End Game Raid Tier Puppets

Ikuhara's Episode Commentary: 34: "The Rose Crest"

Has the prince become a mechanism to allow princesses to exist?

Or is the existence of his princess the only thing holding up the sleeping prince’s noble heart?

The “Rose Bride” is born.

I’ve prepared three points of view.

The prince as a victim. Akio is what the ruined prince has come to in the end, the “End of the World.” The prince’s tragedy.

The Rose Bride is born: she saves the prince, and in exchange for keeping him all to herself, she bcomes the “witch,” and that is the tragedy.

Ikuhara's Episode Commentary: 29: "Azure Paler Than the Sky"

The boy who does nothing but transfer schools.

The boy who was supposed to be gone, came back.

He has always appeared at the same specific time. Frankly, I don’t like him. He’s always… he always prods mercilessly at the exact places I don’t want prodded.

One day, I’d noticed that I’d changed. I’d always hated myself so passionately, but somewhere along the line, that suffering had vanished. Was that his doing? Even if it was, though, I still hate him. And somewhere along the line, he’s left again. People say he changed schools.

At a hospital, I dropped by to visit a sick friend. I overheard the nurses talking. It sounded like one their patients had died. Apparently at a certain specific time, he always used to slip away from the hospital and go someplace. Where?

He told the nurses, “I go to visit someone dear to me.” And he left a request with him family: “If I die, please don’t tell anyone.”

…It couldn’t be. It couldn’t. I mean, he transferred schools. I’m sure I’m just overthinking this. I’ll be waiting for him, my dear him, to transfer back here.

Ikuhara's Episode Commentary: 25: "Their Eternal Apocalypse"

Out of nowhere, Saionji comes back all powered up. Why did he power up? Because he rode in the acting Chairman’s car, of course. Okay, so why does riding in his car let someone power up?

The staff had this conversation during work on the episode.

“A” was a salaryman at a certain small to mid-sized company. He was clever at his job, so the company considered him an asset, but he was unable to stay motivated about his work. This isn’t the work I want to do…

Steeling his resolve, he went to the CEO and spoke his mind, saying “I’d like to quit.”

“Now now, slow down there. Why don’t you have dinner with me tonight?”

And so, A was taken to a certain sushi restaurant. The restaurant had no sign in front, and was set back slightly from the road. It was the type of restaurant that didn’t serve patrons without an introduction…[1]

This was the first time A had been to a sushi restaurant that wasn’t the conveyor-belt type. He’d always thought of a “sushi restaurant” as a place with menus, or where the ingredients available were listed on a board behind the chefs. But in this restaurant, the choices weren’t written down anywhere.

Despite this, A’s chef placed one piece of sushi after another in front of him (without him having to place any orders like chu-toru or kanpachi), always at just the right time. And that wasn’t all. Each piece melted in his mouth like no conveyor-belt sushi he’d ever tasted.

Th-This is what an exclusive restaurant is like!

At that point, the CEO, who had been sitting silently beside him and having a drink with his supper, began to speak. (The CEO wasn’t eating any sushi; he was drinking and grazing on some sashimi.)

CEO: Isn’t this place good?

A: Huh?! (timidly) …Yes, sir.

CEO: With me at your side, you can come to places like this every week. And what’s more…

A: Every week!

CEO: Shall we move to the next place?

A: (gulps)

The two of them vanished into the busy streets glittering with neon…

The next day:

A appears at work with a bright, shining face of a whole new man.

A: I’m not the same man I was yesterday.

Coworkers: ?

A: I’ve seen everything. I know how this world is set up now. And that’s why I’m here!

And from that day forward, A’s motivation skyrocketed. He’d completely forgotten about quitting the company.

Apparently something like that happened…

Huh? Why does he ride on the hood of his car, you ask? Well, if you want to know that, you’d better come along…

Ikuhara's Episode Commentary: 24: "The Secret Nanami Diary"

This is just between you and me, but when I was fourteen, I confessed to the girl I’d loved for a long time, and she turned me down.

I couldn’t give up. I secretly followed her when she left the school.

But, as I did so, a UFO telepahtically transmitted this message to me: "Stop acting like a stalker."

“St-Stalker”? What’s that? Is it some hip slang from the future?

"Live your life heroically. Live it with style. If you live heroically and with style..."

If I live heroically and with style, what?

Ikuhara's Episode Commentary: 21: "Vermin"

When I was a kid, I crushed bugs and small animals with my feet for the more or less meaningless reason that they were “ugly.” A child’s world is governed by absurd and cruel rules. If there’s a rule that something must be crushed underfoot, is it a crime to want to be on the “crushing” side rather than the “crushed” side?

Special beings are beautiful, and they’re never trampled on.

That girl could distinguish between “beautiful things” and “ugly things.” I suspect that ability was her misfortune.

She thought, “What’s the difference between her and me?”

A miracle occurred. Maybe I can be a “special being” too.

Ikuhara's Episode Commentary: 20: "Wakaba Flourishing"

“Love” isn’t a word that describes a fair relationship. “Love” is a word that describes a monopoly. That’s why. We refer to the ego as “love.”[2] That’s why. “Love” is by no means eternal. Because after all. If the ego went on eternally, we would break down emotionally. And yet. She would not learn until much later that love is precisely that which can be lost.

Ikuhara's Episode Commentary: 14: "The Boys of the Black Rose"

I saw a certain horror movie when I was in middle school. There was a secret mortuary in an underground chamber, and the dead were electronically transmitted (!), still in their coffins, to the “other world,” where they were forced into slavery.

The movie’s story was utterly absurd, but the division of the world into opposite poles of “living” and “dead” felt real to me, somehow.

Our world has been spoken of in bipolar fashion for ages.

In my student days, there was a popular book that compared the “affluent” with the “non-affluent,” and sorted everything into categories called “loaded” and “broke.” It was the bubble era, and the aim of the book was probably to get a laugh by saying “They call us wealthy, but our lifestyle’s practically in the trash can!”

But for some reason, I couldn’t laugh.

Years later, the phrase “the winning side” was popular in the media. I thought it was horrid. And sure enough, people started using the opposite phrase “the losing side” as a masochistic joke. I still couldn’t laugh, though.

One day, a girl I saw on TV said, “There are only two types of people in this world: the ones who are chosen and the ones who aren’t chosen.”

That gave me a start.

“To not be chosen is to die,” said the girl.

I decided to try my hand at that.

Ikuhara's Episode Commentary: 13: "Tracing a Path"

This is just between you and me, but when I was fourteen, I saw a UFO.

That UFO telepathically told me this prophecy: "When you grow up, you will direct an anime about girls revolutionizing various things."

Surely you jest.

"You must not tell anyone about me. If you ever do..."

Wh-What will happen to me?

Ikuhara's Episode Commentary: 10: "Nanami's Precious Thing"

When I was a child, the center of the party always seemed to sparkle.

I was always standing on the sidelines, gazing at that sparkle from afar. I thought the sidelines were my place. Surely I could never approach the center of the room.

But then, I was chosen! I touched that sparkle in the center of the room, and no mistake. Still, I know full well that it’s something that won’t last forever. The day the contract ends, I’ll turn into an “unchosen girl.”

So I’ll go back to the sidelines again, eh?

–Smash the egg’s shell.

Ikuhara's Episode Commentary: 7: "Unfulfilled Jury"

This story came together quickly as a “story about relationships.” “He” and “she” only appear within Jury’s memories. The ending in the final script is different than it was in the first draft. The endgame is still about getting a better idea of who Jury really is; that didn’t change. But the first draft ended on a “Could it be?” sort of a note. As the script was finalized, I decided to come right out and say, “She was in love with a girl.”

Ikuhara's Episode Commentary: All Episode Posts

1: “The Rose Bride”

Ikuhara's Episode Commentary: 32: "The Romance of the Dancing Girls"

As a child, I tried to run away from home several times. Usually it was for trivial reasons, like my parents throwing away a manga I loved or a plastic model. I wanted a place to belong. And I believed that place was “somewhere else.”

Everyone needs to hear someone say, “Nobody else will do. It has to be you,” sometime in their lives, even if it only happens once. Just once is enough. As long as you can feel sure those words were sincere, you can live through anything, no matter how painful.