She thinks she understands it already.
Impression
What an insightful episode. As I’ve said multiple times before, I absolutely love scenes about Tooru learning about human society. They’re often the most thought-provoking ones from a discussion point of view. I also love that key frame I’ve put above. It’s so wonderfully quaint. And that tail is so wonderfully fat. I want to taste Tooru’s tail so much. Anyway. You can tell that Tooru is slowly adapting herself to her new surroundings. So for example, I was terrified in the first half that she would do something rash like kill Kobayashi’s boss. I was genuinely worried, beyond reasonable doubt, that he would suddenly fall over and there’d be multiple claw-shaped gashes in his back, especially after the second time he came to chew Kobayashi out for no apparent reason. But she restrained herself to tripping him over. She did it lots of times, maybe, but he’s still alive. Two months ago, or at least whenever Kobayashi moved into her new place with Tooru and Kanna, Tooru was seriously about to kill those three neighbours just for being loud after she ran out of amicable solutions. I think she’s now grown more sensitive to the fact that this sort of stuff might have consequences for Kobayashi or cause trouble for her, even if she still doesn’t like humans in general.
And that assumption in itself is questionable. She’s developing more of an appreciation for them as time goes on, which is more than can be said for Fafnir. Tooru now wants to fit in with them and try her best to understand them. She actually used to be very Fafnir-like, come to think of it – in that her proposed solution to everything was to kill the human(s) causing the problem. Now she’s the one telling Fafnir to play nice. That said, she still definitely thinks they’re inferior, and still treats everything like a nature documentary when she’s observing their behaviour. Makes you wonder how dragons in general feel about falling in love with humans. It’s harder for us to comprehend it, because it’s not like a human falling in love with an animal at all – well it is, in that it’s inter-species love, but the gap between animals and humans is far greater than it is with humans and dragons, not least of all because humans and dragons can actually communicate. Which is what the ED is all about. At least, the other dragons we’ve seen don’t seem to look down on Tooru for falling in love with an ‘inferior species’. Kanna was initially more jealous than anything, Fafnir is mostly worried for her and Lucoa is happy that she’s smiling more than she used to. And Lucoa herself appears to be doing scandalous things with a human of her own, so it’s sort of pot calling kettle black. Not to mention what she did with her sister.
That leads us on to the long-term questions posed by Fafnir, who wants Tooru to hurry up and return to her world as her parting with Kobayashi will be all the more difficult in light of their different lifespans. I’d never really thought about it much before. The long-term issues that did cross my mind, fleetingly, were along the lines of whether Tooru would ever fall out of love with Kobayashi one day, and if so, what she would do. She’s living peacefully with humans and doing everything for Kobayashi’s sake, after all. Of course, at the other end of the spectrum is the alternative and much sadder reality that Kobayashi will die in what, to dragons, will be the relatively near future. My instinctual reaction is that when the time comes, Kobayashi will tell Tooru to let her die a natural death and not extend her life with magic like I’m sure Tooru must be capable of doing. I don’t think Tooru’s thoughts on staying with Kobayashi are wrong. It’s still kind of unfortunate, but a Tooru-filled life is doing Kobayashi a lot of good, and that can’t be a bad thing. That might not be what Fafnir’s world view is like, but I can tell that he, too, wants to protect Tooru’s smile in the end. Isn’t it just the cutest?
Okay, so finally I’ve been struggling with some very important dilemmas. Such as having to decide on who’s cuter between Tooru and Kanna. My usual position has always been to support Tooru and her increasingly fat tail, but every once in a while Kanna does something super adorable, like when Kobayashi was feeding her snacks, and my heart wavers. A bit like Saikawa’s extremely gay reactions, except less extreme. Also, I’m very disappointed that kabedon tops the list of things girls would like to have done to them the most. I approve of lewd things like head pats and hand-holding being there, but what’s so great about kabedon? It’s kind of cool, maybe, but how is it better than being hugged from behind? What sort of inferior taste is this?
P.S. It’s a Lucoa episode next. My body is ready.