#episodic notes

And the Selector battles are back! But before getting into the action, this week’s episode starts by checking in on the members of the supporting cast, and seeing how they’re reacting to the return of the games. First, there’s Hanna and Hitoe, who have both been chosen as Selectors, and while they’re not ready to battle quite yet, we do get to see how they’re preparing themselves. There’s also Yuzuki, and while she may not have been selected, she still plays a key role as a supportive friend to Hitoe and a voice of reason to Hanna. We haven’t seen Yuzuki and Hanna interact before this point, but the conversation between them continues to drive the message that these characters are at their strongest when they’re supporting each other.

On that note, Akira is also back, and she’s as pleasant as ever. Whereas the other characters are defined by their interactions, Akira is defined by her isolation. Hanna, Hitoe, and Kiyoi are all shown having conversations with their familiar LRIGs, but Akira isn’t even afforded that luxury, now being paired with Milulun. Her isolation is no one’s fault but her own, and that’s tragic, but it’s also not something that she’s willing to accept.

So instead, she blames Kiyoi. It’s not her own fault she’s in this position, she reasons, so someone else must be to blame. She was strong, so it must have been her LRIG who has weak. If only she had had a LRIG stronger than Piriluk, then everything would have been fine. With these thoughts, she challenges Kiyoi to a battle.

This is the first real battle of the season though, so the stakes are still fairly low. Akira is shown be fairly skilled, but Kiyoi is able to win by changing her coin skill with the new key system. In addition, under the new rules, Akira’s LRIG is forfeit, further driving her into isolation.

Last week I questioned whether Suzuko understood the hypocrisy of treating Chinatsu as a damsel in distress, but with how it’s handled in this episode, I also have to wonder if the writers are equally in the dark. When Chinatsu becomes a Selector, Suzuko and the others respond with panic, fearing that she’ll endanger herself with battling, and that even if she did manage to recover her memories, she wouldn’t be able to handle them. Being concerned is one thing, but considering that Suzuko is using trying to win back Chinatsu’s memories as a justification for her own participation in the Selector games, she’s in no position to tell Chinatsu that she can’t get involved.

Similarly, Yuzuki and Hitoe are still keeping Ruuko out of the loop, though that will likely cease to be the case next episode. The mysterious voices that Tama hears in this episode will likely play a role in her getting involved, and if that wasn’t enough, there’s also the issue that Yuzuki has been defeated and captured by Layla. I had expected the battle between Yuzuki and Layla to be given more attention, but instead we only see the beginning and the aftermath. It was cool to see Yuzuki and Hanayo fighting side by side, but in the end, they weren’t able to avenge Hitoe’s loss, and it’ll instead fall to Ruuko to save her friends and defeat Layla.

It’s an important detail that Layla is still a participant, despite the fact that she now has five golden coins, since this supports Hanna’s observations about the purpose of the new Selector games. Hanna points out that since there’s a small number of participants and people are more easily eliminated due to losing their LRIGs, the structure more closely resembles a battle royale, and that likely only one Selector will be left standing at the end. This is somewhat at odds with the fact that new Selectors continue to be chosen, but I suppose that choice was necessary to have 12 episodes of content while still having reveals to keep the audience engaged.

For all the gravitas that they were afforded at the end of episode 9, the battles between Ruuko and Suzuko and Carnival and Layla don’t do much to drive the plot forward. That said, while the former is predictably interrupted before it reaches a conclusion, the latter does some much needed character work in developing our antagonists. The battle ends in Layla’s victory, but only because Carnival feels so unthreatened that she refuses to actually play. Since LRIGs are reflections of the wishes of their creators, Layla is literally nothing if not her desire to have her strength affirmed, making this the cruelest thing Carnival could have done.

Additionally, Carnival’s recurring talent for preying on and exploiting the insecurities of those around her serve to reinforce the idea that she herself is a reflection of Satomi Kou, which is ironically enough her own greatest insecurity. She wants her choices to be her own, and hates the idea that her actions are just the result of other people’s influence. This could be a reason why she’s kept a chessboard by her side all season – so that she can convince herself that she’s in control. Carnival does manage to escape from Kou’s shadow by defeating Suzuko, but her victory is short-lived. As Kiyoi points out, she’s still just a pawn of Eternal.

I had a lot of problems with this episode, but I’ll start out by being positive and talking about the things I liked. Hanna may be long gone from the battling scene, but her role in the story is far from done. In her search for information, she’s been keeping an eye on the card shop where Yuzuki had worked, and it finally pays off when she encounters Hitoe. The two of them quickly identify each other as valuable assets and share what they know, and it was one of the most reasonable exchanges we’ve seen all season. I’ve expressed worry in the past that these characters were being sidelined, so it’s nice to see them contributing to the story. The Selector and Lostorage casts have basically been kept separate all season, and so it’s about time that they finally crossed paths.

Unfortunately, that leads right in to the main issue with this episode, which is the lead-up to the encounter between Ruuko and Suzuko. Much of the episode is spent with the former tailing the latter, and it ends with the beginning of a battle between the two. But since they hadn’t even met up until this point, this confrontation falls flat. If they had had any interactions before this, it could have laid the groundwork for this conflict, and provided actual motivations for them to want to battle against each other. If it had been set up, it could have made for a compelling match, but instead all we’re going to get is a battle where both sides are driven purely by failure of communication.

Through what has happened to Hitoe and Yuzuki, this season has thoroughly established that when a situation gets too dangerous, it’s fine to be willing to rely on your friends, and that being determined to handle things on your own usually ends in disaster. However, Kiyoi seems to have missed that message, so that when she is coerced into a rematch with Akira, she decides to go by herself. She created a team with Hanna and Suzuko to back each other up in situations like this, so why wouldn’t she be willing to rely on them? Ruuko even calls her as she’s on her way to the match, so she really has no excuse. This cast is insistent on repeating this same mistake over and over again, and at this point, it’s frustrating to watch.

But even more frustrating is the way in which this confrontation is resolved. By holding Amika hostage, Akira forces Kiyoi to not fight back and allow herself to be defeated in a battle, which Kiyoi thinks that she deserves for putting Amika in harm’s way in the first place. Kiyoi has repeatedly demonstrated a dangerous tendency towards self-flagellating behavior, and this would have been the perfect opportunity for her to be forced to confront it and realize that even if her sacrifices don’t bother her, they still worry the people who care about her. However, no such introspection occurs. Instead, Amika manages to escape at the right time, allowing Kiyoi to fight back and win without exploring her issues. Rather than being a product of character growth, this victory was a matter of convenience, and it’s less compelling as a result.

Ever since I saw Remember featured in the opening, I’ve been looking forward to her appearance in the story, but now that she’s actually shown up, I’m not sure how to feel about it. She’s a character from the Peeping Analyze manga, though if you haven’t read it, the beginning of this episode goes over its events from her perspective. However, it also glosses over a few key details and ends up framing her very differently. In the manga, she had been sadistic and evil, but by omitting the part where she kills Kiyoi’s friend, her character here seems more unstable and pitiful. I’m all for revising characters to be less cartoonishly villainous, but the rest of the episode leans back on the earlier characterization, so I’m not sure why that scene wasn’t included, unless the plan is for Kiyoi to bring it up during their confrontation in the next episode. However she ends up being handled, she and Akira make a fun pair, and I’m looking forward to seeing more of their interactions going forward.

Along with Akira, this episode also features Ruuko’s return to the action. She battles and defeats Layla, albeit with Layla not playing at full power in order to test out Ruuko’s abilities. By now, the narrative has narrowed down its focus to three clear pairs of heroes and villains – Kiyoi and Akira, Suzuko and Carnival, and Ruuko and Layla – and everyone outside of that has kind of ceased to matter. Last week Layla had said that she wanted Hitoe to get stronger and challenge her again, but now that Ruuko has stepped in, that’s probably not going to happen. In comparison, Hanna at least accomplishes a bit of exposition, but it’s likely that she’s also done being a participant.

This week opened with the promised battle between Kiyoi and Carnival, and while it was cut off as expected, the way in which it was cut off actually managed to be a surprise. Typically, battles have ended prematurely due to the intervention of an outside party, but here Carnival forcibly ends the battle seemingly on her own. This is only one of the ways that Carnival continues to be an enigma this week; she also demonstrates that the limitations of the key system don’t apply to her. There’s also the detail that she can sense new Selectors innately, in contrast to Kou, who was only aware due to his information network. Carnival is thoroughly shrouded in mystery, to the point that even her own partner Layla can’t trust her, and I can only hope that in the remaining weeks, her motivations and uniqueness are properly explored.

Following that, after having spent last week running around at random, the protagonists are finally ready to start behaving reasonably and talk with each other. Suzuko and Chinatsu lay bare their concerns for each other’s safety, and this culminates in a good natured rematch between the two. Though Suzuko ultimately wins, Chinatsu still wants to support her friend, and she is welcomed into the team with open arms. On the Incited side, Ruuko is upfront with her frustration towards Hitoe and Yuzuki for not telling her about the games, but in the end it’s not really her decision to make, and instead the focus is on Tama. Tama shoulders the highest risk from getting involved since she was previously a LRIG (and Carnival also seems to have plans for her), but her bond with her friends is more important to her than anything else, and so she and Ruuko finally enter the fray.

Last week ended with the reveal that Riru has once again returned to be Suzuko’s LRIG, and this episode picks up right where we left off with that encounter. The two initially anguish over the return of the Selector games, but once the possibility of retrieving Chinatsu’s memories is introduced, they resolve to participate. This seems like a decision that Chinatsu should have been a part of; she’s being treated as a damsel in distress rather than as a person, and is unlikely to appreciate that once she becomes aware. This failure to consider the perspectives of others was the source of Chinatsu’s problems in Incited, and hopefully she’ll be able to stop Suzuko from repeating her mistakes.

Last week I commented that Yuzuki was playing an interesting role, since she herself wasn’t a Selector, but knew what was going on so that she could support her friends who were involved. In this episode, it turns out that she is a Selector now. This show doesn’t seem to know how to handle characters who can’t be directly involved with the battles, and that’s worrying considering the size of the cast. Between the Selector and Lostorage series, there are a lot of characters, and if they’re all going to be battling, it’s going to be difficult to balance screen presence such that everyone will get a satisfying narrative arc.

Speaking of not getting satisfying narrative arcs, Hitoe battles this episode. Though she passionately declares that she’s grown and has things that she wants to protect, the franchise has always treated her as disposable, and the outcome of her battle with Layla was clear from the beginning. The problem with this outcome is that it’s exactly what we were expecting, and thus its impact is limited. Layla doesn’t seem more threatening than before – she has only met our expectations. The battle between Hanna and Carnival is similarly predictable; Hanna may have established herself as a competent player, but it’s too early in the season for the primary antagonist to lose.