PinkuBentoBox

Well, as promised, time to blog episode 7. 11 screens tonight, and I’ll admit right now that I’ve seen to 10 (raw) so some of what I say may be tinged with a bit of foresight. I’ll try not to let any prior knowledge of upcoming episodes cloud the discussion. Anyway, most of what goes on in this episode is not really directly related to plot points covered in 8-10. This is pretty much the first episode that is focused on the plot completely - the pieces are set and the players have begun to move, and now its time for the action to kick in. Unlike Mai-HiME which pretty much mucked around until about ep 12 or so, Otome has learned a thing or two and gets things moving a bit earlier, which I appreciate quite a bit.

If anything, this episode is a Mashiro development episode, specifically her relationship with Arika. Previously, she’d been antagonistic, though Erstin noted in the previous episode that their banter even at that point seemed not to be too malicious. I’m sure that for Mashiro, Arika is quite different - most people are unlikely to react to her the way Arika does, given that she’s royalty and everything. There is definitely an element of this involved in their relationship.

Mashiro in her meeting with Nagi appears to be about eight, maybe nine years old. Nagi, however, looks not much different than he does now. Maybe a little more of a midget. How old is he supposed to be, anyway? He calls Mashiro a fake to her face, and you can tell that it was a pretty cleverly calculated move, to see whether she’d accidentally let something slip. Later in the episode, Nagi realises that Mashiro has a bit of a complex as a result of what he said to her when she was younger, about her being a fake. The little grin he does is pretty evil - clearly he knows he can manipulate her using that information as a lever. I really was expecting the two of them to already have an arranged marriage or something, so Nagi actually proposing was a surprise. I wonder if he really would have forced a kiss on her had Arika not interfered.

No one ever seems to comment on the blue star beneath the moon. In Mai-HiME, people commented on the red star and the people who were able to see it. This sort of indicates that it’s a pretty standard, constant feature of Otome-land that no one really notices any more. I still hold by the speculation that this is Earth. I’m pretty confident they won’t pull an ‘Otome-land is Mars’ on us though - Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, and both are not round and, compared to Earth’s moon, are very small.

Arika’s ‘part time job’ is pretty conveniently located at the castle, around Mashiro. Though it toes the line of believability a little, I think we can let them away with it given that they’re essentially forcing the basis to come together in order to properly advance the plot. We get our first look at the ‘black letter’ and suddenly what Shizuru said to ‘Mecha-Reito’ makes sense. She asked if he was a member of Schwarz deceived by the ‘black letter’ and apparently it’s just that - a black letter. As in mail. Some kind of signal sent to sleeper agents of Schwarz within the country, telling them to use their Slaves and attack. I assume the target being the country’s leaders since both times they’ve gone after Mashiro. It is possible though that they might be working towards a twist where the real princess (Mai? :o) is behind these letters and using them to try and kill off Mashiro so she can claim the throne that is rightfully hers. I doubt it though.

Sergay gives us some much-needed clarification about that opening scene in episode 1. He says that the attackers were rebels, however they had Slaves and Mecha-Reito was with them too, indicating they’re probably a lot more than that. I doubt that Nagi was behind them, though he could have been. More importantly though, Sergay confirms that the king and queen were killed. Rena ‘retiring’ sounds like she was going to leave them both, indicating that whoever she was leaving them for must be someone other than the king. This would also explain why she had lost her powers - she either had turned in her GEM, or was unable to do anything because the king had died without giving her the approval to fight. Anyway, assuming that Arika is Rena’s daughter as we have been lead to believe, who would her father be? We know Sergay was around at the time, but there was a pretty clear age gap between them. Sergay was a boy in all the materials we’ve seen so far with Rena and him together. I’m really interested to see how this sub-plot plays out. There’s still a strong chance that Arika is the princess as we’ve been told though - I’m pretty sure Sergay was trying to tell Arika not to make a contract without carefully considering it, because it can’t be undone and once Arika is stuck with someone, there’s no way she can be a queen even if that’s her birthright.

Arika gets her first look at Rena via a painting, which is kind of sad. I hope that Rena really does turn out to be Arika’s mother, though at the moment it’s 50/50. There seems to be more to Mikoto than just a cat, though I’ll be buggered if I can pick what. The secret passage that Mikoto pushed Arika and Mashiro through is likely the same one that Mecha-Reito was looking for previously, indicating that he was probably after the ‘Power of Harmoneal’ from the Organ that Arika and Mashiro find. However, there’s a good chance that what he wanted was Rena and the King’s sapphire GEMs which Mashiro and Arika end up with.

The Schwarz guy in this episode seems to be pretty young, maybe a little older than Arika. That makes it kind of interesting as it sort of indicates that their members could be anyone. I hope that this isn’t a result of Fujishima sneaking off the Gundam Seed Destiny project to put his silly spin on current world politics into other Sunrise anime, though. Nagi seems very unconcerned about them - I personally suspect he’s behind them all. The Schwarz guy, prior to activating his Slave, indicates they need Mashiro for their ‘dreams’ indicating she probably has some use to them alive. I wonder why?

The area they end up in is a real mess, and huge enough that I’m surprised no one’s ever noticed it’s there. It looks like the inside of a castle abandoned after a bombing. There are tanks and downed aircraft and stuff thrown in there haphazardly. Mashiro mentions a ‘12 Kingdoms War’ where the Earth military technology was used. 12 kingdoms… 12 HiME… not a coincidence. It seems that Fumi was the first Otome, and her ‘gem’ was called Mashiro. I’m really not sure if this is a direct reference to the previous series that has been warped over time in the manner of most folklore, or if it’s something else. I wonder if there’s still 12 Kingdoms - a big war with that many sides would usually end in nations being wiped off the map, eaten up by stronger nations or laid waste and barren.

The Organ (some people used the term Harmonium, but I think that was a mistranslation of the term that SS translated as ‘Harmoneal’) is a very curious device. The symbols on it are very HiME-esque, and it seems like it needs three people to work it. Obviously the third will turn out to be Nina. There is a white and a blue circle that light up (Mashiro literally means ‘pure white’ and Arika is associated with blue). I’m almost certain we’re going to find out later that the Organ, when played by three chosen people in the right way will open a portal back to Earth, probably back to the portal that Nagi and Mashiro went through at the end of HiME. Nagi knows exactly what it is from his expression when they play the note, which lends credence to my theory that he’s at least behind Mecha-Reito (whether Reito is aligned with Schwarz is hard to see). I’m not sure if Natsuki’s reaction is because she knows the sound and what it entails, or because there’s a loud noise and a gigantic pillar of light coming out of the city. It’s interesting that Miyu seems to hear it wherever she is. More on her (and her raiding of Van Helsing’s wardrobe) in the next episode.

The ghostly figure who appears is voiced by Ai Shimizu, who also voices Mikoto. Now, this may be coincidence, but I doubt it. This character seems male though - I would not be surprised if he turns out to be called Miroku. It wouldn’t be the first Monk-staff-wielding character called Miroku in a Sunrise anime either. Note that Mikoto has disappeared at this point. He says they need a ’song’, a ‘conductor’ and a ‘protector’. I would assume that Mashiro would be the conductor given her royalty and the fact she is in command. We saw two of the three circles light up, so Arika is probably one of these other two as well. I suspect she’s the protector - she often talks about protecting people in this series (it’s part of her nature as a moé magical-girl-esque lead character) and she ends up contracting with Mashiro as her Otome, which correlates nicely with her being a protector.

It would seem that the Coral robes don’t have the ability to fly. We’ve seen Nao and Akane flying, so this is probably something that the Otome students are taught when they have made it to Pearl class. They reinforce that when Arika is hit, Mashiro will also be hurt. I assume that if Arika was older and stronger she would probably be able to take more hits with less damage going Mashiro’s way, since it seems to be proportional to how Arika feels it. It would also seem that the robe of a Meister Otome (and it’s pretty clear that the Blue Sky Sapphire that Arika has is a that of a Pillar, even higher than Meister) makes the user a lot stronger and more powerful than the bog-standard Coral. I wonder if this is all in proportion to the rarity of the gem? If so, I wonder if there’s someone with a Diamond GEM.

Mashiro and Arika are now friends, of a sort, which is good. I wonder if Nagi or Sergay noticed that Arika had a sapphire in her ear or not. Nagi is sharp enough to have noticed, but we never saw any shot to conclude that he had been close enough to have seen it. I’m pretty sure if Nagi noticed it, they’d have let us know that he knows.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned how utterly fucking hilarious the next episode previews are. This time, we’ve got Nagi and Sergay and some homoerotic overtone humour. The funniest though are probably the ones that Natsuki is involved in. I wonder if the actors and actresses are adlibbing these, or if they’re scripted.

Overall this was a really enjoyable episode. The filler-ish stuff is finally over and done with, and we’re getting into the meat of the series. After the pure tentacle-filled filler of ep 6, this was exactly what was needed to keep the pace up. So far (including the raw episodes I’ve seen past 7) the series has kept up an extremely good pace and is very entertaining. The odd thing is that the same writer worked on Gundam Seed Destiny… how is it that Mai-Otome and Mai-Hime were so well paced, yet GSD’s pacing was what eventually killed it? It is a mystery.