Sea Slugs! Anime Blog

We knew that Morimoto was a bit eccentric and that there was something a bit amiss about her, but we find in episode 11 that she’s a shadow pulling addict, so much that she gets groups of students together into a secret club to satisfy her addiction. Somehow, all her friends manage to hear about this exclusive club (unknowing that Morimoto is the “leader” of it all, though they could have deduced it since the leader was always referred to as “Mori”), which sets Megumi on a crusade to break up this club as she drags Shin and Takuro as working pawns in her crusade. For whatever reason, they equip themselves with mops and brooms, and Megumi breaks into the band room where all the pulling is going down, but she was OMGWTF seeing that Morimoto is the mastermind it all. Just like a drug addiction, Morimoto has a difficult time breaking out of the shadow pulling habit, but Shin and company wouldn’t let her fail, even going as far as sleeping in her house to make sure she doesn’t make any late night shadow pulling runs.

Episode 12 reveals the brains behind the Marebite group. Interestingly enough, this man, formally known as Komatsubara but now know as Kujou Mareya, performed the brain surgery that saved Jun’s life, and you can draw some parallels between him and Professor X of the X-men. Both roll around in an wheelchair, both can use a cerebral device to transport themselves around without physically having to move anywhere, and both want to bring those of their own kind together. The similarities end there, as Komatsubara has a lot more hair than Professor X, and he also want to establish assimilate other people’s personas for his own benefit. Ryou runs into one of Komatsubara’s clones, and they both agree that one must fall, so they set up a meeting spot to duel to the death.

Seeing the inevitability of the situation, Ryou goes through episode 13 being nicer than usual to everyone as he knows that he might be killed against Komatsubara. The two meet up in the mountains and their personas basically duel to a draw, but Ryou gets critically injured during the battle. Eiko had managed to follow Ryou for most of the day and up into the mountains, but with Ryou injured, he loses control of his persona, and Eiko gets caught in the crossfire of Ryou’s persona.

Similarly with the TV show Lost during season 2, as much as I want to try to follow the series just to see how it’s going to end, my interest level in Persona is waning a bit since the main plotline has advanced so slowly, and it still hasn’t been clear to me where this series is heading (another battle with Komatsubara or something else?). Although it was pretty funny to see how oblivious Morimoto was to her friends. One moment, she’d be sobbing about not shadow pulling ever again, and then the next second, she’d pick up her phone and agreeing to meet up with someone for another session. Shadow pulling is a hell of a drug…I’ll probably need some to continue with this series.