Last week, I didn’t realize that there was a break until late Thursday, so I was ecstatic to finally watch the episode. Lots of Dark!Seiji, but did they deliver?
I would be lying if I said this was the best episode ever. It could have been, but it wasn’t. Aside from the beautiful speech Megumi gave Seiji, the fight itself was underwhelming. I think the worst part of it that it didn’t feel like either party was putting much of an effort besides Megumi’s Mega Love Punch. Yes the girls were buying time for Megumi to prepare and were focusing on reminding Dark!Seiji of his love for Megumi, but even afterwards, when she and Seiji were supposed to duke it out, we weren’t seeing the same force we were seeing in the previous episode. Dark!Seiji is incredibly powerful, and it wasn’t until later into the episode that the crystal started wavering. So all that time when they were supposed to duke it out, I feel as though Dark!Seiji’s abilities were nerfed to suit the circumstances of the fight against Lovely. It probably would have had a stronger impact had it felt like they had not done that and went all out, showing the power of Megumi’s love and determination to save him.
But despite the episode’s downfalls, it did have a variety of good moments. The first one was the part when Megumi realized she couldn’t destroy the crystal by force and decided that she would accept Dark!Seiji’s hurt and hatred head on because she understands they are part of Seiji’s heart. I loved that because we don’t typically see magical girls address hurt and hatred in that manner. Megumi decided it would be best for them to simply duke it out without anyone interfering. The next moment was my favourite: Megumi took all of Dark!Seiji’s hurt and hate and turned it into Pinky Love Shoot, which she used simply as an opportunity to hug him, followed with the confession of how much she loves him along with the acknowledgements of everything he had done to her. But that wasn’t all. I love how in Happiness Charge, they describe love in its many forms other than liking/loving and helping others. This is important because sometimes we forget that. We forget that the little things we do with the people we care about, all of those activities are all part of love.
At the end of the day, Megumi x Seiji was never meant to be a romantic relationship in this series, but nevertheless their platonic relationship is beautiful as it is.
With Seiji now freed from the crystal (which had been cleansed by love), the girls turn their focus to their final opponent, Red. Megumi has come to the conclusion that Red had someone he loved in the past, and they disappeared. So when Megumi brought up it up, it set off a trigger of his fury. Based on how Red was describing the Red Planet, it sounds to me as if the one(s) he had loved had died.
“Happiness is transient, and love is but an illusion. All living beings shall die. Only despair will remain in this world.”
