Xebek\’s Blog

Yuuichi tries to find out more information about the girl, Mai, who he met last night who saved him from a mysterious monster.

Summary:

• Yuuichi comes home from the school and after taking a bath, heads to bed. He lies awake thinking of the girl who saved him from the monster, and that it wasn’t a dream as he had a cut from when it happened.
• The next day, he heads to school and sees the girl. He tries to talk to her but she says nothing and just keeps walking. One of his friends just tells him not to get involved with her.
• At lunch, Yuuichi tries to find a table and asks someone if he can sit next to him. His friends quickly drag him away, apologizing to the person and telling Yuuichi that that is the Student President, that his father is powerful so he is powerful in the school to and its best to make it so he doesn’t notice you.
• Everyone then gathers around the window saying how there is a wild dog outside. Yuuichi runs to the window to see Shiori on the ground in front of a growling wild dog. He runs outside to save her, and Nayuki tries to stop him. Yuuichi stands in front of the dog and tells Nayuki to take Shiori. However the dog runs past him and goes after Shiori. Then, Mai appears and stands before the dog and it stops growling and runs away.
• Mai heads away from the school as well, even though some of the teachers appear and yell at her kind of, saying how there is always trouble whenever she is around and that they aren’t done talking to her. She just walks away and Yuuichi follows her. He finds her feeding the dog that appeared. He thanks her for saving him again and she still says nothing. Another girl appears behind him saying the dog was just hungry, and introduces herself as a friend of Mai’s, the girl who saved him.
• Yuuichi end sup eating lunch with the two of them, Mai not talking much through the whole thing and Sayuri, Mai’s friend, doing most of the talking.
• After school, Yuuichi runs into Ayu who is still looking for something she lost. Yuuichi helps her look for it but after looking for a while, they find nothing so Yuuichi treats Ayu to some taiyaki to cheer her up, Ayu saying a girl cant’ be energetic without food.
• That night, Yuuichi heads out again to the school and brings food to Mai. He tells her that he is sure she is hungry and she says she is a little bit. They eat together and Yuuichi just says he wanted to be sure last night wasn’t a dream. Mai says it wasn’t and they hear a sound and Mai takes her sword and goes to fight another monster. While she is fighting, another one appears by Yuuichi and almost attacks him but Mai saves him, although the monster causes many windows to be broken.
• The next day at school, everyone is gathered around the widows wondering what happened, some people saying how there are rumors Mai did it and the Student President appears saying to Mai he wants to talk with her.

Impressions:

I liked how we got a lot more information about Mai in this episode. Well, we didn’t get that much information on her because she seems to be mainly a loner and all except for the one friend she has, even as far as people telling Yuuichi to avoid Mai, we did see at least some more advancement of her character, having her thank Yuuichi for coming, and showing that Mai has more to her then probably all the other people think.

One small thing is that they still seem to be looking for whatever Ayu missed, since it has spanned two episodes without them finding anything it is likely to be something important. Either that or/and this is mainly just to get Yuuichi more screen time with Ayu as to advance their relationship and her character.

We get more of an introduction to Mai. If there is one thing I remember about watching this the first time was that I was surprised with how long of an arc they gave Mai, there is the whole deal with her almost getting expelled and when she goes tot eh dance with Yuuichi. Although in this episode they don’t really show that much involvement in extending the arc, I’m pretty sure there is some bits of a Makoto arc between the long Mai arc, but they did leave us with the whole her being blamed for the monster thing and the fact that the monster problem is indeed not over.

Spoilers:

Also, again they had a bit with Ayu and her lost article but the main thing that I think this episode shows that hints to the more super natural aspects and the mystery behind Ayu is that she thinks there is a cake shop somewhere and there isn’t The reason being of course that there was a cake shop there seven years ago but since she doesn’t truly exist now her memory is still kind of that of seven years ago.

The preview for next episode surprised me. Not so much as to what is going to happen next because I’ve seen it, but what they said in the preview and also just the title for next episode. “The Fox and the Grapes” and it’s all about Makoto, hmm :D In the preview it seemed to just be a metaphor comparing Makoto to a fox and that’s probably what I first thought but watching this again it’s a lot more direct then I thought, given she IS a fox.