Ririchiyo’s getting really caught up in her thoughts as she overanalyzes the situation.
What They Say:
Ririchiyo wants the type of friendship the others share with their SS Agent. But her inability to speak her true feelings and Miketsukami only able to talk in a formal matter doesn’t help. What can she do to break the barrier of Master / Servant?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With one of the main thrusts of the series being getting Ririchiyo out into the world and interacting with people since she had been kept in relative seclusion, it’s done a fairly decent job at it. She’s managed to encounter a number of people and make some very, very basic friendships and acquaintances that would have been difficult for her to deal with. Being on her own has been a plus as even the time alone gives her a chance to reflect on things. But one area that continues to bother her is the way everyone else seems to really be close to their bodyguards. Soushi has certainly made things easy for her, being very loyal and helpful while doing all that needs to be done, but she has some very basic restraints placed on herself by her nature that keeps her from really going any further with it.
A good part of this episode just has Ririchiyo grappling with the way that Soushi is so attendant to his needs. She understands the reasons behind it with it being his job, but she also knows he takes it even more seriously than that as he’s proven several times before. It’s not easy for her to understand the way he acts with her since she’s had no real experience with it in her life prior to this. And even in watching the relationships the others share with their bodyguards, it feels different in some way. There’s humor and lightness in there as well, and a closeness to be had, but it doesn’t seem to reach the same kind of depth that she sees coming from Soushi. Of course, some of those feelings she senses could just be a whole lot of projection on her part.
As she does start to figure some of this out, she does her best to watch everyone else and picks up certain traits along the way to try and smooth things out more with soushi. But she continually either finds it difficult to d or botches it in some way that is amusing to watch. There are definitely some fun and cute moments here and it helps to humanize Ririchiyo a bit more, something that never hurts. She’s not a bad character at this point as we’ve gotten to know her a bit and see her struggle with trying to be what she considers normal. And she does a pretty good job with it considering what she’s up against personally. So episodes like this are rather nicely done when you get down to the details of it all.
In Summary:
This episode ends early and we get an extensive epilogue piece that does resolve in some ways some of what’s going on here, giving Soushi a chance to make his case which is welcome. But the bulk of the episode is about Ririchiyo and a large amount of introspection and internal dialogue that shows her to be the confused young woman that she is that’s misreading some things and reading too much into others. But considering her life before coming to the complex, it certainly makes a good deal of sense. Though the episode doesn’t have any profound changes or radically alters things, it’s a solid piece of progression for the leads and it humanizes her even more. But it also gives Soushi what he needed and did it in the space of a couple of minutes. Fun stuff, though it still leaves me with a bit of a fluffy feeling.
Grade: B
Readers Rating: [ratings]
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
