After getting completely overwhelmed by the modern world, Lara was understandably feeling lost and utterly helpless when Mari told her to stop following her around. For Lara, it was scary to go out without a guide (that being Mari), but in order to save her family, she must venture out in order to find true love. But that too is scary for her, because her last love failed her, and there’s nothing more traumatic than having a blade pointed at you and being called a monster by the one you love, and then die because you turned into sea-foam.
So credit where it’s due, because when Grace is suggesting ways to manipulate and deceive humans to do her bidding, Lara had already steeled her resolve and made up her mind. She doesn’t want to cause more trouble for everyone, so she’ll take it upon herself to figure things out. Is it a flawless plan? Absolutely not. But the fact she has enough courage to just take that step forward to proactively seek to adapt to the modern world is commendable in every respects… Except, she made quite some costly blunders that only deepens her debt on top of the window replacement she still needs to cover! Oh goodness, the part where she figured out how to make orders and bought a ridiculous amount of cakes! What a mess! It was very funny though to see how bewildered Grace gets when she has to grasp with things that seem so large at the time, be considered part of the norm nowadays: Such as a school consisting six-hundred students. When she heard that, she thought it was a whole Kingdom!
But understandably, these kinds of things were wearing down Mari’s goodwill and patience. It also didn’t help that she has been on edge even before she found Mari. So she ended up taking out that frustration on Lara, which unfortunately caused the dagger to blink.
It was good that we got to learn more about Mari this week as well, especially about her bond with her mother. Mari has always loved boxing, to the point even before deciding she wanted to be a boxer she’d get into fights with the kids. It was watching a boxing match that made her realize that’s what she really wanted to do. At the time she wasn’t sure how to bring it up to her mother, because she had been told that she likes kids who don’t fight. And the way they agreed to do was a staring contest, which Mari had lost. That’s why Mari had thought she needed to win a ‘fight’ (staring contest) with her mother in order to get permission. But her mother was very good to her. She understood that Mari really wanted to do something, and when she finally learned that she wanted to box, she reassured her that it was okay for her to do what she wants to do. She’ll support her, and that’s exactly what she did.
And because Mari was very close to her mother, witnessing her collapse while she was in the middle of her competition is something that still haunts her to this day. Little things like the sound of a ding and seeing something falling is enough to remind her of the fallen rosary, and pull her out of focus. She probably would have lost that sparring against Captain Nagahara had Lara not interrupted (thinking they were trying to kill each other) and reset the whole thing. In more ways than one, Lara ended up helping Mari save face, reset and acknowledge that she’s bad at being considerate to her peers, and caused trouble for everyone due to her stubbornness.
In the end, both Mari and Nagahara had qualified, which indicates the coach really just wanted them to duke out the tension that was well past the boiling point. With the way the two were constantly butting heads in the club-room, it was making the atmosphere rather unpleasant. There were already some underlining tension that will never go away with the fact Mari, a first year student is allowed to train with second and third years members due to being the winner of the National tournament when she was in junior high. So this was important to set straight.
What also helped was Lara’s sincere consideration towards Mari. She recognized Lara had no ill-intentions, and the mistakes she made were honest ones. She admired Lara’s convictions to brave the unknown world, and keep going forward even when deep down, she’s scared humans will call her ‘vile’ again. She’s a fish out of water, and based on what Grace had told her, Lara’s a mermaid who can’t live in the ocean or on land. Mari wasn’t going to turn a blind eye to that, and so she told Lara it was okay to stay at her place. And with the help of Grace, the two were able to come up with a cover story for Lara so that Mari’s Grandmother would wholeheartedly accept her sticking around (especially since she was the one who had commented how they needed to get into contact with Lara’s parents). I was in tears from laughing so hard during the post-credit of it.
Now it’s about time we talk about that giant fish dagger, because boy, is that thing mighty concerning. It appears Humans can’t see it since nobody reacted when it emerged from the water. But yikes, it looks like it’s the dagger’s true form. This is sure looking like the danger Grace mentioned last week. We also got some hints of Lara’s destructive powers as her shadow resembled one akin to a monster, especially the dagger’s spirit showed up in that moment too.
Actually now that I think about it, I’m not even sure if Lara can see it either. She didn’t seem to react to it, let alone flinch! So maybe it’s something every other mermaid can see except for her– which would make things interesting if that were to be the case, as she wouldn’t be able to pin-point how much time is left in the doom clock. Though if this ends up being the case, suspect Grace would probably be able to sense it’s arrival though, and might think it’s a good time to give her a heads up on the situation. We’ll have to see how everyone follows-up on this development next week.
That being said though, I feel like this indicates that Lara is on a time crunch. For the dagger to show up like it did just now, seemed to start the clock when it comes to the race of ‘finding true love’. Lara blushed when Mari said she likes funny characters like her. Was Lara charmed by it, or did she interpret that as Mari having feelings for her? Right now we don’t fully have a grasp on how much Lara really understands ‘romantic love’. The way she fell for the prince in the past was as simple and straight-forward as it could get, so this could be an instance of following a similar pattern.
But if the Opening Theme and the last few episodes has given us any indication what to expect of Lara’s true love, it may really be about finding true love in a much broader sense. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a romantic one, but more so about building connections and powerful bonds with the people she meets and vice versa. So you could say it’s not as cut and dry as one might expect it to be.
Which leads us to Lisa. While Lara wasn’t able to find the ring this week, but fortunately her sister managed to secure it. So at least she can be assured it’s not in a complete stranger’s possession or being pawned off somewhere. But in that moment, she and the other mermaid boy both saw the fish dagger hovering in the air, and Lisa said: “Find us. Find your true love”, which I think is supposed to be interpreted as Lisa believing their family is Lara’s true love. So their eventual reunion could end up very ugly if the light doesn’t immediately come back like she may be expecting it to.
Last but not least, I wanted to give a shout out to the consideration Mari’s brother had showed Lara this week. I’m actually quite curious whether he’ll have a bigger role at some point in the story. So far he has shown Lara a lot of kindness, and was looking out for her when he could tell she was quite dispirited. He was also the one who brought her to Mari’s school. Poor guy for an earful from the staff after that for bringing the bike to campus! But it goes to show he probably knew he was gonna get into trouble, but still brought her right up to the gates anyways to ensure she doesn’t get lost (or maybe he even drove on school grounds directly to the club house– which is also possible given I don’t know how Lara would’ve found it otherwise!). Either way, I would be down to see the two of them at least become friends.
