Momokuri – 11 + 12

Another week, another familiar rom-com scenario: the Summer Festival. While Momokuri’s didn’t come close to the heights of, say, ReLIFE’s festival, it was still Momokuri’s best episode to date, because it progressed, and characters came in contact with one another, so naturally and effortlessly. Not only was it a fine bit of slice-of-life, it also developed Rio’s relationship with Yuki.

Momo and Yuki are having a fine time as a couple at the festival until they become separated, and Momo’s phone dies. Momokuri subverts the typical instance of a cute girl left alone falling prey to some wolves. In this case, the wolves are older women, and it’s diminutive-for-his-age Momo who is the prey.

Not only that, it’s “Prince” Rio who swoops in to save him from the “panthers”—more androgynous than ever due to her tan and boy’s clothes (provided so she could serve as protection for Ikue and Yuzuki.

Despite looking like most like a boy (and a delinquent at that), Momo remarks how he’d rather see Rio in a yukata. Rio has spent much of her most recent years enduring those who say she could pass a a boy, so she’s heartened by Momo treating her like the girl she is.

Rio heads off on her own to look for Yuki, because a part of her wants to be one-on-one with her. It’s just as good, because when being with Yuki, Rio learns a little more about her rival-in-love, and determines maybe she’s not as weird as she thought. Indeed, she helps Yuki come to grips with feelings she’s not able to understand all on her own.

Like Momo and Yuki, she too was a bit lost early this week. But by the end, her stated desire for Momo to be happy above all else is evidence enough for Yuki that what Rio has isn’t just a like for someone, but love. Of course, Yuki isn’t aware that it’s Momo Rio likes. I doubt she’ll ever find out, either; this isn’t a drama, after all!

Alderamin on the Sky – 05

I’m on the older side, so as I watched the magnificent origin of the relationship of young Yatori and Ikta unfold, I couldn’t help but think of Captain Picard and Guinan (I also thought of Muppet Babies, for what it’s worth). In addition to the fact that TNG had an Oscar-winning actress on TV before it was cool, one of the great big unanswered questions of the show was the history of those two.

All Guinan said to Riker when Picard was captured by the Borg was that what they had was “beyond friendship, beyond family.” That sums up Yatori and Ikta perfectly. One was raised from birth to be a knight, which is no different from a blade. The other was raised into a world of science and deep, distant thought about mysteries once left to the comfort of theology.

Yatori decides to study abroad with Ikta as his father Sankrei was a celebrated military mind whom she sought for enrichment. What she got was a lifetime companion who not only made her more whole, but whom she made more whole as well.

Japanese can be at times wonderfully onomatopoeiaic, as I was reminded when Ikta conveys how “stiff” Yatori speaks, even to a fellow kid like him. But throughout their early interactions, Ikta never tries to impose his will or philosophy upon Yatori; instead, he shows her parts of her world and levies suggestions on how she might become something more than the Igsem blade she was forged to be.

A sword, after all, is only an inanimate object; no mater how much intense training Yatori undergoes, she cannot deny her flesh, her blood, and the emotions all humans possess. Indeed, Yatori is as much a sponge as a blade, benefiting greatly from her exposure to Ikta, his father, and the scientists associated with them. She also learns to play, which for Ikta means outsmarting adults.

It’s really quite invigorating to see these two at an early age right after seeing Ikta bring Yatori down from her killing fever last week. This episode painstakingly explains the bond these two share not with idle exposition, but by telling a story in its own right; a story of two very bright and talented kids bouncing off one another.

Just as Yatori had never met a kid quite like Ikta (nor met any kid period, for that matter), Ikta had never come across such a stern, stiff, duty-obsessed girl. It’s refreshing how quickly they hit it off despite their profound differences in upbringing.

Their bond is formalized quite by chance, when the adults they followed to a remote locale for a geological survey forgot their gear and turned back to retrieve it. Yatori and Ikta end up on their own, up against a pack of starving wolves, who are treated by the show with the same respect one would show a group of starving people.

Yatori and Ikta have no quarrel with the wolves, but they cannot allow themselves to be killed and eaten for the sake of the wolves. They are meant for greater things. I love how Ikta calls out for Yatori when the first wolf corners him, and Yatori comes through like the knight she is.

But this is not simply a tale of Ikta coming up with a game plan and Yatori carrying it out. It isn’t simply the knight saving the damsel in distress (who is Ikta in this case). Rather, when the desperate wolves infiltrate the house, and Ikta and Yatori must retreat to a smaller space ton ponder their next move, Ikta rejects Yatori’s pre-programmed intent to protect him at the cost of her own life.

That won’t do at all! For Ikta, any outcome where one of them dies is no good. Chivalric training aside, he rejects the notion that Yatori must lay down her life so that he might live. Having met and gotten to know Yatori, Ikta knows she can be more than a blade.

So he proposes they look at it another way: she is not the hero and he the recipient of heroism: they are together the right and left hand of a single entity, one far smarter and stronger than either of them alone.

Yatori, still young and relatively impressionable (as well as quite a smart cookie in her own right) can pick up what Ikta is putting down. They work together to outsmart and defeat the remaining wolves, forcing the survivors to retreat.

In the process, they burn down the whole damn house, and eat what’s left of the dried meat they have on hand. Yatori says it feels like they’re eating the wolves’ meat, which for Ikta is definitive proof that she can, indeed, be more than just a blade.

Not long after that unforgettable, life-changing experience, Ikta and Sankrei go missing…but one day Ikta returns, and Yatori is happy, for it is neither her brother nor her lover nor her dear friend who has returned to her: it is her other hand.

The best part of Alderamin is Yatori and Ikta’s relationship. I’ve said it before, and this episode went and capitalized on that strength, with exceptional results.