Soul Eater 69: Smokes and Mirrors

This episode had so many scene changes that I’m tempted to just break this post into scenes.  As I’m still trying to make sense of the chaos, this will mostly be a recap of what happened (or what I understood happened).

Scene One: Medusa and Justin

Half-guillotine half-clown shaped Justin Law decapitates Medusa, but she immediately responds with a vector arrow attack: in other words, Justin has been messing with Medusa’s head but the witch has seen through the psionic attack.  She proudly tells Justin that she’s learned how to cope with this since her debacle before Big Sis (=Arachne) in Baba Yaga.

medusa dies, sort of, again

Then Medusa introduces a mini-Black Clown and tries to use it to beat Justin.  Quite frankly, all of these little gadgets of Medusa’s are starting to bore me, if anything because they seem to be pretty darn worthless.  Oh well…

As I predicted, Justin beats off the repeated attacks and then….

Enter Tezcatlipoca

Actually, at this point Justin sees a second Justin, while Medusa sees a second Medusa.  Medusa is clueless, but Justin realizes this is Tezcatlipoca, which is not surprising as they have a history together as two of Shinigami’s Death Scythes.

Tezcatlipoca is then a doppelganger, but oh, here’s a scene change.

Scene Two: Mizunes, Eruka, Black Star, Tsubaki and Chrona

Yes, this is a battle royale, and Eruka, true to the pun in her rerarranged name (Kaeru = “frog” and “go home”), tells her people to scram, as their objective is not to defeat Black Star but simply to get Chrona out of that mess.

So Eruka throws loads of froggy smoke bombs and then promptly forgets to run away with the others.  The incensed Black Star sees her, she turns into a frog [I think turning into your animal form is the witch equivalent of peeing your pants] and is promptly captured by Star.

Eruka Getto!

Those who read my last post will note my guess that Eruka would gravitate toward Shibusen…and isn’t capture the classic Ookubo way for this to happen (eg Chrona)?  I might be right on this one.  We’ll see.

Scene Three: Medusa, Justin, Tezcatlipoca

Tezcatlipoca announces himself as the Mirror that Reflects All, which translates into Justin seeing memories of his service to Shinigami, while Medusa sees a defenseless, harmless Chrona.  That is, Tezcatlipoca is a tour guide and he’s taking you on a guilt trip.

The Death Scythe also happens to be insane.  He pleads, incoherently I should add, for Justin to turn back to Shinigami etc.  In the end Justin is so baffled, disgusted or simply confused that he decides to move out (or into one of Noah’s pages). When Tezcatlipoca’s technician (Enrique) shows up the Death Scythe announces that’s he got a hold of Justin on his mirror and now they can go and pursue him.  So this mirror shtick is useful in more ways than one.

Excellent side episode for Season 2 of the anime.

Tezcatlipoca = mirror = doppelganger is a set of associations from the original Aztec god (his name means “smoking mirror”), so once more Ookubo has been dipping in the UNESCO bowl.  Here’s an interesting and illuminating article: “Therapy and the face in the mirror”.  By the way, Tezcatlipoca is one of the dark gods of the Aztec pantheon, and this is consistent with Ookubo’s preference for darker, sometimes pure evil, entities Remember the Grigori??

Scene Four: Chrona and Ragnarok

Chrona lands in a clearing, courtesy of black blood wings, and Ragnarok congratulates her on a successful escape.  And she says “yeah” but all the while she’s just thinking about Maka…

Scene Five: Soul and Maka

Back at Shibusen (!) it seems that for some inexplicable reason Maka and Soul are hanging out and going to school like things are normal pretty much.  I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that Shinigami is keeping them around the school in a defensive role to ward off any sudden attacks…or something.

Soul’s popularity is on the increase and lots of technician students want him for a Death Scythe.  Maka is not too happy about this.

Enter new character

This new character is a little girl with a Shinigami hairpin.  She spies on Soul and Maka and complains that Maka isn’t good enough for Soul.  So let me guess: she’s a relative of Shinigami’s, she’s really prissy but powerful at the same time, she has a crush on Soul etc…  In my world, we call her a Suzu-chan (Marmalade Boy).

brat...

Exit new character

Alas for the new character, Soul explains that if he were to switch to a new partner it’d have to be someone with spice, a sexy thing like…

Enter Blair, Risa and Arisa

Like Blair.  Yes, she’s hawt.  The three hostess ladies (magical cat and two witches) are inside Shibusen grounds, evidently pomising “services” to Shibusen students in exchange for the successful completion of missions.  Of course this is all very suspicious…especially considering Risa and Arisa were working for Medusa not so long ago…

Anyway, I’ll take more Blair (and more Eruka), thank you very much.  This all looks very promising.  Honestly, as confusing as this chapter is, I think it shows that Ookubo has some sort of plan, and this plan includes full deployment of Soul Eater‘s large cast of characters.  How can this not be good news?

Scene Six: Kid and Gopher

This last scene is four and half pages of fun.    First Gopher is punching Kid and telling him to beg for his life.  Kid mocks both the beating and the request, and begins to make fun of Gopher’s favorite grimace.  See, Gopher’s mouth looks like the “he” kana in Japanese:

へ

The problem is, the shape is hardly symmetric, and as soon as this dawns on Death the Kid’s obsessive compulsive consciousness, the real torture begins!

I bet you Gopher picks up on this and begins to use it against Kid!

~ by Haloed Bane on January 11, 2010.