Taiga leave and gave everyone their goodbyes, as Minori breaks down into tears and Ami, who now doesn’t seem to detest her that much, consoles her. Ryuuji then decides to go back to his home one more time to get a few clothes and baggage, as he sees a letter left by his mom, telling him to go to his grandparents place and show them a watch she left behind. They then pack their stuff and leave, as they think about what will happen to everyone else because of their leave, and meet up with Ryuuji’s grandparents.
Aside from Ryuuji’s oddly timed marriage proposal, it’s nice to see Ami and Minori tolerate each other a lot more better than before. I was sort of suprised to see how Ryuuji manage to call his mother a failure, when she was just doing all of this now for his sake.
I AM BOSS 
Well the whole failure thing is more about Yasuko messing up her life and pushing her ideals on Ryuuji because she doesn’t want him to go through the same things she did.I don’t think thats wrong but Yasuko is basically not giving a Ryuuji a choice in the matter and when she collapses due to overworking and Ryuuji takes a job and she snaps at him it’s not hard to see why Ryuuji got so pissed.
Ep 24 felt like a clusterfuck to me(typical J.C Staff),at least there’s 25 to salvage it.
Yeah, I suppose when you mention it that way, it does seem plausible that she didn’t give Ryuuji a choice to do whatever he wants, which is probably why he to got into the heat of the moment and got mad when his mother did. Still though, it was a little bit surprising when you look at how Ryuuji and his mom were never shown arguing with each other before.
As for 24 being a clusterfuck, well, the events that took place did went on very quickly (I’m still weirded out by the marriage proposal out of nowhere), but let’s hope 25 concludes it on a happier and more sensible note.
Well even after Ryuuji snapped he realized he was a little out of line with that comment but before he could apologize or anything Taiga dragged him away.
It was kind of random that Ryuuji proposed to her but it shows how serious he is about Taiga I guess,we’ll see how it turns out in 25.