Lycoris Recoil – 04 – Lycra Regird

After having Takina practice shooting non-lethal rounds in the café’s  basement range (what a concept) Chisato, frustrated by being beaten in a VR battle game by a player called “Fuki” (who is actually Fuki), plops the headgear on Takina and lets her rip.

Takina defeates Fuki, but while doing a flip dodging virtual fire, Chisato discovers that Takina always wears tactical boxer shorts under her skirt, the result of Mika messing with her when it comes to “regulation clothing”. With no mission this week, this calls for a shopping trip.

While underwear shopping sounds like a thin premise for an episode, what this really is is an opportunity for Chisato and Takina’s galmance to continue blossoming as they hang out in less lethal or official circumstances. Takina treats the trip like another mission, even bringing her gun, but Chisato makes her promise not to take it out.

They’re not Lycoris today, just two friends hanging out, buying cute clothes, and eating beautiful delicious fancy junk food. While Chisato is helping out some tourists with the menu with her perfect French, Takina looks up at the blue sky, the wind blows her hair about, and she seems to get what Chisato was on about, and she smiles.

Their next trip on their girldate is to the aquarium, where Chisato naturally has an annual pass and mimics the movements of the various marine life. Takina also gets Chisato to open up a bit more about why she left the DA, where she probably could have gotten away with her non-lethal methods.

That’s when Chisato reveals her owl pendant signifying (whether she knows it or not) that she’s an “Alan Child”, part of the Alan Institute that either finds or produces “geniuses” such as her in all forms. Chisato says she left DA to find “someone” who also bears the pendant, who Mika knows to be Shinji, the older blonde dude always stopping by the café.

Seeing Chisato looking wistful and even a little down compels Takina to embrace her silly side, running over to the tank and mimicking a fish, inviting Chisato (and little kids watching) to join in. This cheers Chisato right up, because she knows Takina smiling and acting silly, like geniuses, are truly gifts from God.

It’s a good thing the girls aren’t Lycoris this week, because I doubt even Chisato could have dodged what happens at the Kita-Oshiage metro station. A green-haired ne’er do-well and his band of terrorists disguised as workmen whip out all manner of heavy weaponry and open fire at the next approaching train.

When they stop firing, they realize the train is empty, but for a large task force of Lycoris, who return fire and kill everyone. Green-hair is only wounded, and detonates a series of bombs he set, blasting the station, train, and Lycoris aboard it to smithereens.

When Chisato and Takina walk past the taped-off station, Takina wants to check things out, but Chisato grabs her hand and tells her if she takes out her gun she’ll be arrested. They’re not Lycoris today, so whatever went on down in that station isn’t their concern. They also have a bunch of shopping bags, so they should just head home. The news reports a train collision and derailment, but makes clear that no one was hurt or injured.

That’s because as far as the public is concerned, the Lycoris are no one. The deeds those young girls performed defending the citizenry from agents of destruction will never be heralded; they may not even receive funerals. They had no family except each other, and now they’re all dead and the incident that killed them swept under yet another rug.

That’s why it’s so important to Chisato that Takina learn to loosen up and live a little, whether it’s wearing cuter clothes or less tactical underwear, spending too much money on too many calories or carbs, or being goofballs beside the fish tanks. Because people out there like the green-haired guy (Majima) and Robota (who makes contact with him and proposes a partnership) want to destroy the Lycoris and what they represent.

Chisato and Takina could be killed in the line of duty any day, at any moment, and their deeds and sacrifice forgotten. So it behooves them to look up at the blue sky, feel the wind in their hair, and laugh when they can.

My Stepmom’s Daughter Is My Ex – 03 – Lettuce and Cheese

Yume looks back with no small degree of unfondness upon her “old” self—from six whopping whole months ago—as an “exceptionally introverted” girl who would save everything Mizuto gave her in a small lockable treasure box. And yet here she is in the present, with Mizuto’s boxers in her hands, and she can’t help but smell them.

Knowing that if he ever caught wind of this he’d make her submit to being his little sister, she waits until the wee hours of the night for him to go to bed so she can return the drawers. But before she can open his door, he opens it…holding her bra. Looks like she wasn’t the only one charmed by the distant past.

To their credit, Yume and Mizuto have a seat in the living room and discuss things logically. They both have the exact same excuse for how they came upon each other’s undergarments, but also both agree that absconding with underwear no matter the circumstances, isn’t appropriate sibling behavior. As such, they agree that each of them gets a free demand of the other—within social norms.

Mizuto declares that within their home they’re to be perfect brother and sister, but outside said walls, they can do whatever they plase. Yume soon learns what he means when he spots him at a MgRonald chatting with a cute girl with black hair and black-framed glasses—virtually the “old her”! She goes to Akatsuki with this information, who can’t deny that Mizuto might just have what it takes to sweep a shy girl off her feet.

The plot thickens when Yume comes home to find a pair of girl’s loafers in the genkan. Assuming the girl is with Mizuto in his room, Yume calls him to ask him to run an errand—”get lettuce and cheese”—and hears footsteps leaving the house. But when she approaches his door, he’s in his room, and doesn’t know of any girl.

…Except he does. One day he was approached in the library by the black-haired girl, who immediately asked him out with the ultimate goal of marriage. She then reveals she’s actually Akatsuki in disguise, and that she wants to marry Mizuto primarily so she can become Yume’s sister, and do sisterly things with her … like bathe her and apply lotion to her body.

Honestly I had no idea Akatsuki had this in her, but when Mizuto calls her childhood friend Kawanami, he is told that this is how Akatsuki is: once she’s infatuated with something she won’t let it go. I agree with Mizuto that Kawanami saying Akatsuki doted so intensely on a previous boyfriend in middle school that he ended up hospitalized is far-fetched, the bottom line is that Mizuto doesn’t like hassles.

He wants to make it as clear as possible as soon as possible to Akatsuki that he’s not interested in marriage. To that end, he decides to cash in his demand of Yume, and asks her to accompany her on a date tomorrow. Yume is no doubt both surprised and flattered. After all, Mizuto is an idiot but he’s her idiot, and seeing him with fake old her was a blow that this invitation helps to mitigate.

HenSuki – 10 – No Looking Away

Thanks to the photo of him rummaging through her underwear, Keiki is suddenly Yuika’s willing and attentive slave…and Sayuki is hurt to see her master brought so low, especially knowing it’s due to treachery. Still, Yuika manages to maximize her time with him, dressing him up in a butler outfit of her own design, then using him as a porter during a shopping spree.

After shopping, Yuika takes a bath, but screams when she sees a spider, making Keiki come running to her rescue. Yuika sentences him to death for seeing her naked, but quickly softens when, after she steps on his head, his stroking of her head reminds her of her late grandma. After she trips onto her bed, Keiki discovers she stole a pair of his boxers, so just like that, the blackmailing ceases.

As Keiki and Shouma lament another summer without girlfriends (clearly due to their lack of effort and nothing else) the focus shifts to Nanjou Mao, who first uses Keiki as a model for her boyfriend in a shoujo one-shot she’s working on, then proposes he become her “boyfriend” for research purposes…if he’s not dating anyone else.

Considering how strong she comes on and all the blushing, I wouldn’t be surprised if she actually does like him, though like him with his whole Cinderella investigation, or Shouma with his lolicon, she’s simply hiding from the truth; in her case, behind manga-related excuses. After a recharging hug and sniff, Ayano even proposes she and Keiki start dating, but he respectfully declines. As I said, if he doesn’t have a girlfriend this summer, it’s all his stinkin’ fault.

Perhaps, with a photo taken by Koharu on the day he received a love letter from Cinderella, he’ll finally crack the case open and learn which one of the girls in his life gave him her underwear…or if it’s someone new entirely.

HenSuki – 09 – Boiling Over

In what must be a dream come true for Sayuki, Keiki takes her on a date to a theme park as his pet, and she must call him “master” and follow his commands. Of course, Keiki’s ulterior motive is to confirm whether Sayuki is Cinderella. The proof he seeks is whether she’s wearing the stolen underwear from his room originally gifted to him by Cinderella.

Sayuki wears a skirt for their date, but it’s long enough that none of the thrilling rides they take cause it to flip up in his field of vision. Like his date with Yuika earlier in the show, it actually goes quite well, aside from the investigation. After “being mean” with scary rides, he lets her decide to go on the Ferris wheel, and then he praises her shodou at an exhibition.

But while the Ferris wheel was definitely the place to do it, Keiki waits until the last second, at the end of the date, to order Sayuki to show him what’s under her skirt. As his dutiful pet she obeys, despite the embarrassment … because she’s not wearing any underwear at all. She went commando for the whole date.

In addition to neither confirming or denying whether Sayuki is Cinderella, Keiki finds that things are awkward at school the next day, with Sayuki not acting like herself. Yuika notices the change too, and the avowed sadist tries to make things worse by flirting with Keiki right in front of her.

Throughout Yuika’s initial attempts, Sayuki continues to write “patience” over and over on a parchment, until she runs off onto the table. By the time Yuika jumps into Keiki’s arms and they’re tumbling to the floor just as Mao enters, Sayuki has seemingly “hit her limit” and flees without a word.

When Keiki comes to them for advice , Ootori and Shouma can’t really say what’s bothering Sayuki, but the fact that it’s bothering Keiki means he must truly care about her, otherwise he wouldn’t be so worried about how she’s feeling.

The next day Keiki confronts Sayuki, and learns that she was acting the way she was because she thought he was playing “hard to get” after not doing anything to her after she lifted her skirt for him. She was hoping for a “healthy spanking,” and took getting nothing instead (and dealing with the rising anticipation) as a form of discipline in and of itself.

Keiki decides to ask her straight up if she stole the underwear, and she owns up to it. The only problem is, she didn’t steal Cinderella’s underwear, she stole—and is presently wearing—Keiki’s boxers. If only he’d asked the right question: Did she write him a love letter with the blue underwear?

So the mystery continues, because Keiki is an awful investigator. It’s raining after school, so he walks the umbrella-less Yuika home, but gets cold and wet so she invites him in. Rather than simply ask her directly, he rifles through her underwear drawer while she’s making tea, and gets an incriminating picture of himself snapped for his trouble.

That photo all but ensures he’ll be Yuika’s slave for as long as she has it in her possession. Why he thought the risk of getting caught in her underwear drawer was lower than the risk of alienating her for asking if she’s Cinderella, I have no idea. Keiki just can’t get out of his own way here!

Ai Tenchi Muyo! – 05

Momo, Touri, Hana and Hachiko arrive to rescue Tenchi from the science club. As Hachiko battles Kinojou, Momo frees Tenchi, who saves her from falling rocks as the caves start to collapse. Everyone makes it back to the surface safe and sound.

That’s more like it: a short, sweet, daring, action-packed rescue mission, made possible by the tracking device in Tenchi’s Gentleman’s Area, presumably put their by Touri. Momo and the StuCo prevail, ending up with Tenchi, who shows he can be heroic in a pinch, but we’re sure the tug-of-war (with him as the rope) has only just begun. Oh, and the dress code at this school is appallingly loose!

Ai Tenchi Muyo! – 04

Having escaped from the Student Council, Tenchi falls through a trap door to a massive underground mining operation spearheaded by the Council’s apparent rivals. When their bodyguard finds him, they strip search him, suspecting he’s a council spy.

…And the pattern continues. Tenchi ends up flailing around an all-girls high school in nothing but his boxers, and when he finally finds a private space to change, he gets captured by another club and ends up tied up and naked again.

And again, while things very much look like Tenchi is about to get sexually abused, we don’t actually witness anything, so it’s left up to our imaginations. Maybe they don’t actually do anything. Maybe he gets away. But I’m certain of one thing: he’ll be in this situation again down the road.