Magic-kyun! Renaissance – Episode 2 [I Can Only See You]

So apparently the reason why Teika Ichijoji declared Kohana to be his rival is because there’s bad blood between their families. Her friend Juri, who is in the same class, asks Kohana if she’d known and Kohana says that no one in her family had ever told her anything about such a rivalry. I wonder why.

Afterwards Kohana heads for her first committee meeting for the school’s Hoshi’s Festival. She has a short conversation with her teacher, a scruffy purple-haired man with a ponytail, then follows him to a room where an ill-tempered Teika is waiting for her. Together the three of them wait for the other members to show up, but no one does.

One of the missing committee members is Aoi Suminomiya, the student who was practicing his calligraphy in the first episode. Teika wants to have new members on the committee, but Kohana insists that he first let her try to convince Suminomiya to attend the meetings.

Kohana goes to meet Aoi in his study room, but he doesn’t see her standing in the doorway and she gets ink all over her face. After she cleans up she sees that his study room is pretty messy. There are ink and papers everywhere. Kohana tries to talk Aoi into attending the committee meetings, but he says he doesn’t want to because he has no interest.

While he works and subsequently ignores her, Kohana goes through Aoi’s completed pieces in the order of which their sparkles progress. Aoi reveals that he’s having some kind of mental blockage – he wants to write something he can’t yet define, so he keeps writing different things in an effort to discover what this mystery phrase is.

Later that night in their dorm room, Juri reveals that Aoi and Teika used to be friends as children, but they are now rivals. Together the two young men are in the #1 and #2 positions to be the year’s Artista Prince.

Kohana decides to try to convince Aoi one more time, but he just wants her to check the sparkles of his latest piece. Aoi says that he can no longer see his sparkles for some reason, then nearly passes out on Kohana’s shoulder. It turns out he’s been working so hard he’s forgotten to eat.  x_x  She goes to get him some snacks and he goes right back to work. Kohana accidently knocks over a stack of his finished pieces, which prompts her to spend the rest of the night cleaning his room from top to bottom.

Having clean windows seems to be the most noticeable difference for Aoi; suddenly everything looks different! Which makes sense – if that which filters your light is dirty then what you see is going to look tainted, no? Aoi tries making a new piece in this clear light, and it’s an improvement over his previous works. Baby steps!

The next day Kohana walks in on Aoi hard at work again, and she tries to think of a way she can help support him. She comes up with the idea of making one of her ikebana arrangements for him. When she finishes, Aoi is shocked: he can see her sparkles! Her arrangement gives off a beautiful soft green light, and Aoi stammers that it’s the first light he’s seen since he came to Hoshigei.

In a flurry he makes a new piece: the words bright light. As music plays, the sparkles from Aoi and Kohana’s pieces meld together, and the two students are transported to a magical plane, one where there are flowers and water everywhere. Together they play in the water, then hold hands and spin up twirling into the sky. Man it would be so cool to see that kind of magic in person!

Afterwards the sparkles fade and Aoi and Kohana land back in reality at Hoshigei. Aoi gratefully thanks Kohana for her help, because it’s helped him make some progress. He still doesn’t know what he wants to write, but he feels that he’s closer to discovering what it is.

At the next committee meeting, Aoi surprises both Teika and their teacher by showing up for the meeting. After it’s over Teika has a few words with Aoi, who asks him if he remembered watching sunsets together when they were younger. Teika cruelly remarks that he’d forgotten, then walks off.

We’re also finally given the names of the other missing committee members, whom Kohana will visit one by one and try to convince to show up for the meetings. They are Rintaro Tatewaki (the sculptor), Louis Angelo Anjo (the dancer), Monet Tsukushi (the monochrome painter), and Kanato Hibiki (the musician). I’m personally looking forward to Kanato’s episode the most because music is life.

My thoughts: Hnnng, Magic-kyun! Renaissance feels like it was written for me. The bishounen, the romance, the mystery and the magic… fuck what an awesome show! And the animation continues to be gorgeous. *0*   From start to finish this show has everything I love to watch in an anime.

I’m calling it now, I bet the purple-haired teacher was involved with Kohana’s mom Sakura when they were both students at Hoshigei. Maybe they even dated! Then there was a tragic break-up and they went their separate ways, Sakura married someone else… *romantic sigh*

Ahem. Anyways. Can’t wait for next week’s episode!!