Welcome all, to another episode of Migi & Dali! This week the twins return to town, gather a team, and begin their plan to take down the Ichijo family. Of course things don’t go smoothly, but when do they ever? So without further ado, lets dive in!
Starting off, lets pick up with what’s happened in town while the twins were away. Turns out, Reiko wasn’t just sitting on her ass content with driving them out of town. No, she instead frames them for the murder of Micchan the maid, turning the entire town against them and ripping away what little support they had. Of course not everyone believes this, I doubt the Sonoyamas do for instance. But it’s enough to make life even more difficult for them. So the question then becomes, who else can they turn too? Because they obviously can’t do this alone, they’ve tried for weeks and failed. Well the answer wasn’t all that surprisingly, but did feel earned: Akiyama, the weird bird boy. The one true friend Migi made here, two outcasts against the world. Well four once you count Dali and Maruyama. And with the team assembled? Then it gets weird.
This was expected; Migi & Dali has always been a weird show. But… I was really hoping we wouldn’t see the baby stuff again. Seriously, did we need to go back this far? Dressing Eiji up in a diaper, having a teenager act like an infant? I get that it’s meant to sell how insane Reiko is, to show us how obsessed with the idea of a “perfect family” she is, but this was… I’m not a fan of this kind of weirdness, ok? I find it very uncomfortable and not terribly funny, like a lot of Migi & Dali’s other antics are. Silly plots about killing people with spicy drinks? Slithering out of holes like a snake? The way both twins had to move and interact with things to not give away that there were 2 of them? All great kinds of “weird”. But the baby stuff? No thanks.
Getting back to the actual plot, the whole team-building and planning stuff was nice. Maruta doesn’t make a whole lot of sense; he hasn’t gotten enough time for me to care about him, and he’s never shown signs of being anything other than a little shit. I suppose I can buy the idea that he’s desperate for friends and that he acts the way he does because he doesn’t think anyone would be his friend. But it’s a very weak motivation; Migi & Dali didn’t do near enough work to set it up and is simply nowhere near as compelling as Akiyama. Still, he does bring a lot of fancy tools and is playing a big part in the plan, so maybe Migi & Dali knows he needs time and is trying to give him that now. We do have 3 more episodes after all.
Similarly, the twins revealing themselves to their friends also left something to be desired. The blasé nature of it works well enough, and it fits their characters to a T. The way they didn’t say a word about it until Maruta and Akiyama noticed, almost like they were seeing double, was kind of funny. Plus, the visual of Dali being in a closest, needing Migi’s help to come out of his shell and finally open up to someone else, was really good. I just wish it had a bit more… gravitas? Like the revelation was treated with a tad more weight than it was. I’m sure we will get that with the Sonoyamas, and I’m really looking forward to that. But as far as first reveals go? I’d say it’s just *barely* acceptable.
Finally, we have the plan itself: kidnap Eiji, threaten Reiko into admitting everything, and reveal the truth to the town. For kids, it makes sense. It’s a very naïve plan. But as a way to resolve the series? Well, I’m really hoping *Migi & Dali* has something up its sleeve for the remaining 3 episodes, because this is very simplistic. Why would the cops ever believe them—kidnappers and suspected murderers—over an upstanding citizen like Reiko, who just had her child kidnapped? No, it would never work as a proper climax. Of course, *Migi & Dali* won’t let it stay simple; Reiko is a clever villain. And we do get Metry’s story out of it as well, so maybe it’s just an easy way to get Reiko to exposit at us until the *real* climactic resolution. Only time will tell on that one, but I have hope.
So yeah, all in all, it was a nice enough episode. There are some cracks in the writing here and there, from naïve plans to weird baby shit, but nothing too bad that’s going to ruin the show for me. I’m still very excited to have a seasonal that will actually *finish*, rather than be a cliffhanger for future arcs, and *Migi & Dali* would have to fuck up in a big way to ruin that for me. Possible with 3 episodes left, sure. But unlikely with how it’s been written until now. Just give us a good Metry backstory, one last twist like Eiji and Karen being their siblings via Metry as well or something, a happy ending to top it all off, and I’ll be happy.
