So how ’bout that episode 12?

Time for some incoherent babbling because almost 24 hours later my mind is still full of fuck.

First off, I just have to say that I think this episode really highlights Ikuhara’s strengths as a director. I don’t think you have to be an Ikuhara fantard to agree that the man knows how to use music (or a lack of it) to push all the right emotional buttons. The scene of Kanba desperately begging the Princess to take more of his life to save Himari really reminded me of the end of Utena (and in a lot of respects this middle episode felt like a finale, but that’s another topic)––particularly the bit in the last episode where Missing Link starts and Utena’s crawling on the floor just crying “Himemiya!” over an over. Shit makes me cry every time.

Anyway, some miscellaneous thoughts about the episode because I can’t formulate any of this into a coherent post right now (>implying I can ever formulate a coherent post)

Mary and the Lambs

Hey it’s like the fish story all over again. There are like 15 different things going on at once with the story which just make it super complicated (like everything else in the show).

Mary had three adorable little lambs.
The sight of them walking in the pasture turned everyone’s heads.
The little lambs’ wool shone like angels’ wings.
Mary couldn’t wait to spin their wool into thread.
But one day,
Mary awoke to a surprise.
The apple tree in the garden had withered.
It was the first tree in the world.
The tree that bore golden fruit each year.
It was Mary’s other dear, dear treasure.
Mary ran to the apple tree and broke into tears.
The apple tree’s light had once been the source of world’s love, future and dreams.
Now, the world is shrouded in darkness.
Mary cried on and on and the lambs’ consolation fell on deaf ears.
Suddenly, a voice rained down from the sky.
Don’t give up.
The world has not ended yet.
When Mary looked up, there were two unsual, huge, black bunnies sitting on a rock.
The black bunnies said,
“You know the Shrine of the Goddess deep in the forest?
Go and collect ashes from the flaming torch inside.
This tree will recover the instant you sprinkle the ashes over it!”
Mary declined.
Their taboo forbade human contact with the torch of the Goddess.
“You’re just going to borrow some ashes!”
“The world will be filled with light once again!”
“The Goddess will be pleased, too!”
That night, Mary stole the ashes from the shrine and sprinkled them over the apple tree.
Just as the black bunnies claimed, the apple tree was revived.
Mary was overjoyed, dancing under the tree, blind to the three little lambs.
However, the Goddess was furious.
It was, after all, a taboo.
The Goddess decided to punish Mary.
But… the punishment was ultimately up to the Goddess’s whim.
“Eeney, meeny, miny, moe!”
The Goddess chose the smallest, youngest lamb.
The lamb she chose was a gentle and kind girl.
Who likes to cook and knit, and always worries about her good-for-nothing brothers.
She was but a little girl.
Himari…
The brother lambs who were left behind cried…
“O Goddess, why did you choose Himari?”
“Because punishment…”
“Because punishment has to be the most unjust.”

Ok, so the imagery presented with the story implies (well, Shoma pretty much says as much by the end by saying Himari’s name) Mary = Kenzan, the three lambs = Takakura siblings and the bunnies are pretty clearly the creepy kids with Sanetoshi.

The unclear roles are the apple tree and the goddess. My initial thought (and a lot of people are going this way too) is that the apple tree is Chiemi and something happened to her. The more I think about it the less sure I am of that though. It did occur to me that it’s an apple tree, you know, a tree that bears apples, so it might be implying Eriko (who bore Ringo (apple) ), but I have a hard time thinking of Kenzan that way even though we’ve surely only gotten a distorted image of him so far.

Anyway. I don’t think the stealing of the ashes could be related to the terrorist attack Kenzan was involved with. At least I don’t think it could be a direct allusion since in the story, the tree abruptly dies while Mary has the three lambs and Himari wasn’t even born yet. We also know with some certainty that Kenzan and Chiemi were alive and living with their kids up until at least three years ago (of course that doesn’t exclude the possibility that Chiemi had gotten ill/died-except-not prior to that). Though the way Shoma frames it, the lamb’s death is punishment for stealing the ashes and Shoma clearly considers what happens to Himari as “punishment” for their “sin” earlier. I guess what I’m questioning here is what Shoma considers the “sin.” He does tell Ringo that he considers the incident in 1995 his and Kanba’s fault, but I don’t recall him calling it their “sin.” So I guess I’m just trying to say that there’s still some question over what the “sin” and stealing the ashes actually symbolize. The Mary story’s still sort of fuzzy enough in terms o how it lines up thus far that you could probably make the argument that the Mary story timeline doesn’t necessarily match up with the rest of the show 100% , but I think it does raise some questions.

Orite, and the goddess. I’m thinking the obvious reading is that she’s the Princess of the Crystal. Making the ashes the Penguin Drum I guess? idk, I still haven’t thought this out much, but I suspect the people she wants Shoma to stop are Sanetoshi and the creepy twins (from approaching Kanba and offering him a deal). Then again, the one person we’ve met so far who has asked our protagonists to retrieve an item (like the bunnies ask for the ashes) is the Princess of the Crystal, asking for the drum (incidentally because it would revive Himari like the ashes would revive the tree, and so on). Also PotC wears black and Sanetoshi white, but idk! She did seem to characterize herself in opposition to the bunnies though. Anywho, I wouldn’t count the genders in the story for shit considering motherfucking Kenzan is Mary.

“It’s a boy.”

So, yeah, Kenzan’s phone call from the hospital has been a hot topic discussion both on 4chan and 2ch (that is, in case you were worried that people were suspicious about that line purely because they can’t into Japanese well, the Japanese viewers thought it was weird too).

While, yes, it’s entirely possible to read that conversation in the plural it’s still weird. Most people seem to agree that you’d normally mention that there were twins and you’d mention that they’re both boys even if it was already known that they’re twins (just not gender). Fundamentally, we don’t really know anything for sure from Kenzan’s phone conversation, just that it was written in an intentionally ambiguous way.

The wife line sounds weird to me too, but I haven’t seen anyone on 2ch mention it (it’s possible that I missed it if they did, but I did a quick search through the post-12 threads and I don’t see anything about it) so I’m gonna dismiss that as can’t-into-Japanese-well. It’s probably a you-wouldn’t-call-anyone-but-your-wife 妻 like that, but idk (maybe I’m crazy but couldn’t you use it like that with a close friend re: his wife?).

I’m not a fan of the the-twins-are-the-same-person theory line though. Maybe one of the boys was adopted? Idk. I don’t think it could be something like: Eriko was the one who had twins, Shoma (or Kanba) and Ringo, but gave the boy away to the Takakuras, just because of how little Tabuki described Momoka looking forward to having a little sister (unless it was a SURPRISE! TWINS! situation). Idk what to make of this either, it could easily be misleading trolling too––seriously guys, don’t put that shit past Ikuhara. He is not above trolling the shit out of his audience.

“There wasn’t a trace of her left. They only found her diary.”

They never found Momoka’s body. This is super suspicious and I think it gains some points for the Yuri-is-Momoka camp, especially how Momoka’s image was obscured. Again, never leave trolling off the list of possible explanations for shit in the show, but it’s still fucking suspicious.

Tabuki’s odd scar is weird as fuck too. (2ch was making Kaiji jokes too just fyi.) Dunno what to make of that either (noticing a pattern yet? lol). My wild guess is that Tabuki can’t believe that Momoka died in the terror incident precisely because they’d been in an extremely dangerous incident before and both had survived, but perhaps left Tabuki scarred. Curiously we never see the scar on his right hand when he’s an adult. I haven’t gone through the show and carefully watched to see if we ever get a clear, close shot of Tabuki’s right hand (just from going through the screenshots I took I have a crazy theory that perhaps we never have actually seen a clear shot of Tabuki’s right hand that wasn’t in one of Ringo’s fantasies, but I haven’t tested it yet and it sounds like :effort:).

Other stuff

Not really sure where to categorize this since it’s more of a general thing, but I think the common characterization of Kanba as the more selfless of the twins is a bit off base. I think you could very easily argue that Kanba is extremely selfish and that he really only wants to save Himari because of his own desires (as in: he doesn’t want to save his sister because he loves her (as a sister) and wants her to live a long, happy life so much as because he’s IN love with her and can’t deal with the thought of losing her––like, it’s not really for Himari as much as it is for himself). But I’m not really sure I completely agree with that either. I don’t think we have a totally clear picture about how Kanba feels about just about anything yet (that and the fact that I’m sure we could debate at length about the nature of selfishness and love without reaching any meaningful conclusion because lol abstract concepts). Anyway, just another perspective to consider.