The past is revealed as Jolly hints since intriguing news to Felicita.
What They Say:
Felicitá has insisted on learning the truth behind Elmo. When she finally does, the answer is bigger than expected. The truth involves the entire family and their contracts with the Tarocco.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With what Felicita and the others discovered previously about Jolly, it’s not a surprise that it’s eating at them. His creation of a homunculus is not something any of them expected, and certainly not as smoothly done as he did, and that knowledge is percolating heavily in their minds, especially for Felicita. Getting the background on Jolly was definitely useful in the previous episode since he’s been a character I wanted to know more about as one of the few seeming adults in the show. Having it so that the three youngsters were keeping their distance from him and had a real reason for doing so from their childhood only made him more curious for me to see what’s going on.
What complicates things now is that Felicita’s father, Mondo, is out of the picture for a bit as he’s worked himself into an exhaustion and is now asleep for awhile. And because of that, with all the work he’s got on his hand, the others have to start picking up the slack in order to make sure it’s not worse for him. Or at least that’s the picture that Mondo wants painted as he’s faking at least some of it. Felitica gets drawn into events a bit with Jolly, introducing her to Elmo, a young child tied to the sixteenth card that was given birth as a homunculus himself. This in turn goes further into the past as its revealed how Mond’s contract with the twenty-first card set the order of things when he set up the deal with the Tarocco. It relates back to the issue he’s facing now with the exhaustion as that card and his role is to unify everything within the card family.
Jolly has a plan though, a risky one since the others aren’t working out over the years, and that involves the other card that Felicita has a contract with in regards to Wheel of Fortune. Felicita has not been told what it’s capable of it by her parents but it may be the thing that saves her father now. And as we see, it’s something that was key in the family in the past when Felicita was but a child. That and Mondo’s condition now all leads back to the start of the series with the Arcana Duello and why he’s having it, along with why he had sent Felicita away when she was younger. It may be a bit circumspect in the end, but it ties things together nicely and allows the show to move forward at long last it feels like. Doing that while getting the larger past of Mondo and the family itself brings a lot of things to the forefront to really bind things, making him a more interesting character.
In Summary:
While I certainly understand why this came into play at this point in the series, I can’t help but to feel that if we had gotten it much earlier in the run and had that bit of back story sated, it would have made the following episodes dealing with the individual character stories and connections all the more interesting and given us a clearer and more defined series instead of one that felt like it was just navel gazing. Here, I find myself really liking not only Jolly and Felicitia much more but also Sumire and especially Mondo. Felicita in particular gets some good growth here, especially towards the end, as we see her starting to really become her own woman. Between that and Mondo’s past, which feels like it’s practically stepping out of One Piece, it has me looking forward to seeing how the final episodes play out rather than just looking forward to it all ending.
Grade: B
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.
