Masamune-kun’s Revenge R – 03 – Le deuxième enfant

Everyone’s back in Japan, and Yoshino is confined to the mansion when not at school, a punishment her sister says could have been far stricter. While at school, she meets with Masamune, and says she’ll try to smooth things over with a stress-eating Aki. Then she crosses paths with a smug Kanetsugu. Neko also notices something off with Masamune, and asks if he can accompany her somewhere after school.

That somewhere turns out to be the hospital for some routine checks, after which Neko and Masamune go for a stroll by the river. When he gives her the gist of what happened, she asks if revenge is still his goal, to which he says of course: Once Aki falls in love with him he’ll dump her. Neko decides to be bold and hug him from behind.

If he’s only pursuing Aki for revenge, it wouldn’t be cheating if he fell for Neko. The hug is interrupted by Muriel’s brother’s goons. After a brief chase, her bro pulls out not a handgun, but Muriel’s manuscript, which starts with Aki and Masamune’s story and has an original, happy ending that makes Masamune wonder why things couldn’t turn out that way.

Masamune’s sister Chinatsu greets him with a jump kick to the spine, as she suspects him of going through her laundry, having seen someone through her window. But when their mom says she was the one folding their clean laundry, Chinatsu has to recant and apologize.

Meanwhile, Aki goes to a family restaurant with Kanetsugu and her three-girl fan club, who go over the photos of Aki from Paris. When Kanetsugu says most of Aki’s free time was spent with Masamune, the girls are upset, but when they press Aki for info she lashes out, then excuses herself.

While she’s gone, we get a compressed version of the genesis of Kanetsugu’s scheme to empty the Adagaki coffers, using an official document he found among his late gramps’ stuff which he’ll use to betrothe himself (really herself) to Aki. As for the money, he primarily wants it to help his little sister, who is always in and out of the hospital.

His interactions throughout the afternoon having planted an idea in his head, Masamune arrives at the mansion to meet with Yoshino. He notes how much smaller the courtyard feels compared to when he was little. As for his idea: “Pig’s Foot” was the nickname he thought Aki gave him when she did nothing to stop the bullies from beating him up in that very courtyard.

But Aki forgot that nickname. That means the only ones who know it are him, the bullies…and a second girl in the mansion. At the time, Masamune didn’t know about her, but Aki said someone was confined to their room with Chickenpox. It now occurs to him it might not have been Aki’s voice calling him Pig’s Foot and rejecting him from the window, but that second girl: Yoshino.

The question he has for her is, how does she know that nickname? The answer is revealed in the last shot of the episode, as a young Yoshino removes a black wig. Now it’s official: she was the one who rejected Masamune back then and prevented Muriel’s happy ending from occurring. My question for Yoshino is, since what has been done cannot be undone, how willing is she to sort things out with Aki and Masamune?

Wandering Witch: The Journey of Elaina – 05 – A Familiar Face in a New Place

The show’s commitment to depicting all the facets of Elaina’s world, not just the pleasant ones, is admirable, but after three straight unsettling or cautionary tales, I imagine the primary refrain of viewers this week was “Could we get segment that’s not, like, a total bummer?”

Elaina wastes no time abiding: look, a town full of living people! The beautiful land of Royal Celesteria is just what the witch doctor ordered, but Elaina’s curiosity with the city’s Royal Magic Academy seems to get her in trouble, as she ends up being chased by a pack of magic students.

As a full-fledged Witch, Elaina is able to easily avoid capture and exhaust her pursuers, whose professor turns out to be Elaina’s own magical mentor, Fran, whom she hasn’t seen in a few years. Once she heard the Ashen Witch was in town, Fran thought it would be both good training and good fun for her students to go up against catch such a talented witch—tooting her own horn as well as Elaina’s!

Back in her academy chambers, Fran tells Elaina she should stop by home, as her mother is worried about her. Fran assumes Elaina’s mom was the reason she became a traveler, but Elaina tells her it was more the stories of Nike. Turns out the two share the same favorite story: of Nike passing the torch to her apprentice Foula.

I’m not sure how heavily we’re supposed to read into this, but it’s definitely hinted at that Nike and Elaina’s mom were the same person, and Fran was her “Foula”. Once she taught Fran everything she could, she became an “ordinary woman” and lived out her days at home.

Fran also tells Elaina about her own attempts to write a book about her journeys. While she wasn’t proud of her manuscript and lost it when she sold the bag it was in, Fran encourages Elaina to make full use of her diary, so that she too can hear about her apprentice’s fun memories someday (of course, we know they’re not always fun.)

The next day, Elaina joins Fran as a guest lecturer and assistant. After deftly handling silly questions about her (no, she doesn’t have a boyfriend!),  Elaina has a ton of fun helping to teach the young students how to calmly manipulate balls of water. It’s the first time she’s passing on the knowledge and wisdom passed to her from Fran, and she clearly finds passing it to the kids uniquely rewarding.

The evening before the day Elaina plans to leave, Fran takes her to her favorite view of Celesteria. When Elaina asks what will become of the students when they graduate, Fran says they’ll work in various jobs around the city, which we saw as Elaina explored earlier. But whether they deliver packages or taxiing people about, or performing magic tricks in the square, they’re all doing what they like, just as Fran is teaching—and Elaina is traveling—because they like it.

When asked what else Elaina likes, Fran gets her to say that butterflies are “okay” and that she likes flowers too. The next morning, Fran is late to see Elaina off, but Elaina is worried that if they have an extended goodbye she’ll have sad feelings about it later. Before she leaves, Fran appears with her students and gives her a shower of flowers, some of them flying like butterflies. It’s a fitting farewell to the wandering witch, who will surely have fond memories of her time in Celesteria.

I mean, considering where else she’s been and what she’s witnessed, I’m sure she was as eager for a joyful destination as we were! That leaves the framing device of the episode: Elaina finding Fran’s book in published form six months later, in a town not only full of Fran merchandise, but a prominent statue of the her in what Elaina thinks might be too cool a pose! In any case, next time she sees Fran—and she fully plans to—she’ll have a fun story to tell.

Some words on the episode from Crow here.

Cardcaptor Sakura – 22 – Enter Sandcard

It’s probably for the best that CCS decided to take a break from Meiling and Syaoran to return the focus to the impressive Kinomoto family. When Touya and Sakura’s dad has to work long nights on a tight deadline for a manuscript, the siblings put aside their petty squabbling and do all of their dad’s share of chores, without him having to even ask! If that doesn’t show you he raised some good kids, I don’t know what does.

Sakura wants to extend her helping hand, so she visits her dad at university with Tomoyo, and his lab assistants let her peek in on one of his inspiring and sought-after history lectures. It’s great to see Sakura beam with pride over her father’s work, and wants to do everything she can to make his life easier. Unfortunately, there’s a Sleep Clow Card determined to render her dad and his team unconscious!

Sleep is another one of those mischievous “catch me if you can” cards that wreaks as much havoc as possible before being caught—it even manages to knock Kero-chan out! But thanks to a combination of Jump and Windy, Sakura is able to dodge the magic sleeping dust and disorient the card enough to seal it. However, in the process Sakura causes a lot of damage in her father’s office—and breaks his laptop!

Sakura is beside herself with guilt, but by now we know her father would much rather miss a deadline than watch his only daughter cry, so he forgives her on the spot and urges her not to worry about it. Of course, since Sakura is such a good girl, she can’t help but lose sleep over the accident.

Her dad finds a way to cheer Sakura up the next day: by enlisting her and Touya as his final night assistants. By the time morning comes, Sakura has nodded off but the manuscript is complete. He even has time to make Sakura a lunch with a note urging her to do her best, mirroring the lunch and note she made for him. What a beautiful, love-filled episode!