After Anna takes her family’s magical stone for herself, her mother gets placed in intensive care. Part of me wants to say it’s a copout to keep Anna’s mother alive but the fact that Anna was willing to harm her at all is enough to show how low she has stooped. Shingetsu finds out about what happened and after visiting Anna’s mother in the hospital, she decides that she has to finally defeat Anna once and for all. Right before the next Granbelm, we see Claire try to talk Anna out of participating in the royale and to stop fighting with Shingetsu.
I feel really bad for Claire. The poor child just wants her sisters to get along. It’s clear that she doesn’t fully understand the feud between them. There’s an interesting line where Claire tells Shingetsu that everything between her and Anna wouldn’t have happened if she had stayed with the Fugo family. Really, none of this would have happened if Shingetsu had joined the family to begin with but Claire loves Shingetsu and she wants her to stay in the family so she doesn’t realize this. I don’t think Claire gets the full picture until Anna tells her that nothing would bring her more joy than to see Shingetsu dead. You’d think if anyone could reason with Anna, it’d be Claire and this scene plays out long enough to make you think she might succeed. But as we soon discover, it’s too late for the youngest sister to do anything.
The rest of this episode is the final fight between Shingetsu and Anna. That seems to be the pattern with Granbelm. Get as much character development done as possible so that we can then spend a good chunk of time with the action. For once, this approach works really well in this episode. The show doesn’t have to do much juggling or setup now and Episode 6 did a great job advancing the drama between Shingetsu and Anna. It can afford to devote the majority of this episode to the two characters’ climatic showdown. Granbelm also does a good job justifying the lack of screentime for the other contestants. It will have to elaborate on the whole debacle between Kuon and Suisho but for this episode, it’s a good excuse to keep those two out of Shingetsu and Anna’s fight (especially since Suisho is more than willing to interject). As for Mangetsu, Shingetsu asks her to stay out of the fight and being the good friend that she is, Mangetsu agrees to the request. She only tries to intervene at the very end and that’s quickly stopped by Suisho.
Given its importance in the story, the climatic showdown Shingetsu and Anna is the grandest fight in the show so far. As one might imagine, the Fugo family’s magical stone enables Anna to do some incredible feats of magic, including a very advanced and far more dangerous version of the technique she did in the last episode. But no matter what Anna throws at Shingetsu, the latter is still able to keep up with her. I can’t fault Shingetsu for coming across as overpowered because she is supposed to be overpowered. She is not lying when she tells Anna that she can’t her. It’s an objective fact in-universe that Shingetsu is stronger and nothing Anna can do will change that. And if Shingetsu isn’t stronger, she’s certainly a lot more skilled. Whereas Anna banks a lot on sheer firepower, Shingetsu dishes out some creative counters. Towards the end of the fight, she even uses the residual effects of Anna’s magic against her.
In the end, Anna is only able to gain the upper hand by playing dirty. Shingetsu tries to convince Anna to stop and Anna agrees to do just that, only to then take advantage of the situation by thrashing her Armanox and choking the lights out of her surrogate sister. Maybe Anna was deceiving Shingetsu or maybe she really is convinced for a second to stop before giving into the temptation of killing Shingetsu while her guard is down. Either way, this goes to show how much of a lose cause Anna is. She no longer cares about Shingetsu’s feelings and she’s more than willing to toy with them if it means she’ll win.
As Anna chokes Shingestu, Mangetsu telepathically overhears some of Shingetsu’s thoughts. It’s a curious set of dialogue. Shingetsu internally remarks how she wishes she didn’t have magic, seemingly blaming it as the cause for the estranged relationship between her and Anna. This explains why Shingetsu thinks few people like themselves and why she wishes to get rid of magic if she becomes the Princeps. Whereas magic means everything to Anna, it means little to Shingetsu. She never wanted to be a mage, let alone a really powerful one, and all her powers have done is make her miserable. Shingetsu thinks few people like themselves because she herself doesn’t like who she is. She wants to get rid of magic because she knows far too well how much pain it causes for people.
Despite getting the upper hand, Anna still loses to Shingetsu, the latter managing to pull off one final move to defeat the former. How ironic that Shingetsu wins by stabbing Anna in the back, which is what Anna accused her of doing years ago. What exactly is going on with Anna here is explained better in the next episode but you can probably tell from here that things aren’t looking very good for her.
I get a little teary eyed over this ending. I honestly do. Part of that has to do with the direction, particularly with the inclusion of an insert song, “Scenery” by Uru. That’s a very song poignant song that fits perfectly with this scene (and what’s crazy is that this isn’t even the show’s best use of this song). But putting that aside, I really do feel for these characters. Anna deserves to lose after everything she’s done but knowing her backstory, I can’t help but feel sorry for her. And if not Anna, I certainly feel Shingetsu’s pain. Despite everything that’s happened, she still loves Anna. She didn’t want things between her and Anna end like this. She still held onto the hope that they could go back to the sisterhood they once had, even it became clear that her sister is long gone. That close-up of Shingetsu’s face says it all. She’s technically won the battle but she instead feels defeated. It’s funny. I honestly didn’t think much of the feud between Shingetsu and Anna during the first five episodes. And yet, during these past two episodes, it has paid off big time.
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