Summary
Haruaki, Fear, Konoha and Kirika find some inconsistencies in Shiraho’s story, so they go to check her out in the school records. When they see a picture of Sovereignty instead, they realize that the identities of the two girls aren’t exactly who they assume them to be.
Impression
Heh, I had my doubts about the first half of the episode, but the second half really wrapped the story up nicely. Job well done, Silver Link. Hadena Subs were nasty though, I lost count of how many times I winced at the horrible grammar/timings.
As said, the first half wasn’t great. I mean, there was far too much animation time put into Konoha fanservice, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I thought all those close up boob-shots were excessive. Need moar Kirika
Fear was a cute loli for the whole episode again, similar to last week I found this disappointing. Especially the supermarket trip – I guess I can understand the rice cracker obsession, but I would have rather had a more fleshed out story of Sovereignty and her curse rather than a monologue about how to identify cabbages from lettuce. TROLOLOL, you can tell when cabbages are fresh from their stems! What a good use of screen time. Then Fear went and explained the theory to a passing old lady. Oh, and Fear loves humans! Where have I seen that before…
Anyway, the bomb really drops when tsundere Kirika-chan tells them that “Shiraho” hasn’t been turning up to school, and they go check her records…and Sovereignty’s face is on the page. O_O I must admit, I didn’t see that one coming at all. And since Konoha mentions that Shiraho might have had an accomplice, everyone rushes over to that dark, scary house, and they go in and-
Yup, that bishounen is the real Sovereignty. And before someone goes IT’S A TRAP! It’s not really, since Sovereignty can switch between a male and female body, to apparently suit the owner of the doll. And the reason for that is Sovereignty’s true curse – that any owner will fall in love with it, and eventually die when they embrace, due to a mechanism that stabs the owner when they do. Still, Shiraho, who has clearly fallen in love with the doll. begs Haruaki and Co not to kill Sovereignty, who pretty much goes berserk and stabs Kirika, who won’t die anyway since she’s immortal.
Now, the real Shiraho is still surrounded in as much mystery as before, as we had the Madoka-esque monologue where she talked about accepting Sovereignty, and the episode ended with “Can there be mutual love between dolls?” Which hinted really bad that Shiraho might be a doll as well (hence being able to control those evil plush toys of doom). Why they would swap places and have Sovereignty pretend to be the innocent victim I don’t know, which means there might be an explanation/resolve episode coming up next week. We have to find out what will happen to the both of them anyway – can that kind of love curse even be lifted?