Boy, Setsuna’s not wasting any time drawing attention to himself now that he’s back on Urashima eh?  It seems he’s returned to his original arrival time and location from the very beginning of the series, and only once he’s gone and blabbed his big mouth to a few people does he think to pass himself off as a friend of Karen’s older brother, Subaru. But that seems to raise some eyebrows – why?

Setsuna goes on to tell Karen’s friends about her secret plan to steal aboard a cruiser boat and sneak off to the mainland without telling anyone, including them. He asks them to beat Karen to her hiding spot and encourage her to open up to them, hoping that as a result she’ll lean on her friends more and stop trying to run away from her problems at home.

Setsuna then heads down to the beach where he waits all day for Rinne. After all she still thinks she has soot blight syndrome, so remember that she doesn’t leave the house until nightfall. Rinne meets Setsuna on the beach at their original meeting place, and Setsuna tells her straight out that he’s from the future and he’s arrived on Urashima to save her. He says some things that allude to knowledge about her future, and then throws some cheesy one liners at her in what I guess was an attempt to seem like a more macho guy?  Thankfully Rinne just thinks he’s funny and maybe a little weird.

Setsuna steps into his old job as the Ohara family maid. He meets Kuon and Sara again, and surprises Rinne by making her breakfast exactly the way she likes it. Setsuna’s hamming the whole situation up and pretending he’s just super observant instead of using knowledge he already knew, though Setsuna does remind Rinne occasionally that he is from the future.

Sara takes Setsuna back to her shrine and reveals that she knows about his arrival on Urashima from Karen. Sara moves to attack (well, fail to attack) Setsuna with her pocketknife but Setsuna’s already taken it from her. He further confuses Sara by telling her he knows many of her secrets. The scene ends with Sara being completely and totally fooled by Setsuna’s stupid bravado and his even stupider act. I don’t like this change in his personality. ;~;

That evening Setsuna and Rinne walk along the beach again together. Setsuna assures Rinne that she doesn’t have to force herself to be in the sunlight, she can work her way up to being outside during the daytime slowly. However it really only takes her a day – seeing Setsuna handling her underwear when he was hanging it up to dry on the clothesline was enough to get Rinne outside in the bright sun. ^^;;

Karen and her school friends leave for the mainland using a handmade travel brochure that Setsuna put together for her. This time instead of Setsuna being with Karen when she travels to the mainland to learn about her mother’s death, Karen’s friends will be with her for support. Setsuna even arranges for Momoka to meet Karen and her friends at the bus station, so she can be with them when Karen visits her mother’s grave. Less of a surprise that way I would assume (since both Setsuna and Karen were a little surprised by Momoka existence the first time around, if I remember correctly).

Sara also gets to have a fun birthday this time around, celebrating it on the beach with Karen, Setsuna, Rinne, and lots of fireworks! Much better than spending it unconscious. With Sara’s fears about time traveling on her birthday alleviated, and Karen learning of her mother’s death, Setsuna has now helped two of our three girls with their problems. The only person left to help (or save) is Rinne.

Afterwards several things happen in quick succession, maybe almost too quick. (Then again there’s only one episode left so…)  First, Setsuna and Rinne visit the shack down in the hidden cave, the one where Rinne used to visit the first Setsuna at. Rinne is very calm and Setsuna is every bit the supportive boyfriend. Then they take an inflatable dinghy to Boryujima (even though there was no storm and it’s perfectly calm outside??), where Setsuna leads Rinne to the cave that he dreamed of earlier, and sure enough the first Setsuna’s body is there, preserved exactly as it was in the second Setsuna’s dream. Or was it really a dream? But what else could it be? (Am I missing something?)

Together Setsuna and Rinne bury the first Setsuna and pay their respects. They return to Urashima and spend the night together in bed. No not like that, this isn’t an ecchi.  In the morning Rinne teases Setsuna and tries to get him to give her a kiss to wake her up, but as he kisses her forehead he’s caught off guard by a memory of future!Rinne flashing through his mind. Why?

There’s a festival in town, so Rinne gets all dressed up in a yukata and together she and Setsuna join in on the festivities. Karen and her friends are all at the festival too, dancing and having a great time. This honestly makes me really happy to see because in the first go-through, Karen didn’t spend a lot of time acting like a carefree schoolkid. She was angry at her dad, angry at being forced to live on Urashima, she missed her mom, and she wanted to live on the mainland. But this time around with Setsuna’s help, Karen is now closer to her schoolfriends and presumably closer to her family as well, and she is no longer unhappy living on Urashima. Karen finally got her answers regarding her mother’s disappearance, and now she’s like a completely different person.

But back to the festival. Setsuna drags Rinne out into the dancing area despite her protests and Rinne learns that both dancing and being in large crowds of people don’t bother her as much as she thought they did. When it suddenly starts to rain Rinne runs off and initially I thought that there might be some unusual, time-travely reason why, but it turns out she’d just dropped her keychain that Setsuna won for her in a festival game.

Setsuna does eventually find Rinne hiding under a tree (because it’s storming by this point) and tries to calm her down. Rinne gets up on her tip-toes and tries to get Setsuna to kiss her, but a bolt of lightning ruins the moment. When I think about it, this is not the first time this has happened either. Why is Setsuna so resistant to kissing Rinne? Does he not care about her as much now that he’s met future!Rinne?

The next day Setsuna meets with Sara at the Urashima shrine and she brings out a photo album of past Urashima events for him to look at. Because the three main families of Urashima are getting along thanks to Setsuna’s help, Sara is especially looking forward to the large upcoming fall festival.

Setsuna keeps flipping through the album pages until he finds a picture of what looks like Kuon, her husband (butler?) and a baby Rinne. Setsuna is shocked when he notices a particular detail, and while it initially looks like said detail isn’t revealed, you can guess that by the way Setsuna touches his ring from future!Rinne that the picture might have something to do with the ring. This was my thought anyways, so I skipped back a few seconds in the video and re-watched it a few times – and if you look veeeeery carefully (and I’m not reading too far into this), it looks like the woman originally thought to be Kuon in the picture is actually future!Rinne. She’s wearing what looks like a woven or a textured wedding ring, similar to the one Setsuna is presently wearing.

Holy. Shit. Remember earlier in the series when Sara thought she could time travel and due to the scar on her chest (like her mother’s), Sara thought she was her own mother or something like that?   I think that’s actually the case here: Kuon is actually future!Rinne; Rinne is her own mother. Which sort of confirms a nagging thought in the back of my head that I’ve had since the beginning of the series: why do Rinne and her mother look so identical?

This plus the next scene, “Kuon” fiddling with some wires on what looks like a time travel pod in her room, confirms this theory for me. So this is my theory going into the last episode, final answer. What do you guys think?  If it’s true, why would future!Rinne travel back to the past – to be with Setsuna again?

Actually you know what would be the most fucked up thing of all? If there are links between all of the incarnations of Rinne and Setsuna from the past, present and the future. Basically the second Setsuna is related to the first Setsuna somehow, whether they be family (brothers?) or clones or something else.  But if there are paradoxes in play, maybe there’s a way for the second Setsuna to be an incarnation of the first one?  I know I’m grasping at straws here because some of what I’m thinking is going over my head, so I’m sorry if this concept doesn’t make much sense… ^^;;

Side note: a neat touch to this episode was getting the original opening theme song back, “Eien no Hitotsu” by Yukari Tamura. Except that in this “updated version” there are a few brief moments that include Setsuna and Rinne from Future Island. Awww!

I’m so excited for the finale and all of Island‘s remaining mysteries to be solved!!!