Noodle time in 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.

Much like last time, there’s a lot of tension between the girls and Yuuji because of the amount of attention he’s giving to Konoe. In fact, the entire episode was devoted to the relationships between each of the characters. Personally, I don’t like seeing the girls get all “confused” about Yuuji. Save it for LiveJournal or something, ladies.

Summary:

We start off with a training session between Yuuji and Wilhelmina. Yuuji surprisingly is able to dodge and fend off an attack by Wilhelmina, which goes to show his progress. He’s slowly becoming more and more able to control his power of existence and manipulate it to benefit him better, like physical reinforcement of his body.

After Wilhelmina gets back home, she cooks up some cup noodles and calls it dinner. Shana, still fighting with her emotions regarding Yuuji, skips dinner for a bath. She’s noticeably irritated and snaps at Wilhelmina after she lectures Shana about leaving her clothes in a mess.

Morning of the next day, Yuuji goes over to Konoe’s place to pick her up, but since she’s running a little late, Yuuji is invited inside to wait. The princess finally is ready, and they go off to school. On the way, the bump into Shana, who just angrily runs off.

Once at school, their homeroom teacher asks for Yoshida and Ogata to switch roles in taking care of Konoe with Yuuji. Yoshida actually agrees with it and gives up her place with Yuuji. Ike finally gets tired of Yuuji’s actions, so he outright tells him to stop tending to Konoe so much. But alas, Yuuji has no idea what Ike is talking about.

At the end of the school day, Ogata ditches Tanaka to go with Yuuji and Konoe as her new role requires of her, while Yoshida and Shana angrily/jealously watch them leave. After Konoe is dropped off, Ogata and Yuuji walk off alone until Tanaka shows up to pick up his girl. They split from Yuuji, and cue in a moment of slight awkwardness between them.

Shana comes home to a homecooked meal from Wilhelmina, a rare sight and a huge shift from instant noodles/meron pan. It doesn’t have the best taste in the world, but Shana is thankful for the effort, and finally takes her first steps to going back to her normal self.

Thoughts:

I didn’t really like this episode all that much. Too much drama, not enough swords and killing.

Shana keeps avoiding Yuuji, keeping everything stagnant. I’m happy Wilhelmina is getting her out of this phase, but it’s still taking too long. Too many scenes of Shana watching Yuuji and Konoe, then bawwwing and wondering why she’s feeling mad/irritated when she doesn’t want to. You’d think it would be kind of obvious to her by now. Too much tsun tsun. Too annoying =/

And Yoshida is absolutely no relief either. She’s the exact same as Shana. “I’m feeling bad, is this jealousy?” x 1000. I get the point, can we please move on? ;___;

Although I sound rather bitter, those two are the only people I’m really complaining about. Everything else was fine.

More development on Konoe’s origins. Seeing how her butler has the same bracelet as Konoe and that both are on their right wrists, it certainly implies something significant about it. I’d suspect it’s related to some sort of illusionary magic. It certainly isn’t out of the question, seeing how in previous episodes, an entire dream world was created that was hard to discern from reality. Balle Masque probably chose an abandoned mansion and included that in the illusionary magic so that it would look full of life once again. I won’t be surprised if/when Konoe disappears, there will be a scene of Yuuji standing infront of Konoe’s former mansion, now old, worn down, and empty.

On that note, Yuuji’s recent developments in his abilities are certainly promising. I’d like to see him get useful sometime soon on the battlefield, instead of forcing Shana to always kick him to safety. Can’t be much fun that way anyways =/

Ike’s even doing something now. Despite being Yuuji’s rival, he still has the decency to tell Yuuji to shape up and back off from Konoe. By doing that, he kind of gave up his chance to strike and get close to Yoshida. Of course, that’s assuming Yuuji actually listens to Ike. At least we know that not all guys in the series are completely brainless.

And Ogata. Yuuji really doesn’t know when to quit, dragging Ogata into his mix of ladies. Tanaka sure can’t be too happy about that one, but at least it’s nice to see he’s actually getting somewhere with Ogata. Side characters: not completely neglected. Hurrahs!

I wonder about the significance of the empty rooms in Konoe’s mansion. Am I missing something blatantly obvious? Yuuji pays a good amount of attention to it, so I figure I’m being blind to something. Perhaps if there’s really nothing special about it, the purpose of it will be to serve as a contrast to the empty mansion that appears, should everything really be just illusionary magic. Another thing that I don’t see the significance of yet is the black car that keeps driving around. I don’t think it’s because the animators just wanted to throw in a random black car into the scenes to make it seem more realistic. There seems to be something about that black car. But then again, what use do Tomogara/Flame Haze have for cars? I mean, they can fly around and all that, so maybe I’m just being paranoid.

In any case, I’m happy the arc is progressing so we can finally get it over with. With Shana’s imminent return to normal, things are looking up. However, judging by the episode preview of 06, it looks like there’ll be one more episode at least until things can finally blow over. Hurry up ;__;

//Soda