Kimi no Iru Machi – 08

A year and a half after moving to Tokyo, Haruto is now in university and dating Asuka. He decides to get a job at the Lawson Market to pay for a beach trip with her. He bumps into Eba Rin at the market. Haruto’s friend begs him to attend a group date, and he gets permission from Asuka. On the date he encounters Yuzuki, who is still single. While Asuka is at the market with Haruto, Rin shows up again, and mentions Haruto seeing Yuzuki, making Asuka jealous. When Rin appears again after his shift is over, he walks her home, but she voices her concern that he’s “settled” for Asuka, when Yuzuki or even she herself could make him happier. Haruto accepts the challenge.

After Kyousuke died, Haruto abandoned his quest to win Yuzuki back. Dating your dead friend’s girlfriend – or vice versa – was always going to be difficult, and Yuzuki definitely didn’t seem interested in pursuing anything. So what did Kyousuke do? What we told him to do ever since he met Asuka: date her. And by all accounts, it seems to be going splendidly! They make a cute, logical, domestic couple. They make sense. He cooks for her, she steals kisses from him, they make long-term plans together (which will probably never materialize, knowing this show), and when they end up on the floor they seem to have every intention of capitalizing on the situation…at least until the phone rings. You gotta answer the phone in that situation, right? (Sarcasm.)

And then Rin has to show up and ruin everything. Yuzuki shows up first, but that’s just soap opera coincidence; Rin straight-up stalks Haruto for the entire episode, loitering around his workplace and waiting for his shifts to end. Haruto may think she’s “grown up” but her behavior this week suggests she’s the same selfish, spiteful, conniving brat who tortured her half-sister for years. As much as we hate her, she has a point: Haruto didn’t uproot his life and move to Tokyo for Asuka. But there’s nothing really wrong with Asuka. Rin just wants to set something on fire just to watch it burn, and Haruto’s dumb enough to take the bait. For all of her complaining about Haruto “settling”, she sure settled for a easy mark.

Rating: 8 (Great)

The Tulips:

The camera keeps going baack to a bouquet of four tulips throughout the episode: we decided to attach meaning to them, even if that wasn’t the intention (though if it wasn’t, why would they feature them so prominently?)

The yellow one represents the cheerful, cute Asuka; the purple one represents the purple-haired Yuzuki, and the Red one represents the red-haired Rin. The white one is Haruto. Their order changes throughout the episode.

When we first see the tulips in Asuka’s arms, the yellow and white are together, like her and Haruto…

…Then she places them on the balcony, and the yellow is obscured by the red and purple, foreshadowing what will happen in the episode.

When Haruto decides to get a job so he can take Asuka to the beach, a white petal flies past her face, but then off the balcony and into the sky.

When Haruto and Asuka are interrupted by a call about the group date,  the yellow is now in the front with the white beside it, but the wind makes the red one peek out from behind…

…And when Haruto returns from the group date, it’s the same deal.

After she learns about Yuzuki, Asuka separates the purple flower and admires it…but the red is now in the front, between the yellow and white, foreshadowing Rin coming between Haruto and Asuka.

In the last shot, a drop of water falls from a drooping but opening red (or purple) tulip.

Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai: Megami-hen – 09

When Keima is about to kiss Chihiro, she tells him it’s her first, meaning she isn’t hosting a goddess. Shocked by her unexpected declaration of love, Keima rejects her outright. Ayumi saw how he treated Chihiro and kicks him. While bathing, Diana tries to get Keima to “love Tenri more” so she’ll sprout wings; refuses. While at school with Elcie, examining their school emblem starts him on a route that discovers an enormous plot involving Vintage raising loose souls beneath Point Rock, but drops the investigation and gets back to his conquest of Ayumi.

So, the show did pull the twist and make Ayumi the host. Again, not particularly surprising. Once Keima realizes kissing Chihiro won’t release a goddess, his calculating mind decides to slam on the brakes and make a quick u-turn, running right over Chihiro’s feelings. It’s a cruel and not totally-out-of-character move by a guy who has said many times he’ll never fall for a real girl. He does consider Chihiro’s feelings – briefly – in his mind, but in the end, he ignores his conscience and brings the hammer down, hard.

We wouldn’t be surprised if Chihiro now hates his guts, meaning he ruined a potential post-goddess arc romance not sullied by the supernatural. But hey, apparently he doesn’t want that, so on with the mission! About that: while he couldn’t have known Ayumi was spying on him, he could have helped his cause much better had he not so harshly and mercilessly rejected Chihiro. In doing his u-turn, he obviously forgot the two are close friends, and Ayumi isn’t just going to leap in his arms because he says he loves her. Now his job to conquer her will be that much tougher.

Rating:7 (Very Good)

Stray Observations:

• We think Ayumi went a bit too far following and spying on Keima and Chihiro. It felt like the plot needed her to see Keima reject Chihiro in order to complicate things for him later, so…there she was.
• We liked how all of her celebrity treatment has rubbed of on her to the point she’s started acting and talking like one. 
• We lost some respect for Keima for so deeply hurting Chihiro, but gained a lot back when he started that convoluted sidequest…only to drop it immediately. He can’t be bothered to worry about all that supernatural Vintage conspiracy crap…just like us!

Danganronpa: The Animation – 09

In the fourth trial, Hagakure and Fukawa admit to hitting Oogami with bottles, then Asahina confesses to killing her, but can’t explain the locked door. Kirigiri finds a glass shard in the poison bottle, meaning Asahina switched the poison bottle with the protein shake cup after Naegi broke the window.

In an effort to stop the infighting, Oogami locked herself in the rec room and committed suicide, and Asahina tried to kill everyone by making them vote for her. As punishment, Monobear destroys Alter Ego. Kirigiri learns and tells Naegi the name of the sixteenth student: Ikusaba Mukuro.

When you have a dead body in a room with only one door locked from the inside, suicide is the most likely culprit. Of course, this series never jumps right to the most likely culprit, but none of the other possibilities hold up against that one certain fact: once that door was locked, no one could get in or out.

As someone with warrior’s physique, we expected her to also possess warrior mindset, in which if the most profitable move for the greater good is to give up your life, you do so. Combined with her remorse for working as Monobear’s agent, Oogami was the most likely of the remaining students to off herself.

Rating:7 (Very Good)

Stray Observations:

• We believe this is the first instance of a studnt trying to kill everyone, in this case Asahina, who felt that it was her and everyone else’s fault Oogami killed herself, and so none of them deserved to live either.
• Funny how Monobear knew about Alter Ego all along. So much for their digital ally!
• Monobear lets slip that the mastermind “did something” to the students’ bodies, but doesn’t elaborate.
• Kirigiri discovers the sixteenth student’s name…so where is he/she, and what’s their story? 
• More to the point, how did Kirigiri learn of this, and is all of her helpfulness simply setting Naegi up for an eventual betrayal?