Temporary Note: Unrelated but I have my fourth and possibly final episode review poll up and running! The poll ends on Sunday, March 31. You will most likely need a Twitter/X account in order to vote.
After Chisato made her heart grow three sizes, Takina decides to adopt her partner’s approach of not killing people. We see her try Chisato’s bullets at the beginning of this episode but she can’t get the hang of it so she decides to stick with normal bullets and avoid firing at vital organs. If the past couple of episodes are anything to go by, we know Takina is incredibly accurate with guns, maybe more so than Chisato even, so this change should pose much of an issue. I suppose someone could still bleed out after Takina shoots them…but don’t worry about it!
Following target practice, Chisato is shocked to discover that Takina is wearing boxers and not panties. There have apparently been some miscommunication that led Takina to conclude that she should wear boxers to improve her efficiency as a Lycoris. Add onto the fact that Takina doesn’t have casual clothes in general and Chisato decides to that two of them need to go shopping. I swear this is the main plot of this episode.
The most recurring joke in this plot is the amount of times Lycoris Recoil could do a panty shot, only to not show any actual panties in the frame. If there is an upskirt, it’s only when one of the girls is wearing boxers. If they are actually wearing panties, the shot gets conveniently censored by something. It’s a little strange as technically, the last episode straight up showed Chisato in her underwear at one point so why show restraint now? I suppose the show wanted to highlight the absurdity of this plot without having fanservice get in the way.
Aside from shopping for lingerie, the girls check out a nearby restaurant and aquarium. These scenes serve to show Takina getting used to her new life now that she’s more or less been blacklisted from the DA. I particularly like the part where Takina follows Chisato’s shenanigans and poses like one of the animals at the aquarium. It’s very atypical of her to do and the character herself looks embarrassed to do it but it goes to show that she does want to embrace the lighthearted life Chisato encourages her to have.
At the aquarium, Chisato answers a couple of questions Takina has been curious about. The first is why Chisato refuses to kill anyone. Chisato claims there’s no particular reason; she doesn’t want to rob someone of their life. I’m not 100% convinced of this. There probably is a more specific catalyst to this stance; my money being on her famous mission at the old radio tower. I of course could be wrong here and Chisato’s words are supposed to be accepted at face value.
While I imagine that Chisato’s no kill rule is partly why she’s an outlier among the Lycoris, it apparently is not the main reason why she left the DA. Rather, Chisato left so that she can better investigate the identity of a man that’s very important to her. Her only clue is an owl themed trinket given to her by the mysterious man and this item isn’t unique so it hardly counts as a lead. Chisato doesn’t elaborate on how this man helped her but this episode does spoil his identity. It’s none other than Mr. Yoshimatsu. As for why the man doesn’t reveal this connection to Chisato despite regularly visiting LycoReco, it’s apparently against the policy of his organization, the Alan Institute.
I would call this reveal anti-climatic but with so little hints to work with and given the mysterious aura Mr. Yoshimatsu already has, it probably wouldn’t take too long for the viewer to put two and two together. To be fair, this reveal does make you wonder what his deal is. Clearly, he is someone important to Chisato as well as a friend of Mika but as seen in the first episode, he’s still a shady figure in opposition to the DA. Is he a good guy, a bad guy, or is he somewhere in between?
As Chisato and Takina make their way home, they notice a bunch of Lycoris gathering around the nearby train station. Since they’re not in uniform, the two are forced to leave it be. At the station, we see a man named Majima (Yoshitsugu Matsuoka) gather his men and fire at an incoming train. To his chagrin, the DA predicted this attack so rather than fire on innocent civilians, he gets attacked by the Lycoris and is forced to retreat. While not explicitly stated, it’s all but confirmed that Majima is the one responsible for the arms deal and the missing guns in Episode 1.
I can see someone finding his first real scene chilling but I find it to be rather abrupt. This episode veers so heavily towards goofy slice of life shenanigans and baiting us with potential fanservice so it’s jarring when it cuts to a full-on terrorist attack. As for the character himself, he just seems like a mustache twirler to me though I find it interesting that he wants to do a crime so big that the DA can’t possibly cover it up. He could very well just be a sociopath but he still isn’t entirely wrong about the DA being a shady organization with a ton of power over the populace. I imagine that Majima and Robota will team up in the future but it is funny how their first scene together has Majima asking who Robota is and immediately hanging up on him when the hacker calls him. I hope that happens one more time before they team up for real.
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