New cour means new OP and ED and I’ll be honest, I’m missing the first ones a lot. If the visuals in the OP are any indication of where the anime is leading to and what tone it’ll have, then I’m getting a little worried. The last thing I wanted was for this show to go down the shounen action-packed route so I really hope I’m wrong.
Things did get pretty interesting this episode however. It looks like after her fight with Haine, Ushio (very conveniently) gained some new abilities such as being able to show others the events of previous time loops she’s been in, as well as being able to completely erase a Shadow. With these newfound abilities, getting Hizuru and Nezu on their side was very easy to do. And with being able to erase, Ushio is determined to use this against Shiori to get rid of Haine. This episode did explain my problem with Shiori surviving the attack from Hizuru when she was pinned down, though I’m not sure I care for the explanation too much but at least it’s something. Haine’s main body isn’t strong enough to move around, but her Shadow is still strong enough to be able to lend a bit of itself to Shiori which is how she’s able to move around. And because it’s so strong, Shiori was able to make that escape. Maybe this is stupid because Haine is basically a goddess but even though she’s weak right now, she’s still able to influence her shadow to move around with Shiori all over the island? She basically is using a part of herself, and that might explain the four-armed Shadow’s existence when Ushio said it “smelled” just like Haine. It’s probably just a part of herself? Knowing me it’s probably not that hard to explain and I’m overthinking it, but there’s still something about that I can’t wrap my head around but I bet this is something that’ll clear up later. Or…when I think about it more. But either way, it does present theories like the four-armed Shadow being another part of Haine.
Even with the convenience of just showing Hizuru and Nezu what happened in the previous time loop, this was actually the shortest time loop so far. I knew the hand mark on Shinpei’s arm would come back to haunt him and it certainly did. It shouldn’t be any surprise to them that Haine and the four-armed one are able to time loop as well, worse, find Shinpei’s location because of the hand mark. Being branded Haine is able to track his location on the island and using all the info from the previous time loops, she’s able to determine where and when Shinpei spawns and what his movements will be. This is going to make things A LOT more complicated with their planning and actions since Haine can find them if she wanted to. Knowing what they know now, why wouldn’t she keep going after him to get rid of him? I like how the scene at the Koba Mart played out, with Shinpei, Ushio, and Nezu having a normal and lighthearted conversation only for Hizuru to get pushed out of the window and killed. It was a really big shock and set the tone of what we’d have to expect with these two.
Ushio dealt with the situation really well by having to kill Shinpei so they could time loop once again. But instead of spawning back to the Hitogashima of their time, they loop all the way to a past memory. Like that one time Shinpei looped to watch a scene out of Mio’s memory, Shinpei and Ushio are now going to witness Hizuru’s memories. With this, we should probably get loads of information between the relationship between Hizuru and Haine, as well as Ryuunosuke’s murder.
I don’t recall if Shinpei ever mentioned his parents other than the fact he lost them and lived with Alan afterwards, so it was surprising to see his parents in the memory. I’m so glad we’re getting all this. If this memory episode is going to be as good as the Ushio one then it’ll be a treat. I think I can already deduce what’s going to happen and why Hizuru feels like she has the responsibility to get rid of Haine, but we’ll see where the memory takes us. Back to the present, we watched Sou’s dad talk to someone on the phone about Shinpei now getting involved with the Shadows. I wonder if it’s a character we already know, or if it’ll be a new character that’ll show up in the story. And if it is, will they possibly show up in Hizuru’s memory. I have a guess on who it could be but it seems too obvious and boring. Either way, I’m interested to see how things will go from here and watch how Hizuru and Haine became friends and what led to Ryuunosuke’s death.
Episode 14 will be a double post!