With Takina re-assigned and Chisato at death’s door, the latter and Mika decide to shut down LycoReco. In light of this announcement, Mizuki and Kurumi decide to move out of Japan. Some of the cafe’s regulars are dismayed over the news and they ask Chisato and Mika to reconsider. Shutting down LycoReco is a logical plot development but the consequences it brings falls pretty flat for me. Lycoris Recoil never gave the spotlight to any of the recurring customers. Hell, I don’t know any of them by name and I don’t think I ever mentioned anyone specific in these episode reviews. Even Mizuki and Kurumi’s departure doesn’t leave much of an impact for me. They have been on screen pretty often but they’re not really that prevalent in the story. All Mizuki does is drive Chisato and Takina around and complain that she’s still single. Kurumi has more of an arc but it’s brief and she most boils down to a vehicle to advance the plot. As a result, I’m only mildly sad to see them leave for the time being.
There is one dramatic scene that really works for me and it’s the one between Chisato and Mika. Knowing that Chisato might not get to get it wear as intended, Mika lets her wear a kimono that he had reserved for her coming of age ceremony. It’s here that Mika tells Chisato the truth: that Yoshimatsu agreed to help her on the condition that she grow up to become a hitman. I really like the inner conflict expressed by Mika here. He originally intended to use Chisato to boost his career and he was therefore going to honor Yoshimatsu’s request. However, Chisato’s admiration for Yoshimatsu made her a better Lycoris so Mika kind of had to keep the truth from her. As time went on, Mika truly came to see Chisato as his daughter and that made him even more conflicted on whether or not he should continue lying to Chisato about her savior. It’s a dilemma with no clear solution and I find it to be very compelling. I kind of wish Lycoris Recoil leaned more into the father-daughter relationship between Mika and Chisato. This is some of the best writing in the show so far.
Knowing Chisato, I figured she’d still be thankful of her dads even after Mika tells her the truth. The fact remains that they did allow her to live longer than she was expected to. And while her perception of Yoshimatsu ended up being wrong, she argues that Mika made the right call to keep Yoshimatsu’s intention a secret. Had Mika told her everything from the get go, she would’ve felt trapped in a life of a Lycoris. Really, what Mika did was let Chisato carve her own path. Admittedly, it worries me that Chisato still thinks Yoshimatsu as a father. That could only end in disappointment at the very least. That and, well, Yoshimatsu didn’t see her for a decade and he’s sabotaging her life. The man is hardly father material at this point. Still, I understand that letting go of her preconception of her savior would be difficult to do.
Meanwhile, we see Takina working with the other Lycoris to hunt down Majima. The DA deduces that Majima is targeting Enkuboku, the new radio tower. Not going to lie, it’s been so long since they the show explicitly brought up the tower so when I watched this episode, I was horribly confused for a second.
I’m a bit puzzled at the fact that Chisato isn’t present at the operation. I was under the impression she was going to be there as she offered to participate if Takina is reinstated as a fully fledged Lycoris. Obviously, Kusunoki budged on that so what gives? Apparently, Kusunoki is reluctant to deploy Chisato, even when the government pressures her to do so, but that doesn’t make sense as it contradicts her requesting Chisato to join the operation. Chisato is objectively the best Lycoris, even the government thinks so, but Kusunoki just wants her on standby for what is clearly an extremely important mission? I swear, some things happen in this show simply because someone took stupid pills.
Something neat about Takina’s scenes is her tendency to do things that ought to get her demoted or exiled again. In one scene, she interrogates one of Majima’s men with force. During the mission, Kusunoki and Majima have a remote chat and Takina butts in so that she can learn where Yoshimatsu is held captive. I suppose this is par for the course for Takina but I’d argue that this speaks to her headspace at the moment. She doesn’t actually care about being a Lycoris again. It’s just a means for her to save Chisato from dying so naturally, she’s feeling a bit reckless. Admittedly, Takina should maybe behave if she wants to stay in the DA long enough to accomplish her goal but maybe I’m arguing semantics here.
Having Kusunoki and Majima argue over the ethics of the DA’s control over the populace feels weird. I mean, Majima isn’t wrong about the DA having too much control and that the people are living under a false sense of peace. It’s just that at Episode 10 of 13, it’s really late for Lycoris Recoil to have someone discuss the ethics. After the underwear shopping and the poop shaped parfaits, I kind of stopped expecting anything that deep from the show. Not that Majima and Kusunoki would necessarily bring it up, it is amusing that their conversation doesn’t discuss how screwed up it is for the DA to train young girls into undercover agents.
One would think that Majima would be blowing up Enkuboku for the whole country to see but no, his plan has him leaving a bunch of guns all over Tokyo for people to find. I suppose that would cause a lot more chaos, certainly enough that the DA would struggle to contain without exposing themselves to the public. Really though, the most ingenious part of Majima’s plan is capturing Yoshimatsu. He knows how important the man is to Chisato and he knows that if anyone could stop him, it’d be Chisato. By having Yoshimatsu captive, he keeps Chisasto occupied and he buys himself time to see his plan come to fruition. What a fun villain this man is proving to be.
Given Chisato’s track record, I don’t doubt that she’ll come out on top here. What I’m less sure on is whether or not Chisato will survive. She could come out of this conflict completely unscathed and it won’t matter as she’s on the last embers of her life. Since the artificial heart loses more power the more Chisato exerts herself, I can picture her draining the battery by the end of the mission.
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