Impression
Okay guys, we’re renaming this show No Jibril No Life.
Best girl, or best girl? I’d been fully supporting Shiro until now (she is still, admittedly, very cute) but Jibril is dangerously erotic… that moaning and all her other fanservice scenes won me over surprisingly quickly. Even though they’re constantly reminding us of the age restrictions in this show, they’re cutting it awfully close at times – the only reason Jibril, Steph and Shiro didn’t have their bare breasts censored was because Sora had conveniently used a turn to remove their nipples. Not that I’m complaining, of course! With Jibril’s crazy obsession over knowledge and books, it’s actually sometimes hard to believe that the Flugels were god-killing warriors in the past – although she does look scary when she gets serious. If we assume that combat and battle capability were what the Flugels specialized in back in the day, it definitely says something about them as a race if they’re still able to maintain a high ranking within the Exceed just through this crazy version of shiritori. And that makes Jibril even more awesome.
While the chess game with Kurami already highlighted the sort of stuff we might be getting from No Jibril No Life, that game of “Materialization Shiritori” was… very ballsy, to say the least. Just incredible. For those who aren’t aware, shiritori is a word game – players take it in turns to say words, and each new word has to start with the syllabic character that ended the previous word. It’s fairly commonplace as far as I know, and it was featured during an arc in Medaka Box as well. Jibril’s version is a whole different kettle of fish though, in that the words one announces will literally appear if it’s not there, and will disappear if vice versa – meaning that the things you call into existence will directly be part of your strategy in getting your opponent to lose. It was just like Sora to begin by testing out what he could and couldn’t do – but wow, that hydrogen bomb was overkill. Bit of a gamble, too – Jibril may not have wanted the game to end after a single turn, but ultimately it was down to her quick thinking that kept the game going. Imagine if she hadn’t known a high level sealing spell that conveniently started with “ku”. Also, sudden sibling kiss was sudden.
I think the crux of the game came down to Sora and Jibril both exploiting knowledge that the other didn’t have access to – Sora through his surprising scientific knowledge of the real world, and Jibril through her angel magic. In this way, Sora getting rid of her spirit circuits and summoning the lithosphere minus a crust and mantle were all part of his devious plan to have her lose through “dying”. And I suppose Jibril’s pride brought it on herself too, through using “empty-headed academic” as a perceived final victory jab to prove to Sora that his beliefs were wrong. Without that, Sora could never have been able to trigger that hypernova (!) that gave him the win. It was a very very narrow win, mind you – I know the whole idea was that Jibril would be closer to the massive ball of magma, and would thus die first, but with the hypernova we’re talking about a difference of fractions upon fractions of a second. Nevertheless, it was a fitting end to an incredible game – topping this will be difficult, methinks. And dammit Sora, where can I get an angel girl of my own?!
Remember, the Exceed ranking is determined by how much magical power a race has, so the Flugel didn’t earn their ranking, they just have it automatically. It’s also a bit disturbing, though, in that they were created ti kill gods, yet there are still five races who are more powerful than they are (although one of those was the gods in question, so how much that means may be up in the air).
PS: MY sexy angel of death! Mine! Get your own! 😛
Ah, that’s right. It seemed pretty similar to a superiority ranking to me – the significance of the use of magic during games perhaps explains why. As for the other races, it almost seems like the further up you go, the less humanoid they get – instead they’re otherworldly beings or “entities” of immense power, like the Phantasma we saw in Episode 5. Imanity sits at one end as the “fully human” race, and the Old Deus is at the other.
drags Jibril away You’ll have to come get her first!
This may have been covered, but who is the “famous person” Sora says Jibril sounds like at the beginning of the episode?
It seems like one of those in-jokes that only a local would get – it could possibly be Lou Ooshiba as koekara points out. Certainly sounds pretty similar! Although it was much sexier on Jibril of course 😀
In the manga, Sora said that if Jibril didn’t use empty-headed academic, he had 20 other words prepared just in case that would achieve the same result as removing Coulomb’s Force.