In a bizarre opening, Mai starts the episode off by having a happy breakfast with Takumi, Mikoto and her parents. In this wacked out world, Takumi is healthy, Tate and Natsuki are both personable athletes, and Shiho is even a blood-related sister of Tate. At this point, we realize that Mai is trapped in a mediocre anime romance series thanks to the power of St. Vrus. These kind of mind games never go smoothly, however, and at the last minute Tate busts in to save Mai from St. Vrus’ iron maiden attack. St. Vrus is not really a unicorn chess piece; in fact he/she/it is actually a creepyass skeletal unicorn with bat wings. In some really touching romance, Ishigami and Sister Yukariko hug and get swallowed up by the skele-bat-corn while the church burns down. Before their fiery romance is completed, however, Ishigami reveals to Mai that Reito is Lord Kokuyou.
Moving on to the next twisted romance, we see that Nao has once more captured Natsuki, but this time to use her as bait to lure out Shizuru. Shizuru’s busy beating up the old ladies of First District, and so Nao passes the time by telling of how some robbers broke into her house and left her mom bedridden. Nao’s all bitter because the robbers got a wonderful yaoi-tastic time in jail, while she got shipped off to an orphanage. This helps explain why she hates Natsuki for getting everything easy, due to Kuga cash. With that explanation finished, there’s nothing left to do but lick the claw and get owned by Shizuru. Nao is surprised at the heavy shoujo ai tension and so is easily defeated. She even goes into a sobbing frenzy when Kiyohime chomps down on the only CHILD that comes close to being as weak as Diana. You know, cause Kiyohime only picks on tough CHILDs. And ferocious old ladies. Before Shizuru can execute Nao, however, Natsuki intervenes and explains that she used to be just like Nao. However, Nao now Natsuki realizes that all this time Shizuru was her MIP who saved her from becoming an angsty flower-hating pirate. Just like that, Natsuki gets her little toy guns back.
With that wrapped up, it’s time for the final and most annoying romantic conundrum. Nagi forces Shiho to realize that she is a HiME and that her subconcious (what Shiho has been seeing in her dreams) has been summoning Yatagarasu, the dark child. Not only that, but Tate’s been playing her for a fool since he still loves Mai. In fact, Tate is trying to work that whole understanding card again by telling Mai “what’s important to you” isn’t the same thing as a responsibility. Shiho gets ready for battle by summoning her element: beautifully bleached white sheets and an ugly flute. Having a HiME mark on her head has interfered with her ability to realize that [Flute + Sheets + Bleach + Crow] << [Fire Shield + Giant Dragon + Large Breasts]. It finally comes out that the crow actually defeated Gennai, and not Mikoto. Mikoto is happy to hear this and defeats the crow, but realizes that she can never go back to Mai after defeating Midori and Mashiro. Naturally this means that Tate vanishes, and Nagi compliments Reito on his plan to split up Mikoto and Mai.
So yeah, three of the more annoying characters got eliminated this time (Tate, Yukariko, Shiho… sorta). The power of character deaths really loses its oomph after so many MIPs have been lost, and when the victims aren’t that likeable… well you just don’t care that much. One can picture Reito and Nagi in front of the jumbotron deciding which characters need to be written off. It’s like Mai Hime meets Death Note… ZOMG Reito connection (phonetically anyway)!!!
2 Comments
Hmmm… I would have subscribed to the death comment in episode 23, but Tate’s end was one of the highlights in the show IMHO. I didn’t like Tate too much after his decent testy initial start, but I think that the final dilemma was nicely presented here
He did have that one moment of slight coolness telling Mai about doing what was best for her and not to treat it as a burden, but overall he was pretty craptastic imho. He’s sooooo much better as slave-kun in the manga!