In episode 10, we finally wrap up the ‘After School hexer’ arc. The last episode ended with Naru collapsing and this episode begins with him being rushed to the hospital. Though once he’s there, and a little bit healed up he calls in a few people with the answer behind the mystery of what’s been going on in the school. My memory was right in recalling that the teacher was the culprit, yet for the life of me I could not remember the reasoning for it. Why would she hex the students, Mr. Yoshino, Masako, Naru and Mai? Well the answer is simple really, it can be summed up in one word “Revenge.”
The previous episodes discussed briefly the psychic craze that happened sometime in the past. She was one of the kids that had previously come forward claiming to have psychic powers such as bending spoons, just like Chiaki. She was approached by a journalist who wanted desperately to disprove her, she got nervous and couldn’t perform so she tried to bend the spoon with the edge of a chair. A photographer caught her and plastered the photo’s in a magazine, shaming her and calling her powers fake. It happened now to one of her students and now she honestly had the perfect cover, using the rage from her student as a cover and letting everyone think she was responsible while putting hexes on people.
The most sickening and most chilling part of the episode is the fact that she smiles the entire time Naru is calling her out on what she’s done. Even as he points out that someone could of and probably would of eventually died from what she was doing. The smile on her face as she says,
“It was just a harmless prank.”
is almost sickening. Then she says that if someone died, they would of deserved it for denying what they couldn’t understand. She’s smiling and she sounds so distant and cheery through the entire thing. She also hide another doll in the flowers she brought Naru in an attempt to finish him off. It’s sickening how disgustingly twisted she became by this. With this though, the case is saved and the group goes back to the office after Naru is out of the hospital about a week later and they do a test on Mai.
She appears to be a latent psychic, but in all the wrong ways. In guessing where the lights would come on over 100 times she missed all of them, which is as Naru points out. A statistical impossibility, it seems like her power seems to focus on the idea of self-preservation and being able to pick out friend from foe. Mai is just really adorably upset as everyone picks on her for being a sort of danger sensing psychic blood hound and it’s really funny.
Mai tries to get her revenge by calling Naru out about the spoon bending and Lin actually gets a little mad. Naru goes to demonstrate it to everyone, but Monk reveals it’s a simple trick of weakening the spoon and then bending it with your finger. Yet something about that doesn’t add up with how angry Lin got. Is there more to this story?
Probably, we’ll see.
Now on to episode 11.
This one is a isolated episode, rather then an arc. It begins with Mai hearing from one of her classmates that her and her boyfriend had been doused by water by an invisible force in the park. Her friend asks her if she can have Naru look into it, but Mai is pretty doubtful that he’ll be interested at all in investigating it. She’s right, he’s not. Though as soon as Mai is ready to give it up as a bad job, Masako comes in and asks him to look into the very same case. Though because the director of a movie requested for her to get help as their lead couple kept getting doused in water while trying to shoot the film.
So the group sets out to the park to investigate, but with one small hitch. The ghost only seems to target couples and thus it means that they must act as bait. So much to the dismay of a jealous Mai, Masako attaches herself to Naru and they go off. The rest of them play rock paper scissors for it and Mai and Monk end up in one group and John and Ayako in the other.
The spirit goes to attack Monk and Mai with it’s water attack, Masako senses it and runs over. As she is seeing and describing the spirit, her eyes go blank and she collapses and when she stands up again. She is possessed by the spirit.
Honestly, this episode is pretty hilarious if only for the way they animate the possessed Masako. There is nothing particularly humorous about a guy two timing a girl or that two timing driving her to suicide, though the show does try to lighten the mood by making her suicide attempts fail and ultimately having her die in a freak accident caused by tripping after being startled by a cat.
They see the man who two timed her and to help her cross over, they corner him and let her get her revenge by pouring water down upon him the way that he poured out a bottle of water on her head and made her look like a fool.
She gets to rest at last and passes on, leaving Masako to her own body with no memory of the events that happened. She is led to believe by Ayako that she kissed Naru multiple times for a second before Mai calls Ayako out on lying.
Though in the end, Masako does ask Naru out to dinner and he accepts, driving Mai into a jealous rage again. The two of them head out and the rest of the group makes theories on why Naru is so willing to do things for Masako and they eventually work out that Naru’s sponsor. The reason he can afford such a nice office and equipment is because of Masako’s father most likely paying for the things. It explains things but it doesn’t lift Mai’s mood any until Monk jokingly asks her on a date. So the two of them go out and Ayako drags John out with her for a comedy double date.
I feel bad for John.
This episode is cute, it’s a little stand alone segment that provides some much needed light heartedness after the heavy talks of revenge and how the world can twist you in the previous episode. I think it’s also buttering us up for the next arc, which if I recall is pretty sad but actually pretty beautiful.
The Christmas arc, up next Silent Night, part 1.