Alright here we are, episode 9. Ayano’s theory of Happiness. I have some tissues ready just in case, from what i’ve heard this is one of the saddest PV’s in the series. So much so that the composer cried while working on it. So I am ready, I’m braced. The episode starts with Ayano’s mother reading her a story. Oh dear, this opening is already threatening to make me cry. It shows the other three being adopted.
She tries to be the best sister she can for them. She creates the blindfold gang to make them feel like heroes instead of monsters. Oh god, we aren’t even 5 minutes in and I’m tearing up. Oh god! little Kano is so cute, I can’t even. This family Dynamic…This is just during the opening song. The animation for this is really wonky, however, the lyrics are really enough to carry it. The lyric that really tugged at my heart strings was.
“Red is the color of the heroes on the TV, So you don’t have to be afraid.” The way she comforted Seto with those words.
The opening ends and we start up with Kano drawing on Seto’s face to make him the villain, but Ayano makes them the good guy gang. The Professor comes in to play the much needed villain.
Oh god! August 15th, their Mom and Dad we’re caught in a landslide. We’ve seen the professor. We know he made it out of the darkness and that he has a power. Their mother though…Ayano though she was suffering from the loss of her mother comforted everyone.
Life went on, the professor went to teach Haruka and Takane. The blindfold club proceeds as usual.
Ayano walks into her dad’s room to close a window. she finds her mother’s journals about the powers, and the monster in the child books and how they all gained powers when they nearly died. It’s a strange and wild theory, but faced with the three with powers. The professor comes home and tells Ayano that they might be having guest to prepare for the festival.
Ayano’s mother was looking for some way to end this suffering for Kida, Seto, Kano and the others who suffer from what they do. I’m rather interested in what the professors power is.
We see Shintaro and Ayano talking, he gives her his prize for winning the shooting game. Which is a giant fish, what an odd prize for a shooting game. Kano pops up behind her, Kida has gone missing. I’m so confused about the professor and what his power is.
Kano was a rather clingy younger brother. Ayano asks him for help, we cut back to the current time as he’s recounting this story to Ene. Who is still rather mad about him looking like Haruka. Not that I can blame her, I’m still mad about that one and I adore Kano. It was a real dick move Kano.
The professors power only shows itself at night, when he is asleep. It has it’s own personality, a split personality of sorts. He would pretend to be Ayano and go to school for her during that time. Through that, they discovered what the power inside their father wanted.
They show up at the school, the snake inside his body had been it’s trying to gather all the snakes in the real world. Oh god, Takane and Haruka were sacrifices to get more snakes onto this side of the portal. The one carrying the queen, i believe is Marry or is it…Takane? WAIT, WAIT? THAT’S TAKANE’S BODY! WHAT THE HELL? I’M SO CONFUSED….LIKE a lot makes sense now, however. It makes no sense at all at the same time. This series, I can’t even guys.
Now, I heard from a friend that the animation in this episode was supposed to be pretty bad. Opening’s strange animation aside the rest of the episode looked fine to me. When I heard the animation was off I was expecting something like Gurren Laggen episode 4. I will give everyone this, I’m not sure why the opening was animated the way that it was. It was sad, it was super sad but the animation sort of distracted from that. Anyway, up next. Act 10: Fantasy Forrest!
Gonna say it right now – Ayano’s my favourite character, so maybe I’m just being biased, but this is my new favourite episode of this series! XD I was disappointed with the animation for the opening, but at least the content of the scenes themselves were nice, seeing the family bond and all, and the song was wonderful (as always!)
This was a great episode, revealing a lot of plot and getting into the really important details. I was so excited by the end of the episode, I wish it could have gone on for longer!
However, I’m starting to suspect that we may be getting a second season, because honestly speaking, I don’t think it’ll be possible to wrap up the whole story in three more episodes. Hmm…we’ll just have to wait and see, I suppose.
I too was unhappy with the OP. Ayano’s Theory of Happiness should have been a crowning moment of feels, and the animation sequence really derailed that imo.
I don’t know about a second season, but I agree three episodes doesn’t seem enough. According to the website, the remaining ones are set to be Imagination Forest, Otsukimi Recital and Children Record – with the whole “monster” story having been slowly revealed, I can understand why they’ve gone for the first of those. And Otsukimi Recital is really fun, so I’m looking forward to that too – but the absence of Outer Science is sort of disappointing.
Definitely! All I can hope is that they do something about it in the Blu-ray/DVD releases, at the very least…the animation was actually very distracting during that scene.
Yeah…I had been expecting the last episodes to be Outer Science and Summer Time Record myself, so I was really surprised to see the episodes chosen. But like you said, it makes sense for Imagination Forest to be the next one, and I do admit that I love Otsukimi Recital a lot (a looooot, gosh it’s so cute.) I do wonder what the Children Record episode will be about though.