“Hey…have you ever wanted to change the past?”
Summary
Sasami has barricaded herself into her room, and absolutely refuses to come out, sending a large variety of missiles after Kamiomi, Kagami and Tama as they try to break through her Amaterasu-powered barrier. When Tama finally eats through the barrier with Tsurugi’s instructions, Sasami reveals she has become abnormally fat, prompting Tsurugi to send her back into the past to deal with something “unfinished” left behind by her mother.
Impression
…Oh dear. Well, from a male perspective, I think that with any trouble a girl has with her weight, things are usually not as significant as they make it out to be – let’s go with Maou from Maoyuu Maou Yuusha and her constant worry over having too much “useless meat” as an example. But in terms of Sasami’s uh…current appearance, I have to agree that this time, there is something horribly wrong with how fat she is. It probably does justify shutting yourself in if you destroy the image of femininity to that extent – and considering Sasami’s position as having the power of Amaterasu, it’s worrying that there’s an Alteration to a suspiciously delicious pizza that she doesn’t have any control over. All I know is that Sasami and her family are more alike than they might think – looks like hikikomori traits run in the family too, though I can’t blame Tsukuyomi Ruza for not caring any more after his pride was utterly crushed by his dead wife last episode.
It’s a pity Sasami’s large arsenal of missiles never did manage to strip Kagami naked, as I would have liked to see Excellent★Kagami become a national sensation all over Japan 🙁 And what was with that blatantly obvious white censor bar? I’m disappointed…I would have thought this show would be more liberal with these things…carving a path into a world of anime where white censor bars are no more! No? Well…at least use a more discreet methods (like clouds) to cover her panties instead of a lazy white bar across the screen. On a serious note, I’m glad to see that Kagami’s going to many lengths in order to help Sasami with her problem and get in contact with her after several days of hearing nothing, which really consolidated that friendship episode from a few weeks back. Oh, and yay for Tsurugi! I’d always guessed she wouldn’t have much of a problem coming back from the Underworld.
This show has an awkward habit of going off on a tangent once it’s introduced a new event or issue, and this episode was the same – we kinda diverged from the whole issue over Sasami becoming ultra fat, and delved into a time back when Juju was still alive with Micchan the miko and the fully intact Tsukuyomi Shrine, presumably failing to “finish” something before her death. She’s as strong as she was when she fought Sasami and the Yagami sisters – looks like her power as a Tsukuyomi priestess really is the real deal. Again, despite her antagonistic role last week I still have mixed feelings over my opinions on her – at that point in time she was already pretty ill, but she’s always thought about Sasami, wanting her to grow up well and have a good life as the next Tsukuyomi priestess. She’s working especially hard so that if anything, Sasami’s time as priestess will be made slightly easier for her – I’m beginning to see why she was so fixated on Sasami succeeding her as the next in line.
Finally, Tamamo-no-Mae made an appearance – she was Caster in Fate/Extra, but here she’s a nine-tailed fox spirit who takes on a more antagonistic role, being a member of some evil organisation that seems to be focused on Sasami and the powers of Amaterasu. More worrying was the fact that she’s from the future too, and entered the original flow of history through the weird golem that clung to Sasami’s child version. It’s definitely not something that happened the first time round, which means she followed Sasami in – and it turns out that she’s offering to change the past. I’m sure Sasami has regrets, and what we saw this episode is probably only a few examples out of many, but it’s never, ever a good thing to change the past. It’s been proven in literature time and time again that worse things end up happening if you casually mess around with a time stream, and small, unrelated changes you make may end up having massive effects on the present that won’t be easy to undo.