I’m enjoying the bold, colorful aethetic of this show. I’m enjoying the galaxy of crazy expressions being doled out by both Rokruo and Benio on a regular basis. And I’m definitely enjoying ridiculously scenarios in which Benio causes a self-upskirt by sucking at embroidery as much as Rokuro and sewing her hoop into her dress. That’s some creative flashing right there!
Sure, this wasn’t the most serious episode, but it still had serious undertones, and the notion that Subaru isn’t going to train them the way they expected, and that inability to expect what she’ll say or do next is actually part of their training.
Most of the episode is a game of hide-and-seek, with Subaru using magic, but it isn’t an unwinnable challenge: Roku and Beni simply need to hunker down, focus, and discover the clues that will lead them to Subaru.
Granted, Benio isn’t very practical about looking for Subaru at first, and ends up looking everywhere, including the fridge and Rokuro’s porn stash, but what’s so great about these two is that there’s a good give-and-take; push-and-pull dynamic. Benio isn’t always on Rokuro’s case or vice versa; that would be boring. Instead, both are sometimes on each others’ cases.
The rest of the time, they’re downright normal and decent with each other, which is typically when they’re not overthinking their interactions. Rokuro praises Benio’s good guess about Subaru’s dieting, and Benio likes it. But When Rokuro goes further in trying to read her mind by guessing she wants to eat ohagi (which is probably correct, by the way), she gets cross and tries to step on his foot.
They’re right back on the same side when they end up in Magano, and in a boss fight with a giant octopus Kegare that’s obviously been set up by Subaru. Their initial separate attacks have no effect, and when it’s Octy’s turn he unleashes a giant cloud of miasma that amounts to a “darkness” spell.
No matter; Rokuro and Benio realize the only way they’re getting out of this is by intuiting what each other will do and when. Benio guesses that Roku will move first (not a stretch there), while Roku knows Benio will back him up.
They lay some serious slashes on the octopus, and to their and MY surprise, its dispersal isn’t prefaced by a giant pentagram. Instead, it explodes in a cloud of tiny fans, indicating it was not a Kegare at all, but a familiar cooked up by Subaru. That was a neat little “switching-up” moment that capitalized on the patterns we’d come to expect from Magano battles.
Subaru congratulates the couple for thinking outside the box and trusting in one another. Even though her training was unorthodox to say the least, when she departs, neither Rokuro nor Benio can deny that they learned a lot. Unfortunately for Rokuro, one of the things Benio learns is the location of the rest of his girly mags!
The episode ends with a reveal of anothe rpotential antagonist, but I was far more bowled over by Tatara’s navigation face, making up for the fact that Subaru’s Talbot-Lago has no SatNav. That’s just a really neat little detail in a brisk, boisterous, cheeky, and very entertaining episode.
RABUJOI - An Anime Blog 