The battle begins between Minnie C and Shizuku, and right away it’s apparent that it’s going to be a difficult one. Both ladies have very developed Alice abilities, but Shizuku has the upper hand in that she can use many, many cards like Sana can. Shizuku’s abilities work by naming aloud the name of an attack, and that allows her to do things like create giant chess pieces for protection or summon specific weapons.
After squirreling away Sana and Zouroku for protection, Shizuku focuses on attacking Minnie C. From above, Yamada tries to read Minnie C’s position via her Alice signal, and then relay that information to Shizuku. At one point Minnie C has Shizuku clutched in one of her disembodied arms with a gun pointed at her head, and it seems like the battle is over… but really it’s just getting started.
This moment is when Shizuku launches her #1 ability, which transforms her into a maid character she saw (heard) on TV when she was younger. She also now only uses card numbers between 1 and 10, as these are her most powerful. Minnie C is clearly caught off guard and does her best to try to fight back, but she’s no match for Shizuku. Lying on her back on a shipping container, Minnie C is drained of her energy and can no longer fight. As lights shine down on her from the helicopters above, she is overwhelmed by her grief for her dead husband.
On another ship, Sana talks to Zouroku about wanting to be more human, more “real.” She grabs Zouroku’s sleeve and flies them up into the sky together.
Down below in a restaurant, Director Kouichi Kitou is about to leave with the three Dreams of Alice children when he is met at the door by the police, right as he is telling someone on the phone to delete all the Alice data. Bus-ted! >:D
At the same time Ryuu is using Shizuku’s telecom ability to speak with Alice and Zouroku up in the sky. He tells Sana it’s ok to fly as long as she does it carefully, so no pictures or video can be taken of them. Sana then apologizes to Zouroku for breaking the vases in his florist shop, and he tells her she should’ve done it sooner. However he’s no longer mad at her. 🙂
Sanae’s voiceover says that Sana has finally joined their family, and that the research facility studying the Dreams of Alice was supposedly disbanded. Minnie C also left the country due to some kind of protection agreement with her home country.
When we next see Sana and Sanae it’s a sunny day. Sana’s being all cute while she waters and prunes the flowers outside, and Sanae can’t get over how adorable her new sister is. When the girls sit down for dinner with Zouroku, Sanae thinks up places she and Sana could go play together. Naturally Sana has no idea what any of these places are so her reactions are pretty funny. Guarding the little family from outside are Shizuku and Ryuu, Sana’s new guardians by the look of it.
My thoughts: Seeing Shizuku in her maid outfit solves one of the mysteries from the beginning of the series – the woman with the long brown hair who tried to protect Sana from Minnie C in the first episode was in fact Shizuku in her ultimate form.
This episode was really emotionally charged. It was fucking awesome getting to see Shizuku go all out with her abilities, but my heart really bled for Minnie C. At the end of the episode as she was leaving Japan by helicopter, for the first time we see her remember her husband via his ring around her neck, and not because she was using her Alice ability to bring his arms around her. Or maybe she lost her Alice ability now? Either way, it was heartbreaking watching her confront the reality that her husband is gone, and that because she lost her battle with Shizuku she will never be able to use Sana’s ability to bring him back to life in some capacity.
This is also not the first show this season to throw me with it’s pacing and plot development. I thought that the research facility and Minnie C were going to be the big baddies for the season, but now all that’s apparently resolved, so what will be the conflict driving the back half of the season? I’m really excited to find out!
Also: stupid product placement.
Author’s Note: I didn’t know that Alice would be skipping a week, so rather than this being a double-post, it’s instead a very late review for episode 5. My apologies! ^^;;