#9.2.20

Vetements x Motörhead “The World Is Yours”

Long Sleeve T-Shirt

— £406 / $560

Eleanor via her IG story • 9.2.2021

These 5, of whom Felicia on the far right is a key player for the episode - she parades herself around as a mercenary and seemingly everyone has a bad impression on her - apart from Iroha, who she finds she has great chemistry with. I love the line where she’s all “you’d really cook for me?” - it’s one that’s not delivered in a super sympathetic way, Felicia’s clearly keeping up those sorts of barriers, but it still makes it clear just how disconnected she is from the people around her, and how fuckin nice Iroha-chan is. What a good girl.

Of course, we are also reintroduced to:

Our motherfuckin’ girl Kyoko! Who’s pretty much here because hey, lots of witches are here, but her experience makes itself very apparent in how she talks to Yachiyo, there’s a fair bit of sort of formalities about rules of territories and avoiding conflict with other girls, to the point where Kyouko’s genuinely surprised that Yachiyo’ll let her hunt here. I don’t know much about Kyouko’s role in Magia Record beyond adopting Yuma, whether or not we’ll even meet her in this I’m not sure, but Kyouko does some eavesdropping on our gang when they’re talking about the latest rumour, so I mean, maybe after her history with Mami she’ll want to take that rumour out on her own, or something? I’ve honestly got no guesses.

Speaking of rumours, this time around it’s some water that if you drink, 24 lucky things’ll happen to you, but afterwards, you disappear, unless you keep drinking the water anyway. Back to disappearance means Iroha has probable reason to investigate since hey maybe Ui drank this, but then the lucky stuff is also an excuse to give her some money to pay for Felicia’s services. It’s probably the least interesting rumour so far but in terms of MagiReco’s more episodic conflicts derived from said rumours, it’s doing its job fine. 

The rumour’s also an excuse to give us our last introduction of the episode, and rather than clearly introduce any one character, it’s time for the grand appearance of who I feel like are the big bads - the Wings of Magius. They all wear that iconic robe and have all their hair pretty much covered up, and I don’t know most MagiReco girls’ voices, so if any of these people are actually game characters I have no idea. Perhaps Kuro’s among them, perhaps Kuroe is among them, perhaps those two are the same thing all along, I’ve got no idea. Their objective it seems is to eliminate all witches, but they’re also interested in making sure Iroha and the gang don’t disturb this rumour, and even try to recruit Felicia, from which we get this wonderful face:

Which is uh, striking, to say the least. Anyway, if their objective is to eliminate all witches, and tons of witches are coming to Kamihama, and there’s a rumour that you can go to Kamihama to be saved, I mean, there’s gotta be a correlation between all that, yeah? Are Magius responsible for the latter rumour? Are these rumours physically affecting witches and that’s why they’re gathering here? Where do Doppels fit into all of this? Is having a Doppel being saved? Do Magius think of Doppels as witches and want to eliminate them? I can’t even fuckin guess, really I’ve got nothing. All just more plot sauce to look forward to.

MagiReco anime’s been full of mysteries like this, so I hope when we get our answers it holds up on the rewatch as well as the original show did. People that already know the game’s story don’t seem to be too bothered by the handling of mysteries from what I’ve gathered so, that’s pretty encouraging.

Here’s this striking ass background that I might rotate and use as a phone background.

Next episode is a recap episode, unfortunate, but the good people at Doga Kobo deserve a break so hey I’ll take it.

Now one thing I’m thinking is that, in this episode, Miyako’s conflict related to her family. This was true of Sakura last episode as well. And likewise for Miu in the first 3 episodes. So with every conflict relating to family so far my guess is that that’ll just, continue for every other girl, and then it’ll all culminate with a nice found family thing of all the girls realising how much they mean to each other. Sounds sweet but by god I think the existence of the Wall completely devalues that. Because it’s not “found family”, it’s “magic omniscient wall pulls girls together so they can be found family”. Based on that it’s really evident that we’re supposed to view the Wall as a benevolent thing but I’m so fucking tired of how much agency it rips away from the girls. And I mean, yeah Miyako’s the one who decided to throw the party, technically she had agency, but it feels so, illusory, because at the end of the day it’s still that fucking Wall that set things up like this, this god damn fucking Wall is the source of every single problem and every single solution in the show and I hate that.

Slight tangent relating to that is that Miyako wants to be a fashion designer, and I think it’d be really neat if she could, maybe design the outfits then, rather than have the nameless faceless entertainment company 22/7 works under do all that. Bothers me less but it’s still kind of a problem I have.

Anyway, let’s get my arbitrary collection of screencaps out of the way.

My favourite interaction in the entire series. Between this and more particularly a later moment with some handholding I wonder if they’re sorta just gonna have this be a yuri harem show with Miu being the harem protag. That’d be a good meme.

Hair down-ish Miyako, looks interesting, pretty cute.

Are you even a real idol group if you don’t do this hand circle thing?

In which my heart literally fucking stopped.

More miscellaneous marvelous Mius.