I like Michiru. She’s just so damn nice and good! So like Nana, I’m glad she’s not dead, only feverish and dehydrated. Unlike Nana, I don’t think liking or caring about Nana makes me weak or disrupts my Talented murdering spree.
Despite the trained, hardened killer in Nana lamenting how much time she wastes tending to Michiru while Kyouya is distracted by the new killer, she simply can’t and won’t leave Michiru’s bedside, even when Sorano offers to take her place there so she can rest.
Michiru eventually comes to, and we learn her mishap in the shower wasn’t the result of foul play, but the limits of her own Talent. While Nana was gone, two cats came to Michiru’s dorm. One, unbeknownst to her, was really Jin, while the other had a nasty cut on its neck. Shortly after healing the cat, Michiru took a shower and suddenly blacked out.
When Michiru spots the cut on Nana’s hand from breaking into the cafeteria to help her, she tries to lick the wound away, but Nana stops her, angry that Michiru didn’t learn her lesson about overuse of her Talent. In the precious subsequent moments when the two girls are making fun of each other’s unkempt hair, Nana isn’t a killer and Michiru isn’t a target…they’re just good friends.
Meanwhile in the woods, Jin encounters Ishii’s killer, who remains a dark silhouette to us. Without judging their murders, Jin requests that they at least stop hurting animals. We also check in with the committee that sent Nana to the island. She has apparently exceeded their expectations, and they praise the man who trained her, Tsuruoka.
When Nana goes off to clean herself up, she struggles with her sudden conflict not just over whether she should kill Michiru, but whether Michiru is remotely deserving of death. At the same time, she fears what Tsuruoka’s reaction would be if he could see how far off her game she currently finds herself.
When Michiru insists Nana stick around so they can play shogi, Nana brings up the name “Hitomi” she saw in Michiru’s journal, saying she “heard Michiru’s inner voice”—which is true to a degree! Hitomi was a delinquent-ish classmate back on the mainland whose dog Michiru healed. Hitomi, in turn, protected Michiru from bullies.
Hitomi once asked Michiru if she could help her sick “mom”, and Michiru explained she couldn’t heal illnesses. That said, she realize she can help a lot more, so she starts going to the hospital and healing people until passing out like she did most recently in the shower. That’s when Hitomi visits her and reveals she was asking for herself; she has terminal cancer; her orange hair was only a wig.
Michiru feels terrible for “making” Hitomi come to school to rescue her again and again, but Hitomi assures her she did it because she wanted to—and because like everyone, even she felt lonely and afraid sometimes. She likens leaving the hospital to help Michiru to Michiru risking her health to heal people—”we know it’s bad for us, but it’s okay to live a little.”
Shortly after reuniting in the hospital, Hitomi passed away, but Michiru promised herself to never stop healing and helping others—better a short life full of good deeds than a long life of cautiousness. Nana is so overwhelmed by this story, she has to excuse herself.
Out in the hall, she collapses from the weight of what is now the greatest single threat to her resolve. She keeps staring at the text indicating Michiru’s “Potential Death Count” of over 150,000 souls, partly hoping seeing that number will snap her out of her conflict, and partly hoping it will go down or disappear entirely.
She didn’t want to get this emotionally invested in one of her targets, but she is. She didn’t want to doubt the committees estimates, but she does. There’s still time for the show to reveal that Michiru is a supremely deceptive, evil, nasty piece of work after all. I sure hope they don’t go there.
That would let Nana off the hook too easily. I, like her, want to believe Michiru is exactly who she seems to be. Not only that, Munou na Nana created something truly beautiful in Michiru the pure, irreproachable, virtuous angel puppy. I’d hate to see that beautiful thing destroyed.
RABUJOI - An Anime Blog 