“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5
Summary: Mahiro and Yoshino continue to roam the countryside in an effort to find more of Hakaze’s buried talismans. While at an aquarium, the two run into some Kusaribe goons lead a man named Tetsuma. They fight, destroying most of the aquarium in the process, but in the end Tetsuma is forced to retreat thanks to Mahiro. The two of them continue on, and eventually land at the apartment of Junichirou Hoshimura, a friend of Hakaze’s from her childhood, where they are given an especially powerful Talisman. Junichirou ends the episode by revealing to Yoshino and Mahiro a very shocking fact about Hakaze.
Impressions: SURPRISE TWIST ENDING!! Holy cow, bet you didn’t think that was going to happen! Unless you’re reading the manga. Or you read spoilers somewhere. But, seriously, Hakaze being dead was something I did not see coming. It raises a whole bunch of new questions, like is she a ghost or a spirit or what? How does she think she’s on the island when her remains are with Samon? How did she not know that she died? How is she communicating with Mahiro and Yoshino? Does her little voodoo doll have a special on collect calls to the after life? Samon is apparently keeping her bones, in case the Tree of Exodus gets out of control, because she’s the only one who would be able to defeat it. But didn’t they clearly say that dead people can’t be brought back to life? So what’s the point of keeping the bones? This leads me to believe that 1. they’re going to go back on the logic they themselves set up and 2. that they’ll definitely be resurrecting the dead in some way in future episodes. With Hakaze trapped in some kind of weird limbo, and not just a desert island, things just got a whole lot harder for Yoshino and Mahiro.
This episode also introduces not one but two new characters: arrow man Tetsuma, and Junichirou the enigma. Tetsuma is another one of Samon’s underlings, and unlike our spear wielding friend, he seems a bit more hot-tempered. Hakaze tells the boys that he’s never really liked her, but with her illogical existence now, I can really see why he would want to rebel against her so strongly, especially if he loves logic as much as Hakaze says he does. We didn’t really get to see him in action much, but he didn’t really give off impression that he was as strong (or stronger than) Natsumura. The fight in the aquarium was very nice, although very short. The idea of fish (that usually swim around gracefully in the water) being turned to sunken iron and just laying about was a very striking visual.
Junichirou, our blond-haired sweat suit wearing buddy, also makes his first appearance but remains a complete mystery. The only things we know about him are that he left the Kusaribe because he didn’t want to get caught up in their conflict and that he likes to read (judging by the sheer volume of books in his apartment.) He also may or may not have a sense of humor depending on if he or Hakaze came up with their ridiculous password. Since he was part of the Kusaribe clan, I’m guessing he must have magical powers like the rest of them, but that remains to be seen. I have a feeling he’ll be filling more of a scholarly role.
We also get a couple of flashbacks to Yoshino’s past, specifically a date with Aika that he had at an aquarium similar to the one they visit in this episode. If it wasn’t clear before, the reason they were (and the reason why Yoshino still is) hiding their relationship from Mahiro was because they both knew that it would hurt him badly on some level. Finding out that his best (read: only) friend and his beloved sister where dating, leaving him as the odd man out would probably have been a harsh blow to Mahiro’s psyche.
Aika also talks about fate, and how everything was ment to be, which is later echoed by Hakaze. Of course Yoshino disagrees with this idea, since it would mean that it was fate that Aika was killed. It raises an interesting idea; what if she was killed for the purpose of drawing her brother (and Yoshino as well) into eventually fighting to save the world? She was killed by someone within the Kusaribe tribe, so who’s to say that Hakaze, with all her careful planning for the future, didn’t order her death as a back-up plan to save the world?
Anyway, next episode…stuff will happen? Spear dude is back, Junichirou will be doing some fighting (?), and we’ll maybe get some explanations as to what exactly Hakaze’s status is. Is she alive, dead, what? I neeeed to know!
Final Thought: Nice bit of continuity between episodes, with first showing the mountain with the big piece missing out of it, and this week showing how it got that way. It’s one of the first times we see Hakaze doing magic, instead of acting through a proxy, and you can see why she is the strongest magician. She just sucks away half that mountain like it ain’t even a problem. If I were Samon, I’d probably be scared too.
But you can’t send a “Message in a Bottle” from the afterlife, can you?
If Hakaze is really dead then WHO WAS BOTTLE?
A message in a bottle is not a guarantee that it’ll reach someone else’s hands when you are still alive. We never know what that bottle went through or when exactly the bottle was sent out. Also the problem would be how can the dead communicate with someone? (and through a fucking wooden doll – AH LINZZ IT”S ANIME AND IT”S MAGIC!!!)