Proposal Daisakusen-- Episode 9

All right! It's the last slide of the wedding show and Ken gets the chance to rewrite the worst memory in his life so far.

The picture shows the happy couple in a restaurant the day Rei accepted Tada-san's proposal. Through the window behind them, Ken can be seen outside, sadly walking past the restaurant. Whoa, he looks creepily ghostlike there. Tsuru notices it, but Mikio, who knows about the time-traveling, shuts him up.

The Fairy Man makes his usual entrance and gives Ken a grand pep talk since it's Ken's last chance to change the future. Ken strikes the pose, and Hallelujah- chances into the past where he's in a suit at work. Ken is a white board salesman. That's a pretty sad career choice.

Ken ditches work and calls Rei immediately. He orders her to stay at the architecture office and wait for him. Knowing it's his last chance, Ken resolves to go all out, but his sales partner begs him not to leave. The man has little children to feed. Ken, being Ken, puts Rei on hold to help his sales partner. They will sell two white boards, then Ken will leave.

After several discouraging tries, Ken gets another pep talk. Ken's partner encourages Ken to keep trying-- even if there's a high chance of failure-- because that rare instance of success is what makes life interesting. Wow, with all these pep talks, Ken has to make a move this time.

Ken runs off to Mikio, who's in film production, and Tsuru, who's helping out on set, and forces them to buy one white board. Mikio is uncooperative because he's worried that his girlfriend may be pregnant. Annoyed, Ken says it's all Mikio's fault that he's in such a rush-- because Mikio made the engagement picture the last picture in the slide show, which Ken uses to time travel.

Mikio's boss buys the white board and Ken repays Mikio for the help by telling Mikio that his girlfriend is not pregnant. She's faking. Mikio confronts his girlfriend, who admits she was just testing him to see what he thinks of marriage. He's angry at first, but they make up real fast like last time. These two will never break up.

At another company, Ken makes another sale and he's free to run off to Rei. Ken must be in good shape to do all this running. Maybe he should try a marathon sometime. (There's a running joke in which Ken is always running past a future marathon winner.)

Despite all the running, Ken is too late. Tada-san has already taken Rei to the first building he designed and proposed. The man works fast! Ken hears the bad news from Tada-san when he runs into him at the architecture office. The good news is that Rei didn't give him an answer yet. She's out having a marriage girl talk session with Eri. Ken runs off again...

He gets a call from Eri that she and Rei are waiting for him to treat them to yakiniku.

Eri walks into the restaurant and meets Tsuru while Rei walks around outside the restaurant, thinking over the answer she's going to give Tada-san.

Ken's still running, bumping into a giant "Don't Knock New York" sign, then stopping off at an ATM, on his way to Rei.

At the restaurant, Eri tells Tsuru the latest gossip about Rei and Tada-san. Tsuru follows the example and asks Eri to marry him. She says no, as usual. Tsuru then rephrases the questions in many ways, getting a no each time. Finally, Tsuru just asks if Eri will go out with him. She says yes. Tsuru, in total shock, asks again to confirm he wasn't dreaming. It's still yes. Aww... This must be the change that leads to Tsuru dating Eri, thanks to Ken's inspirational speech in episode 7. Why didn't Ken take his own advice that time? The drama could have been wrapped up by now.

Ken, certain of his feelings for Rei and aware of the importance of his last chance, finally catches up to Rei. Night has already fallen. Much to everyone's dismay, the scene plays out exactly the same as the first time around. Rei tells Ken she's going to accept Tada-san's proposal. He tells her not to get married too quickly to someone she's only known for a year and a half; then calls her decision stupid. She gets upset and says the lines that echo painfully in his head: even though they've been so close for so long, Ken really doesn't understand anything. Rei walks away.

Why, Ken? Why? At least, TRY to change the script. He was supposed to change this memory, not cement it deeper in his brain.

Watching Rei walk away again Ken breaks from the script and runs after Rei. He hugs her tightly from behind, entreats her not to go, and asks her to marry him instead. Hooray! Rei cannot possibly ignore his feelings after that desperate move, can she?

Unfortunately, as we learned from the last episode, Rei has moved on (or at least she thinks she has). She asks why Ken chose to say these things now and repeats her last line. Untangling herself from his grip, she walks away. Leaving Ken in tears, Rei meets Tada-san at the restaurant and accepts his marriage proposal with a smile. Damn, she's cold.

Ken takes out the engagement ring he bought for Rei. It was the best he could afford with his small salary and since he didn't know Rei's ring size, he asked for the biggest size possible so that it would definitely fit over a finger. Accepting his complete defeat, Ken leaves the ring on a spiky part of the "Don't Knock New York" sign he had bumped into earlier. He walks past the restaurant where Rei and Tada-san are toasting to the future and gets transported back to the present when the waiter takes the picture.

I actually don't think Ken messed up this time. He may not have said the words "I love you", but it's obvious to anyone with half a brain that that is what he feels. Relationships need two people to work and Rei really failed him this time. She should have at least taken some more time to consider Tada-san's marriage proposal. You know, no matter how much effort you pour into making your dream come true, if your team lets you down, then you fail in the end.

Ken stares at that last slide show picture and is shocked when the MC announces that the next slide is the last slide. Mikio walks by and tells Ken that he added an extra slide since Ken wasn't happy with Mikio ending the show with the proposal picture. Oh, so Ken did change the future a little-- he made Mikio add another slide. Wait a minute, if Mikio knew about the time travel and he was putting together the slide show after he knew about the time travel, couldn't Mikio have changed the whole slide show to give Ken more chances? Never mind. I promised myself I wouldn't over-think the whole Fairy Man time travel magic. I don't need another headache.

The Fairy Man shows up and tells Ken that this last picture really is Ken's last chance. For reals, this time. Last. Picture. Last. Chance.