Mushoku Tensei II – 00 – The Bodyguard

This prologue to the much-awaited second season of Mushoku Tensei shows us what happened to poor Sylphiette (Kayano Ai) after the Fittoa catastrophe. She’s transported to a spot several thousand feet above the gardens of the royal palace of Asura, where the second princess Ariel Anemoi Asura is enjoying afternoon tea.

A giant boar monster happens to attack Asura just when Sylphie arrives, crushing the boar’s skull when she lands on it. She ends up unconscious in a bed of flowers, making quite an impression on the princess, who reminds me of a less sadistic Princess Renner from Overlord: an outwardly cute and kind blonde royal with hidden depths and ambitions.

She wakes up nude (for some reason) in a bed, and when Asura learns the name of the village where she’s from, she informs Sylphie that Fittoa has been destroyed and her family and friends’ fate is unknown. Asura then tells her that she could get in trouble for trespassing on the royal grounds, so she has her assume the identity of a male and her new mage bodyguard, “Silent Fitz”.

“Fitz” finds the hustle and bustle of the royal court tiring, especially when her elf ears can hear all the offhand comments and mutterings about her. When she loses focus, stumbles, and knocks over a noble’s wine, Princess Asura bails her out by gracing the crowd with her beautiful singing voice (courtesy of Ueda Reina).

In that same mingling session, we meet Asura’s older brother, who is in line for the throne despite being an illegitimate child. He suspects Asura is trying to gather support to usurp him, and even arranges for her assassination. Thus Sylphie has found herself in one tangled mess of palace intrigue and backbiting.

On top of that, she suffers nightmares of her fall, but Asura invites her to sleep in her bed. Initially I, like Sylphie, worried that Asura might use her station to take advantage of her, but turns out to only be joking (or saw Sylphie wasn’t into it and stopped). She also admits to suffering nightmares from the day of the boar attack, and finds Sylphie’s presence soothing.

Later that night is significantly less soothing, as an extremely lithe and scantily clad assassin attacks them. Sylphie demonstrates that she’s no slouch by matching blows with the tiny ninja-like killing machine, and even when she’s nicked by her poison blade, she manages a coup-de-grace that sends the attacker smashing through the room’s main window and into the forest below.

Once again, Asura lives thanks to Sylphie. And while I realize the assassin is just a tool of one of her political enemies, I wish we’d have been given a little more about her besides her name later on, and wonder why she had to be introduced on the lap of that big old bald guy. Oh well…

Under council from a loyal minister, Asura decides to exercise the better part of valor and flee the capital, gather foreign supporters, and bide her time for the eventual coup. That’s right: Asura’s brother’s suspicions are correct! But because he and his pal are jerks and Asura is nice to our elf girl, I’m totally on Team Asura.

Asura even releases “Fisk” from her service, as she regrets the underhanded circumstances under which she was hired and doesn’t wish to burden her further. But Sylphie remembers Asura calling her a friend, and she considers her a friend as well—a friend who is no burden to protect. She puts the Kamina-like shades back on and re-assumes the mantle of Silent Fisk of her own free will.

I quite enjoyed this royal detour from the main story of Rudeus, which succeeded in its world-building and in weaving a simple but compelling story of an underdog princess trying to claim the throne. We don’t meet the other prince or princess above her in the order of succession, but I’m sure they’re jerks too. The promo art for the season suggests Sylphie and an older Rudy will cross paths at some point. I’m hoping they’ll recognize each other and reunite as pals!

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury – 24 (Fin) – Family Matters

Things look grim with Aerial wrecked and Eri not responding. Suletta also gets a hit of data storms and is briefly knocked out, but quickly comes to with renewed purpose. Like her mother, she’s experiencing physical consequences to her close contact with the Permet, so it all comes down to whether she can hold out long enough.

Her mother’s security is able to take back control of Quiet Zero and detains Miorine, Nika, Chuchu and the others, but without Eri it’s just a giant hunk of metal. As for the Assembly League president, he should really have a mustache so he can twirl it as he orders the giant frikkin’ laser to fire again as soon as it’s charged.

After Lauda returns Suletta’s little keychain and gives her his reluctant blessing to get the job done, she heads back to Quiet Zero with the husk of Aerial, and Prospera tells her good job. But Suletta isn’t here to hand Ericht back to her mom so she can plug her right back into the system domination machine. In two huge landmark moments in Suletta’s life, she tells her mom “no”, then tells her she’s wrong.

While attempting to transfer drive controls from Calibarn to Aerial, Suletta and everyone else receives a little surprise: Elan, the Elan who first befriended Suletta and stood her up at the bench, coalesces in the data storm to give her a hand.

Turns out he’s like Eri, unable to exist in the physical world, but perfectly capable of helping summon the Bits and reawaken Eri. When she does awaken, Suletta tells her she wants to be “greedy”—she wants to live in a world with her sister and their mom.

Eri gets the message, and she agrees. She sends out a data storm that hacks system-wide communications, allowing Miorine, who announces to everyone out there that Benerit Group has not only surrendered, but is hereby dissolved and liquidated with immediate effect; its assets to be distributed to Earth-based corporations.

MioMio also exposes the Assembly league’s collusion with Grassley and promises to make the smoking guns public. Elan resigns on the spot, while Shaddiq tips his proverbial hat to Miorine’s guts. It’s one of Mio’s finest moments, and she does it while Prospera’s bodyguard has a gun to her head!

The Assembly League Prez still believes he has the last trump card in the form of his Giant Frikkin’ Laser, but Suletta and Eri (with a bit of help from their Permet-etheeral buddies) send out another data storm without Quiet Zero which overrides and shuts down its firing sequence, eliminating the last threat to them and those they love and care about. Nadeem, Dr. Cardo, and others come to Prospera, urging her to join them on the other side.

But Prospera isn’t ready to turn tail and cast away her mortal bonds. Both Suletta and Eri thank Prospera for choosing the future over revenge, and declare that they want to stick together as a family from now on. Quiet Zero and the Gundams start to break down into the vacuum of space, having done their job.

Suletta is left floating in space once more, but she’s not alone. MioMio catches a ride on a mobile suit to pick her up. For a few moments, she fears Suletta might have finally succumbed to the incredible strain of the data storms, but when her eyes finally open, MioMio’s tears of despair turn to pure joy and relief.

Fast-forward three years, and a clean-cut Nika has paid her debt to society and reunites with the other members of Earth House, still hard at work using GUND tech to help, for instance Petra, who is now officially with Lauda. Elan is on a quest to track down the places Norea drew in order to feel closer to her, while the Grassley House girls back MioMio up as she continues to confront the protests and problems on earth head-on.

At the same time, MioMio hasn’t buried herself entirely in her work, because as the sun sets she comes to a farm where she meets up with Suletta who is playing with children. The two of them both have gleaming rings, as they both went and got married at some point in the past three years.

While I wish we could have seen the actual ceremony, it’s also nice to see them simply chilling arm-in-arm, a picture of marital bliss, and a still unfortunately relatively rare instance (both in anime and American TV) of a gay couple living happily ever after.

It’s also good to see that both of them, with support from one another, have found their purposes in life. No longer led by the nose by their families’ legacies, they’re now doing everything in their power to make the world they live in a better place for those who come after them.

As Grassley House girls and Earth House crew await them at the top of the hill, MioMio offers Suletta a hand up, and their joined hands no longer tremble in uncertainty, but are firm in their resolve and their love. It’s a beautiful place to close the book on The Witch from Mercury, which to me stands out as one of the better series of the franchise.

P.S. Thanks to flamerounin for reminding me of Eri’s fate: she’s still “around”, but now her consciousness has been transferred to Suletta’s keychain! I agree that this is hilarious, and there now must be a third season—a sitcom—with starring newlyweds Suletta and MioMio with Keychain Eri as the third wheel!

Hell’s Paradise – 13 (Fin) – The Space Between Life and Death

Shion arrives to save Sagiri and Yuzuriha, with enough knowledge on the “waves” that make up tao that he’s able to fight a sustained solo battle against Jiujin, impressing both Sagiri and Yuzuriha. Realizing he still can’t defeat the monster alone, Sagiri and Nurugai don bandages and cover themselves in Yuzuriha’s ninja mucus in order to protect themselves from any scratches that could lead to flowers blooming.

True to form, Yuzuriha doesn’t directly involve herself in any more fighting, but she is able to prop Senta up so he can tell Shion where their opponent’s true weak spot is: the ovule, since it’s a plant monster. When Shion focuses all of his tao into one point and uses that to slash the ovule, Jiujin is finally killed for good, and even thanks Shion for doing it, as it ends a thousand years of life, much of which must have been pretty dull.

With the first tensen defeated, proving that they can be killed, Yuzuriha is frank in her assessment of Senta: he’s not going to make it and it isn’t worth wasting precious medical supplies on him. That said, she does hold Senta in her arms until he passes.

Sagiri, perhaps the most well-adjusted of the characters there (not saying much, I know) is wrecked by the death of a fifth comrade. As for her charge Gabimaru, he wakes up having no idea where he is or what he’s doing. It would seem his excessive uses of tao has resulted in amnesia.

But it might be even worse than that. As they rest in a nearby stately house, Yuzuriha somehow finds an even cuter outfit to change into, then plants a new seed of doubt in Sagiri’s head: what if Gabimaru was wrong about the village chief drinking the elixir? What if that was just another ninja illusion drilled into him as a kid? And what if his wife isn’t even real, but simply another illusion designed to motivate him?

When Mei uses her tao-vision on Gabimaru, he seems to be missing the whole top of his head-tao, which can’t be good. Now the veil of uncertainty has been cast over a number of things I took as a given (the elixir exists, Gabimaru has a wife named Yui. It’s a particularly cruel way to close this first of presumably two cours of Jigokuraku. 

At the same time, I have faith in Sagiri’s goodness, humanity, and commitment to not let anyone else die. I don’t know if she’ll succeed, but I do know she’ll try her damndest, and for all the right reasons. As for the rest, I can only hope Gabi isn’t a fake wife guy and can recover what he lost with some rest and/or meditation. In any case, we won’t know what will become of these folks until that second cour comes around. But what a first cour it was.