Jewel Pet 28-29: Evolution

The second half of Jewel Pet has started on the right paw!  The central rivalry of Pets vs Diana is heating up, and the requisite love triangle [this is shohjo after all] is starting to get nice and sharp edges!!

Oniisan waits and bides his time...

Episode 28 worked mostly on the love angle.  Rinko has a dream of a shining prince on a white horse coming to rescue her.  When the prince approaches her she realizes it’s Tatewaki and wakes up.  She’s flabbergasted and upset.  Now, I’m not much of a Freudian but I figure the Austrian would say that this is wish-fulfillment: Rinko wants to be with the older Tatewaki.  Anyway, the rest of the episode is spent on her getting along much better with her neighbor Nanase.

Prince?!

The most remarkable thing about this episode, from a ethnological standpoint at least, was the first ever depiction in the show of 3 (!) Pets casting spells at the same time and on the same individual.  The situation is simple: a girl at the school likes Nanase but can’t muster enough courage to confess to him.  Ruby [obviously oblivious to Rinko’s budding feelings toward Nanase because Rinko is a silly girl who won’t even confide in her Jewel Pet] decides to use her Courage magic on the girl.  Anyway, things don’t go as expected and Sapphy and Garnet decide to pitch in and all 3 pets cast at the same time [i.e. Courage + Friendship + Love].

OHMIGEWDNESS!!!

The resulting explosion blows up…well, nothing much, but there’s a heck of a lot of smoke.  When the smoke has cleared everyone loves Nanase, and they’re not afraid to tell him!!

oops

Just in case you were expecting this Nanase-Rinko connection to be a one-episode thing, it wasn’t.  Episode 29 already has Rinko and Nanase being quite friendly with each other. But the main focus of the episode is on Diana and her quest to revive her oniisan who’s trapped  (in jewel form) inside an iceberg prison of sorts.

In a comment on another post yesterday, I talked about how as a kid I enjoyed shows were the enemies were easily beatable.  It’s possible Ashura’s antics in Mazinger might have conditioned me on this, or possibly Bugs Bunny’s mad skillz in dealing with opponents.  Developments in the last few episodes, culminating in this 29th, lead me to believe Jewel Pet is following this very paradigm.

powered-up pawprint, as can be seen by the mauvish tone..

This latest episode shows us Diana boasting that her magical powers have increased of late.  We see how true this is.  So far things have worked like this: a) Diana puts her magical pawprint on the nape of an unsuspecting victim; b) said victim’s life becomes a total mess [e.g. if he’s a chef, his cooking will go to ****]; c) Jewel Pets figure out what’s going on when they find a Pet in jewel form on or near the victim; d) Rinko and Ruby use their jewel book to cast a Jewel Charm spell on the jewel, which releases the new pet; e) the new Jewel Pet casts a spell and lifts Diana’s paw print.  Voilà, it’s done.

But now, after Diana has laid her paw on someone, the Jewel Charm does absolutely nothing to release the pet from the jewel!!  If point (d) fails, then (e) is impossible and Diana wins.  At this point in the episode I thought to myself: “Well, I bet it’ll take 2-4 episodes for the Jewellers to figure out this mess of a situation.  I was thinking the paradigm: villain powers up → villain is unbeatable for a little while → heroes power up and beat the villain → villain powers up again (or a new, stronger villain arises) etc etc.

The awesome power of the Jewel Stick may not be properly captured in a screenshot.

Boy was I wrong.  Right after Rinko and Ruby realize that their Jewel Charm has failed, Minami comes up with a suggestion: why not use the Jewel Stick?  Now, the Jewel Stick, if you’ve been following the show, first showed up in episode 25.  After a hard struggle, Rinko managed to gain control of this superweapon.  That was 3 episodes ago, and sure enough when Rinko and Ruby cast their spell with stick in hand (technical term: Jewel Charm Evolution) the pet is released and Diana vanquished.  Whoa!  So here the heroes powered up 3 episodes before the villain!!  Pre-emption to the max…

Random shot of Ruby and Garnet

Anyway, there are a couple of potential monkey wrenches on Ruby’s path to Bugs Bunnyhood.  First off, Diana is not upset at all at this upset.  As she flies away, she tells herself (and us) that in fact everytime she uses magic she gets stronger, so that eventually she will be strong enough to beat the Pets.  Then again, the Pets themselves seem to be getting slightly stronger with time so….

The real doozey here is oniisan.  At the start of the episode Diana, who was saved somehow by her oniisan and whisked away to his icy prison a few episodes back, tries to use her magic to release him.  She fails, or she thinks she does…  As she flies away, vowing to try again when she’s stronger, we see a little magical glint on the ice.  Did she succeed after all?  Is it a reaction from oniisan?  I don’t know, but we can be sure he’ll turn out to be an mean, evil kitty!

Rinko's neighborhood at sunset reminds one of Belgian Surrealism (Magritte, Degouve de Nuncques)

~ by Haloed Bane on October 29, 2009.