I Don't Even Know

ngl, I thought Chizuru's head was a small owl they were petting. What a year this day has been.

In my defense, there's already an entire zebra here.

They are all back as their high school selves, but wearing more traditional clothing? Mitsuki's mind...

Mitsuki uses music to process things more than the average person and we hadn't been given a ton of music crumbs during this stretch of angst. Now she's straight up mentally defragging to a song and going all the way back to where it all began. Give or take a zebra.

She couldn't reach Aya on her own (ladder? flying?), but the zebra threw an idea at her head and gave her a way to cross the void.

Aya is the one that is lured over to her via the guitar hero bridge and she replaces the guitar Mitsuki had been holding in her arms.

Aw, they had fallen asleep listening to song from the old iPod that Mitsuki dug up for the boys earlier. So this might be a really old comfort song for her. I mean, it's from 1995, but since it's on the old school iPod it's probably from middle school.

Around the 3:53 mark the music is notably jamming without lyrics. The lyrics are kinda depressing, but the nice thing about songs are sometimes it's about the feeling and wash of noise vs the actual lyrics. When you go back and listen to something that was meaningful in your youth and are transported back to those feelings you had back when you didn't have a relationship like that to reflect upon and it's just pure vibes.

(I used to sing along in the car to Third Eye Blind's Semi-Charmed Life in front of my parents without a thought in my head for example.)

🎶HUM - Stars 🎸

She thinks she missed the train to Mars She's out back counting stars She thinks she missed the train to Mars She's out back counting stars

She's not at work, she's not at school She's not in bed, I think I finally broke her I bring her home everything I want Nothing that she needs

I thought she'd be there holding daisies She always waits for me She thinks she missed the train to Mars She's out back counting stars

I found her out back sitting naked Looking up and looking dead A crumpled yellow piece of paper Seven, nines and tens

I thought she'd be there holding daisies She always waits for me She thinks she missed the train to Mars She's out back counting stars

Aki is empty brained when asked to have non-Bug Rangers related thoughts.

So Riku is his school friend who acts a bit more serious for his age. Someone who knows him well enough to bail him out of this girl situation.

Interesting dynamic. Riku seems at least on the surface accepting of someone a bit more eccentric than himself. Aki still likes childish things, but Riku isn't doing that lite social bullying even friends tend to do at that age.

Oh man. The first betrayal is the worst.

Riku, the arbiter of all things cool, appeared to accept Aki's bug show love but does not accept his sister's love.

He could have used his power to tip the scale the other way and understood that these people are important to Aki and it's not cool to laugh about them, but everyone fell in line behind him the wrong way.