I am the bone of my origami.
Paper is my body, and control is my blood.
I have folded over a thousand sheets.
Unknown to sunlight.
Nor clear blue skies.
Have withstood pain to bed my brother.
Yet, these hands will never hold him.
So as I pray, UNLIMITED PAPER WORKS.

Not a bad episode, despite being Aono centric, plot is developing at an acceptable rate. Lucky for Matsuri, she got stabbed in episode 7 and not in this episode, else she would have surely died.

Episode Rating: 8.5/10

Yorito wakes up in the middle of a lecture, confused and unable to remember anything that’s happened recently. After class Mana asks him how he’s feeling, he says that he’s fine but his memory is mixed up and when he tries to stand up he collapses.

Mana takes him home to Aono and they lie him down, after seeing how mixed up he is, Aono carries him upstairs so he can rest and brushes Mana off.

Elsewhere, Sae is on her way home, late from work, when she sees loli in a garbage can and Matsuri walk into a dark alley together. Matsuri still hasn’t recovered from Aono’s stab wound, opting to take the pain instead of using her yaka powers to heal herself, because she feels it’s punishment for breaking her promise to Yorito. As for loli in a garbage can, she met Matsuri one rainy day when the clouds suddenly parted and she was left in the sun. It turns out that she is also a yaka, and Matsuri happened to pass by just as she was being burned by the light and saved her.

The next day at school, Sae shows Mana the picture she took of Matsuri and loli in a garbage can. Wanting to tell Yorito right away, Mana asks Sae to send the picture to her and tell the teacher that she’s sick. But it’s Aono who answers the door at Yorito’s house, and after hearing Mana’s story, she tells her to leave at once. Mana persists, saying that Matsuri is an important person to Yorito, this angers Aono and she ends up pushing Mana away, exposing her hand to the burning sunlight while doing so.

That evening, Yorito’s condition continues to worsen. He begins to dream about stabbing Matsuri and his mind goes berserk, Aono tries to hold him down but ends up getting tossed around and burned after Yorito accidentally tears the curtain away. She eventually calms him down and then leaves to finish this once and for all, i.e. to confront Matsuri.

While Aono is out, Mana ninjas her way into the house to see Yorito. When she sees him in his depressed, zombie-like state, she slaps him out of it and shows him the picture of Matsuri and telling him that she’s still nearby. Yorito snaps back to life and, recognizing the train yard from the picture, heads out with Mana to chase down Matsuri.

Meanwhile, Aono has already tracked Matsuri down and starts hurling sharpened paper airplanes at her.

Thoughts

Aono, death, fire, etc.

I still can’t really pinpoint why I hate Aono so much, there have been selfish and jealous driven antagonists like her in the past and I never had this much hate for them.

It’s especially odd because I’m usually all for siscon. Although the general trend is that incest fails when the sister is the one to initiate, as opposed to the high success rate when the roles are reversed.

Anyways, putting Aono hate aside, there are a few questions raised by this episode. When Aono was talking to Dorito-kun after Mana brought him in, he mentioned that they were blood-related siblings. Assuming it wasn’t a horrible translation error, how exactly does that work?

From the flashbacks we’ve seen so far, I think it’s a safe bet to say that they were set in the relatively distant past. Aono also said in one of these that life without Yorito is not worth living, suggesting that he died. So how could present day Yorito possibly be Aono’s blood related brother? The only explanation I can come up with is that Aono haxed his memory to make him think that, but that’s a pretty weak plot development.

Loli in a garbage can also remains a mystery. It’s now clear that she’s also a yaka, as suspected, but that raises the question of why Hige is fighting for her. He told Yorito not to get involved with yakas, and curses their existence, yet he fights to protect one.

Next episode is set up for some potential win, Matsuri is injured, fighting an angered and jealous Aono and Yorito is on his way to the scene. The rather ominous title ‘At the End of a Promise’ doesn’t suggest a very good fortune for Matsuri though =\ But then again, it could be interpreted as Dorito-kun fulfilling his promise.

Meh, as always, we’ll find out next week.

~ Shirukii ~