This is his default face.
Impression
It was only when I saw Claudia in the preview that I remembered she’d made some sort of promise last week about it being the true heroine’s time to shine this episode. I’m sorry, Claudia. I’m sure we’ll get to your scenes eventually.
I’m still pretty undecided about blogging this. I have no idea whether future episodes will be split like this one – that is, between happy slice-of-life scenes with a touch of harem antics and serious, plot-related scenes involving interesting characters like Dirk. I don’t mind the cuteness at all, it’s just that there’s hardly anything to talk about when things become as standard as watching Julis yelp when Flora asks Ayato how far his relationship with her has gone. I will admit that most of the first half involved me thinking ‘Julis is cute! Julis is cute!’ in my head over and over. Her blushes are the best (my favourite non-battle related scene involving her was that headpat session she got from Ayato in S1). I’m not much of a Flora fan though – I’m not sure if it’s because there are better lolis with more developed personalities (i.e. Saya and Kirin – and by ‘more developed’ I mean that relatively) or whether it’s because I feel they made the wrong seiyuu choice for Flora. It’s too… squeaky and chirpy, I guess. I didn’t like it much.
I mean, we all know what Flora will be used for anyway, right? Dirk isn’t trying to be friendly with Corona when he asked for more info – he’s interested in Flora and her relationship with Julis, and thinking about what he could do to twist that to his advantage. It might not be so fun being Flora in a couple of episodes. Characters like Dirk (voiced by based Sugita) are the real fun of Asterisk – he’s already one of the more interesting personalities in the show by virtue of not entering a cardboard cut-out and falling out the other end. People like Ayato and Kirin (at least while it was still her arc) do say some good stuff sometimes, sure, but we’ve seen those sorts of characters lots of times now. Dirk not so much – he’s not an obvious antagonist or shady guy like Madiath Mesa but he’s just… there, he’s got a lot of power and he’s not your friend. He’s not necessarily evil, but he’s only going to be amicable to Ayato to the extent that he has use for him. After he confirmed that Madiath Mesa had plans for Ayato but that the two weren’t connected, he’d already paid Ayato in the form of some info about his sister, and so they were booted out of the car. I don’t think he even took control of Le Wolfe by physical force, he did it by indebting various people to him and using them as pawns. That, and his secret police (like Seidoukan’s Shadow Stars, which Yabuki is a part of and for whom he’s probably actually doing work for every time he disappears) is likely to be how he found Ayato and Julis at the cafe. Other than the battle scenes, it’s the scenes involving him that are the most interesting to watch. And there’s also the humour in seeing Corona ditz around him all the time (as well as the irony that she thinks she’s doing her job right and being useful to him with tarot readings, but he uses them to confirm what won’t happen because everything she says will be wrong).
As for Amagiri Haruka participating in illegal Festas, we can make absolutely nothing from that other than that she’s trying to accomplish something in some way and thus had to fight in the Eclipse to get that something. It’s all too vague to make any meaningful speculation about at this point (I don’t think I’ve heard any more on this front at the point I’m at in the novels) so there’s not much use in talking about it. It’s strange if she participated in it for the rewards though – what could be more lucrative than the ‘any wish you want’ reward from the main Festas?
Finally, here is a cute Irene.
