Demi-chan wa Kataritai – 10

tfw the best character only has one scene

One of my favorite weekends of the year, when the US goes on Daylight Saving Time. We should just stay on this time all year! But back to Japan, where they don’t ever have clock changes. Maybe that’s why it always seems like it’s getting dark early.

Kyouko Tries to Make a Move

Kyouko bein’ a lovestruck goofball

After learning the news that Hikari has kissed Tetsuo, albeit only on the cheek, Kyouko starts to really muse about the idea of trying to ‘catch up’ to Hikari. And her favored watching of romance shows helps her mind get right to the idea that she could figure out a way to kiss Tetsuo and have him think it’s a joke as well, like Hikari’s obviously was (although it still made Hikari blush pretty hard). So when she next sees Tetsuo in the hall, while his hands are full, she starts kinda goofing around with the idea of giving him a quick peck. But it doesn’t quite turn out that way when she loses her grip and drops her head.

An unexpected reaction

I think that Tetsuo’s reaction, lunging to save her, and then getting cross and scolding her when she tries to laugh it off, is entirely both in character and reasonable for an ordinary person. Yet, that fast reaction is not what Kyouko wants from her crush. Plus as she says, for her to make Tetsuo so angry that he yelled at her really makes her feel like she must have done something very wrong. But it’s definitely one of those situations where both feel bad about what happened, so when Hikari pushes Tetsuo back to Kyouko, he is the one who apologizes first. And in the end, it’s really just one of those “growing up” things, where a kid learns that doing something is stupid, and they shouldn’t do that if they don’t want to get hurt or worry other people. And where they also learn that there’s scolding out of dislike and scolding out of love, something that most children get from their parents, but sometimes need to see from other people as well to really understand it.

And an unexpected apology

A Scientific Digression

Souma with his doofy grin

The B-part of the episode was given over to a trip to Tetsuo’s college with Kyouko, and a visit to his friend Souma, he of the perpetual intense grin. To be honest, this part got a little boring for me, with it seeming more like a chance for Natsuki Hanae to do some scenery chomping as Souma. Conjecture about the true nature of Kyouko is well enough, but the show seems to have accepted as canon that the “supernatural” effects of these formerly mythical types of beings are more just “not yet explained” by science. And that’s fine, and fits into the overall theme of the show that all the people in the show are people, whether they are dullahans, vampires, yuki-onna, succubi, or some other kind of formerly fabulous figure.

She ends up really tall with her head on her shoulders

One thing that I put together from the show so far is that it’s hard to believe that something like a genetic mutation could have caused a someone to be a dullahan. What kind of genetic expression could form a wormhole, or whatever you would like to call a space-time bridge that acts seemingly instantaneously (it certainly does rely heavily on our current understanding of things like Quantum Entanglement). Might it be more some sort of odd galactic happenstance, such as the wormhole just happened to be passing through a particular point in space and somehow was captured by the developing Kyouko? That tends to get back to the question of how was Kyouko born, and was she a dullahan already?

Wonder what this pointy-nosed jerkface is going to be doing?

Like I said, a lot of scenery chewing in the B-part by Souma, but a good learning moment for Kyouko as she learns that people who care for her can be angry at her without ceasing to care for her. In fact the reaction that Kyouko gets from Tetsuo is more because he cares about her well-being than in spite of his caring. And maybe she’ll look to research in the future, but I would always shy away from experimenting on yourself. Down that path lies The Invisible Man.

About Highway

Proving that you don't have to be young to love anime, I enjoy all genres and styles of shows. If it's not hurting anyone else, you should never be ashamed of what you like!