Summary
Shiro, Neko and Kuroh are engaged by Scepter 4 in a stadium, with Seri and Munakata fighting Kuroh, who refuses to draw his sword against them. After Neko’s illusions throw the Blues off-guard and they manage to escape, Kuroh reveals Neko’s memory manipulation abilities, and asks her to dispel all the ones she has on Shiro to find out who he really is.
Impression
I was actually waiting for a confrontation between the Shiro/Kuroh duo and an opposing faction as they’ve spent the majority of the show trying to avoid each other, so I was initially really hyped up to see them caught out in the stadium by Scepter 4, with a team led by Awashima Seri. Seri herself couldn’t match up to Kuroh, who never actually unsheathed his sword in the entire battle with Scepter 4 – be it against Seri, the random clan members or Munakata himself, even though he’s one of the seven kings. That reluctance pretty much cost Kuroh the battle, though I’m not sure how much of a difference Kuroh’s sword skills would have affected the battle, as Munakata defeated him using merely the scabbard of his sword. He also took the liberty of bitchslapping Kuroh xD His… giant Sword of Damocles probably has some significance that I’m struggling to grasp – would it be signalling an activation of his powers, or something that was involved with dispelling Neko’s illusion?
The other main revelation this episode was the confirmation after much speculation that Neko’s power is memory manipulation – both altering and implanting falsified memories as and when she likes. It’s disappointing to see that she only met Shiro when he first arrived at the school, falling from the sky in a parachute after being pushed off by some random guy. Being able to manipulate both Kukuri and Shiro’s brain to believe the existence of Isana Yashiro is not something I think is supposed to be easy, so hopefully there’s something more to Neko and her identity other than her being a random cat within the school. We’re 7 episodes in, and the story is still in a complete mess – there are actually more questions being raised than answered at this point. Heck, Shiro’s real name isn’t even Isana Yashiro at all, and the dude that pushed him off is probably a rival king that clearly saw Shiro as a threat, making it likely that Shiro’s a king himself – which was hinted at by the illusion Shiro pulling out his own giant sword. Most importantly though is Shiro’s memories before his parachuting down to school and where they have gone to – and why has the white-haired guy not come after him at all? Shiro himself looked and acted perfectly sane on that blimp, so how does this relate to the murderer Shiro, his bloodstained clothes and the murder of Tatara Totsuka if it supposedly happened sometime when he was at school?
