Yamada-kun to 7-nin no Majo – 09

What a tangled web Y7 weaves…and yet it all holds together marvelously. As thanks for helping to change her fiery future, Sarushima lets Yamada borrow her powers for their festival booth. Sarushima then asks Yamada to help her erase her power, stating she wants to fall in love and never will if she knows the future of everyone she kisses. As a practical matter, Sarushima has outgrown her power, so it’s not a bad thing for her to want to free it up for another girl.

Unfortunately for Yamada, the “Witch Killer” whose services he seeks on Sarushima’s behalf is Tamaki Shinichi, a bit of an aloof trickster, who has already stolen the invisibility power of a witch, a power that will stay with him until he kisses another witch. Tamaki agrees to take Sarushima’s ability, but only if Yamada gives him valuable intel on whom Yamazaki will be choosing to succeed him as StuCo President.

Yamada first asks Yamazaki upfront for this sensitive information, which Yamazaki predictably declines to surrender, so Yamada decides to try Odagiri’s power—given to him with her blessing, as she wants to help Sarushima too—to charm him. Only his lips can’t get anywhere near Yamazaki’s, because of his secretary and bodyguard Asuka Mikoto stops him with a furious, panstu-revealing kick.

They tie Yamada up, expecting to need torture to get his true intentions out of him, but Yamada is happy to just tell them: Tamaki wants the info. Ironically, Tamaki was atop Yamazaki’s list of successors, but is bumped down when Yamazaki learns of his scheming. We also learn Asuka was the sixth witch, who willingly had her invisibility power taken by Tamaki…though that doesn’t explain her amazing strength!

With the candidates neck-and-neck-and-neck, Yamazaki proposes that the one who discovers the identity of the seventh witch will win the presidency.

There’s suddenly a lot of moving parts in Yamada’s plan to help Sarushima move on, but he never for a second considers backing out of helping her. In fact, he dutifully explains all these moving parts as the cause for the delay (everyone he needs wants something). Sarushima rewards him for his hard work with a kiss, forgetting that it means he’ll see her future.

It’s fun to wonder in the context of their kiss here, that if and when Sarushima does lose her power, whether she’d discover she was in love with Yamada after all.

Anyway, in that future, he sees that Sarushima has lost her powers (which is good), Tamaki has become president (which is fine), Shiraishi is Tamaki’s secretary.

That last bit is concerning to Yamada, especially the way she walks away with Tamaki and looks back at him in the vision. It spurs Yamada to decide to change the future he sees, by helping Miyamura find the seventh instead of Tamaki.

At the bonfire where he and Miyamura keep their distance from their reveling friends and classmates, Yamada admits to him what we’ve known for some time, but he hasn’t been able to verbalize until now: he loves Shiraishi, and doesn’t want to lose her.

Miyamura and Odagiri thus begin separately researching all the troublemakers in the school in their search for the seventh witch. Tamaki seems unmotivated to Odagiri, but by telling Miyamura this, and how it could be a two-horse race between them, Yamada figures out that Miyamura, Tsubaki, Itou and Shiraishi have been kissed by Tamaki, making him invisible to them, which he no doubt used to steal their research.

Rather than simply continue the race to find the seventh, Yamada, who is very much invested in Tamaki not winning, decides to use Shiraishi’s body-swapping ability to get back at him.

That plan will be set into motion with him switching bodies with Shiraishi, but in the light of his realization of his love for her, Yamada finds it more difficult than ever to actually kiss her, worrying about all the variables they never bothered worrying about before. Shiraishi isn’t having it and kisses him.

This upsets him, and when Shiraishi asks why, he tells her: in that future, she wore a look he never wanted to see again; a look of isolation and loneliness; the antithesis to her warm bright smile at the bonfire, surrounded by friends. But Shiraishi responds to his concerns with her own resolution: to never go back to being that lonely person, before asking Yamada to change the future for her.

Perhaps, once he has, Shiraishi may not have further use for her power, nor Yamada for his, and these two can move forward, along with Asuka and Sarushima, to lives defined not by supernatural abilities, but confidence, devotion and love.

Yamada-kun to 7-nin no Majo – 08

I’ve liked how deftly Y7 has kept things fresh by approaching each new witch intro from a different angle, which is also appropriate considering the unique problems that led to them getting their powers in the first place. Urara was and is Yamada’s primary love interest. Nene was an adversary, while Meiko and Maria needed his help.

With Takigawa Noa, we seem to be dealing with another adversary. Her powers are believed to be the opposite of Maria’s, meaning the Supe Club assumes Noa’s turned three formerly popular students into troublemakers through blackmail or manipulation. But nothing is ever as clear-cut as it seems on this show. In fact, Noa’s turns out to be the most emotionally complex witch cases yet.

She’s also, at first, the toughest nut to crack. Yamada thinks at first he can put on the charm and get a kiss to make things easier, but to his shock, Noa is grossed out by him, having only teased him about liking him.

With Yamada’s pride hurt, he tries again, but only gets a push broom to the face. When he reveals he’s in the Supe Club and knows she’s a witch, Noa pulls attitude 180, and is suddenly keen to kiss him. So keen, Yamada thinks something is fishy, and rebuffs her advances. Now she’s the one with the hurt pride.

Using her knew knowledge of Yamada, she hits him where he lives, having her three troubled friends/minions brutally ransack the clubroom. I’m not sure how they weren’t simply suspended or expelled right then and there, but the adults are all but nonexistent in this school, so whatever.

Pissed off more than ever, Yamada confronts President Yamazaki for the truth about Noa, and he gets it: she wants to make witches out of her three friends, and eradicate all the others. That means Urara, Nene, Meiko and Maria are all in danger.

Rather than panic, Yamada stages a trap for Noa’s crew, using a game, excited Urara as the bait. I appreciate her adventurous spirit throughout this mission, and the fact she trusts Yamada’s judgement more than anyone else. The female friend of Noa kisses Urara, and celebrates the fact she was able to switch bodies, so she can now pesumably do something to get Urara expelled and thus powers revoked.

Only Yamada kissed Urara before, so the girl only ends up switching with him, in Urara’s body. She and the other two are tied up and held captive in the club room while Yamada, still in the girl’s body, opens negotiations with Noa.

Two others (not sure who) accompany Yamada in the bodies of Noa’s friends, but Noa knows who they are immediately. She offers the notebook, then both notebooks in exchange for her people, but Yamada wants more: for the witch-hunting activities to stop, a condition Noa flatly refuses.

The talks break down, and Tsubaki and Itou beat Yamada for failing again, but Yamada insists this is about more than getting the notebooks back: three students’ reputations are at stake, and Noa must be stopped. That’s when Noa’s friends agree to stop their activities of their own volition. They’d rather be together with Noa than for her to be alone.

This awakens Yamada to a key point: Noa hasn’t been manipulating her friends. When he gives them back to her, he asks her if taking over the school with her power was really her goal, and castigates them for causing all those problems that caused them to lose the popularity they already had.

That’s when a frustrated Noa kisses Yamada, and he experiences her power firsthand: in a dream, he relives the most traumatic memory of her past, when her classmates locked her in a storage room for hours until she wet herself. Similarly, her three friends never did anything bad; they were framed.

Noa has wanted to save them for so long, and thought she could do so by getting them witch powers. But when Yamada stopped them, she remembered they were popular from the start, and only their association with her hurt them.

Then the three friends come to Noa’s aid, fighting Yamada and insisting they won’t leave her side. But Yamada shoots back that it’s their wishy-washiness that’s causing Noa’s suffering. Yamada doesn’t have all the answers, but he thinks they should at least do whatever they can to make Noa smile.

At that, another switch seems to go of in Noa’s head, and when we next see her, she’s in the club clinging to Yamada, whom she claims to have fallen for completely. Urara, whom you’d think would be jealous about such a development, is actually happy, because Noa’s power is more about simply seeing someone’s darkest hour, it’s about both kisser and kissee opening their hearts to one another, eliminating artifice and pretense.

They haven’t known each other long, but Yamada and Noa experienced that, and now he knows she’s not just an annoying schemer, and he’s not just a nosy, gross upperclassman. Urara also remarks that the two aren’t all that dissimilar: Yamada’s power also ultimately brings him closer to each of the witches, since to know their powers is to know the problems that gave rise to them. He knew exactly what to do for Noa, and she appreciates it.

It was great watching the battle of wills between Noa and Yamada, as well as the breathless evolution of their relationship. Yuuki Aoi is a great addition to the already stacked cast. Two witches to go!