04.20
Like a wet match.
Super-speed is a bona fide physical technique and not any kind of magic whatsoever, so says the holy Tatsuya amongst his imouto apostles. Any who challenge his mighty reign as the new savior shall be vanquished by feats and powers that were unsheathed from between the lord’s buttocks. Do not cross his ascension to the throne amongst his lowly Blooms, for he shall conquer all with his lack of strong emotion. Some would call Tatsuya a bland man, or perhaps not even a man at all. But bully to them, I say. His strength defies the mortal conventions of matters like education or whatever propaganda they teach to the children nowadays. Tatsuya is the gleaming light in this year of our Chinese cartoon overlords, proving that any anime can be made no matter how hackneyed the characters are.
…but that’s all moot, because Miyuki’s the one with the remote control. The preceding scene with Miyuki buoyancy aside, this actually provides something refreshing for Miyuki as a character. She’s now portrayed as Tatsuya’s handler in a sense, essentially being the only character so far who has an upper hand on him. And that puts a new light on all the times she seemed to need Tatsuya’s nod of approval to act. How much of that was genuine, and how much was an act Miyuki pulls to comfort herself? And does Tatsuya really have control over his actions if they can be reconfigured so easily? It all makes Miyuki more Stepford in her behavior, if it turns out that Tatsuya’s actually just her chess piece.
If civilization has been tampered with by magic, then what has it done to human neurology? Miyuki could do that to Tatsuya in few minutes, so what’s not to say an organization could do that to an entire society in the span of a few years at the most? Are there other mind-controlled super soldiers who are just hanging around in some magic high school? That also factors into Tatsuya’s lack of outward ambition so far, alluding to the sense that he’s just serving as the front lines for someone behind the scenes. It depends on how willing the show is to go into that conflict, by discussing how the main character so far has been revealed to be his little sister’s puppet.
Personally, I’m too cynical to believe this will turn out well. While making a character deal with his lack of emotions seems interesting enough, the show quickly runs away from that topic in favor of more technobabble and scenes where Tatsuya saves girls from wacky antics or potential murder. There’s not enough focus on what could potentially work, instead targeting on what has so far been a retread journey about the new guy in high school. We get it. There’s class conflict going on in the academy, now run with it instead of rolling off more exposition. The Enrollment arc really needs to get going already, especially how off the kendo club scene was. Like, the kendo club leader is suddenly okay with trying to slice another kid down for something petty. It just feels like laying on the class conflict thing too thick instead of doing something interesting with the topic.
Also, there was no Mayumi in this episode, so it gets points off for that.