After the really exciting revelation of Eia’s ultimate goal in joining the SCM game, this episode takes a bit of a step back on that faction and focuses on Ryuou again. There was a new direct challenge from Fujito Taito AKA ‘a crazy person’ putting all in the line and Ryuou can’t resist the offer, but before that, we finally get a glimpse of his real goal and intentions and we learn why Julia is so devoted to him.
Julia wants to be close to someone and cherished, she felt it with her parents while holding hands with them and afterwards with Seiya until he threw her out. She actually seems kinder than I expected, seeing this side of her surprised me a bit. In the end she had nowhere to go and a friend of her told her about a house she could stay at for free. Once she arrives there, she meets Ryuou for the first time. It turns out he’s home alone a lot because his mother is always working. Out of curiosity and a sense of duty Julia tries had to get closer to him and take care of him. Eventually Ryuou gets her to play a game with her and she loses, becoming his slave.
This is when things get more interesting because there’s a bit of a subversion of the image of Ryuou we get when he’s first introduced. He asks Julia to take him somewhere and it turns out to be the bar where his mother works, but she owes a lot of money to the mustache guy who turns out to be the owner, so he won’t let her go. Ryuou must give the man 100 million yen for him to consider the debt paid, so he needs money fast. He uses Julia as a bait to gain attraction from other slave-owners and people who are in the SCM game and she goes along with all of it, glad to have someone she can protect, help and comfort while at the same time being comforted that they share a secret together as only Julia knows Ryuou’s true goal.
I liked this twist a lot because although Ryuou is cunning and clever, he didn’t quite seem the ruthless type to me and the stories of torturing Julia didn’t add up with her open displays of devotion because she doesn’t strike me as a masochist either. His interest in getting money from his slaves finally makes sense too as he needs it to pay off the debt. I still feel like her devotion to him is a bit excessive considering how they became close, but well, the story needs her to feel and act like that and there’s only so much screen time. I also wonder now if her brand is a real tattoo or a temporary one. I must say I think it’s pretty though!
After all this we finally get to the 5-on-5 capture the flag duel between Ryuou and ‘a crazy person’. The details of this aren’t really that relevant, although I must say it was funny to see Ayaka and Seiya interact! The reason why Julia’s devotion is so important is shown in this game as she is not afraid of going through with orders that may put her in danger, but Fujito’s slaves won’t do the same for her because their fear is bigger than their allegiance to her. In the end she ends up losing, expectedly so, and Ryuou gloats that she made her think she had won right before she lost out of spite and to punish her.
Now that so many slaves have changed hands and Ryuou has so much more power, it’d be interesting to see what new factions emerge since most of the characters we met in the first half are accounted for. I’m really looking forward to more duels and I’m rooting for Eia to eventually topple all of this SCM system down.