Synduality: Noir – 06 – The Ciel’s the Limit

Unexpected bad weather sends Kanata, Noir, Tokio and Mouton to Baccarat Nest. If Desire was the nest of lust, Baccarat is the nest of greed: everything can be wagered or staked. Tokio gives Kanata his share of their most recent Drifter earnings and proceeds to literally lose his shirt (and almost his underwear) gambling. Kanata and Noir look around, and eventually hear the voice of a songstress Noir recognizes as Ciel.

Noir introduces Kanata to Ciel, who can tell cares about Noir, and even teases him by asking if he loves her (he’s not ready for that question). Noir also reports there was nothing on the camera Ciel fixed, so Ciel uses it to snap a photo of Kanata and Noir, to commemorate the moment.

Kanata and Noir then bump into the man in the black mask and his sleepy Magus Schnee, and Kanata proceeds to lose all his money as well. At the same time, Range and Dolce arrive at Baccarat still sore about losing the Maguses they captured, only to find one of them, Ciel, is right in front of their noses.

Range grabs Ciel and Dolce slaps a restraining collar on her; he claims her as his property since she signed her deed over to him, even though he tricked her into thinking it was a consent form to ride his Carrier. Since this is Baccarat Nest, there’s no law firm she can run to…but fortunately, she has allies in Noir and Kanata.

When Range sees the demand for winning Ciel’s deed, he assigns himself a bookie and starts taking entry fees for a battle royale, the winner of which gets the deed. While Kanata is broke, Noir pawns her beloved camera, confident she and Kanata will win. They proceed to use what they’ve learned in the field to make quick work of the other opponents.

Range and Dolce again turn the tables by announcing that they themselves will be in the second round of the battle, accompanied by three henchmen coffins. Gotta love how cartoonishly nefarious they are, especially Dolce with her Ojou-sama laugh.

The man in the mask decides to enter the battle in order to even the odds, having taken a liking to Kanata and Noir. When Kanata asks his name, he says he’s not ready to give it, so Kanata just calls him Kurokamen, or Black Mask.

Mask and Schnee deal with the three henchmen, leaving Kanata and Noir to battle Range and Dolce. Kanata powers through Range’s barrage of insults, but Daisyogre runs out of ammo, he and Noir end up with Range’s gun pointed at their coffin’s head.

That’s when Noir starts to convulse, as if in pain, then take on ethereal form and leap out of Daisyogre. Her clothes and hair turn black (i.e. Noir), and she rains a massive thunderbolt down on Range and Dolce, whose skeletons are visible as they’re electrocuted, adding to their whole Looney Tunes vibe.

The baddies are vanquished once more, and with Kurokamen classily bowing out, Kanata is the winner of Ciel’s deed. Just when I thought Ellie would now have to contend with two AI waifus back home, Kanata cancels his contract with Ciel, rendering her free to continue wandering the world looking for the Master of her dreams.

Before they part ways, Noir takes the camera Tokio bought back with winnings (no doubt betting what was left of his and Mouton’s clothes on Kanata) and snaps another picture to commemorate her and Kanata’s new friendship with Ciel. All’s well that ends well.

There remains absolutely nothing groundbreaking or original about Synduality: Noir, but I don’t think it’s trying to be either. It’s just trying to be an entertaining episodic action/adventure anime with tinges of comedy and romance and bright, fun characters, vehicles, and locales. No excessive brainpower is needed, which works out just fine for a Monday evening.

Masamune-kun’s Revenge R – 07 – Masamune brulée

During her family’s big formal New Year’s celebration, Neko is off to fetch more sake when the little son of one of her relatives bumps into her. She neither spills the bottles on her tray nor vomits blood, which I’ll call a win. But seeing her relative for the first time since her wedding, when she was as small as this kid (only rounder).

Meanwhile, it’s been ten days since Christmas Eve, and Masamune and Aki haven’t spoken. Not a great way to start the year! As I said, it sucks for these two to run into problems so soon after becoming an official couple, but I suppose we do still have six episodes for that to be resolved.

Neko is reminiscing about the day she met Masamune when they were both kids. She was desperately shy, but he offered her a giant chicken wing from his pocket (a habit he’s since kicked). She then gets a text from Tae inviting her to join her, Kojuurou, and Masamune for the first shrine visit of the year.

While I know Masamune is freaking out about this hives thing, which his doctor suspects is due to stress, it’s still pretty mean to not only ghost Aki, but lie about her and Yoshino being busy so as to exclude them and spare him the awkwardness. Fortunately, he’s terrible at hiding the fact he’s troubled, and Neko notices something’s not right.

He notes that he still manages to laugh and have fun, and while he and Neko get a brief moment alone together, it’s not long enough for her to broach the topic of what’s troubling Masamune. Her suspicions are reinforced when she watches Yoshino breeze right past Masamune in the hallway without a peep.

When coincidence conspires to put both Neko and Masamune at the same hospital one day, she offers him a ride and some tea at her house. Her attendant Shidou-san is not pleased with his presence, but there’s nothing she can do about with whom her mistress spends her time.

Masamune expresses how the lack of anything wrong with him seems wrong in and of itself, even as he realizes the irony of coming to someone with such fraught medical history with his problems. He wonders if the thing stressing him out is holding something back, like not telling Aki about Yoshino’s role in separating them.

But Neko has a different theory: he’s burnt out and in a state of shock after his life’s goal of revenge was suddenly ended. His mind, body, and energies had been concentrated on that goal for so long, it’s only natural there’s a physical as well as psychological strain from its rapid termination.

She also wonders whether Masamune is hewing too close to his pretenses and preconceptions. He may have loved Aki, back then, before his heart was broken…but does he still love her now? Meanwhile, she owns up to having met him once before Aki did.

When she made advances on Masamune earlier, she was clinging to the meager memories of the past, but now she makes clear she loves the Masamune of today, here and now. She draws in for another kiss, this time one that is free of the past…but Shidou breaks it up.

Neko tells her attendant she doesn’t need to worry, as she sees the hives develop on Masamune’s hand. Her smile and trembling hands betray her heartbreak all over again as she declares “no mistakes will be happening today”. She then considers if she truly has cast off her pretenses and preconceptions.

I truly felt for Neko, being a good friend to Masamune, and testing the waters only to be burnt herself, not by his words this time, but by his very skin. But in this she’s not alone; that’s now two girls who have given Masamune hives since he learned the truth.

As he views Aki’s text asking if he’s okay after visiting the hospital, Masamune vents his frustration over not knowing what truth there is to find that might cure him of his stress hives by shouting on a bridge. This startles someone on street level and causes them to fall.

He apologetically rushes to their aid to find it’s his ex-master Yoshino who fell. Despite her efforts to ignore and avoid him, circumstances have brought them back together, and I think it would do them both a power of good to talk about things a little more.