English Dub Review: Twilight Out of Focus “Promise Me This Is Forever”

Overview (Spoilers Below):
With Shion avoiding him, Rei starts wondering if he’s been dumped.  Rei and Jin have a heart-to-heart talk about relationships.  Jin points out that Rei has changed a lot.  Jin convinces Rei to run after Shion and try to salvage things before it’s too late.

Our Take:
Shion has been taking his experience with filmmaking quite well, but there’s still a matter of his relationship with Rei, or lack thereof.  Unfortunately, things may have worsened, but it wasn’t for Shion.  Instead, it was Rei who doubted their newfound relationship with Shion when he saw him hanging out with Kirito.  After talking to Jin about it, Rei starts realizing that he has fallen in love with Shion, resulting in the two making their relationship official.  Of course, this also puts little doubt on whether it’ll last forever.
Rei gets a lot more development in this episode than I anticipated.  He’s usually seen as a reliable yet unenthusiastic film club member known for raining on someone’s parade.  Heck, he even belittled Shion for his selfish desire to get a boyfriend instead of participating in the film club.  However, after seeing Shion assist in making the music video, Rei witnesses a different side of Shion that inspires him to pursue his own future.  Shion’s poetry showcasing his real side also helped Rei’s relationship with him grow.
It was nice to see Rei grow from being a sour sack to a kindhearted soul in “Promise Me This Is Forever”.  All he needed was a special someone to give him that push, even if that someone was a hopeless romantic like Shion.  Based on the ending, it looks like we’ll see all three romantic subplots come together for the final two shots.  With the film festival on the horizon, it better be a conclusion worth shooting.