Lots of talking this episode, which made the overall story rather hard to understand. It’s an Ibara-episode. Souta and the others end spending the night in a village, in which a special flower grows. It’s called the Sennen Tsubomi. They meet up with a girl, who’s responsible for tending this flower. Still, something strange seems to be the deal with it. It doesn’t seem to bloom, and Souta gets a strange feeling out of it.
Shirayuki tries to bless the flower by pouring some holy water on it, though Ibara (who’s been goofing off for the entire episode) falls asleep on top of her, kindof destroying Shirayuki’s motivation to keep trying. Still, later she’s seen looking at the flower in a suspicious way.
I think the village is living in poverty. If I had to guess, Sennen Tsubomi is the only flower in the village. Perhaps it’s the first flower appearing for quite a long while. The girl, responsible for tending it also gives a lot of food to Souta and the others, as a form of hospitality, while the village itself has barely to eat. I think the villagers are seeing it as a symbol of fertility.
Later in the episode, Randagio pours some strange liquid on the flower. A rather funny scene occurs, in which Randagio ordereds the flower to find Erde’s key, after which Akazukin, Shirayuki, Ibara, Souta and Ringo appear to protect the flower. It’s a nice play with coincidence. ^^ In any case, Sennen Tsubomi gets a dark aura and transforms into a monster. It seems that Sennen Tsubomi appeared because of Cendrillion. Because of her grasp on the country, darkness has started to appear. I think it’s first form is in flowers like these. Randagio recognized this, and helped the flower evolve a bit. Afterwards, Ibara stopped the flower, and it sprouted in tons of other, white, blooming flowers. According to Ibara, these don’t seem to have any evil power.
It’s interesting that the evil starts to appear in the form of flowers like these. I’m wondering what the next stage will be: more flowers or animals.
Some random facts:
– Sweet Phones are called phones for a reason: they acually ARE phones. Shirayuki and Akazukin use them to communicate with each other in an attempt to wake up Ibara.
– Cendrillion seems to have another minion.
– The little girl seems to be speaking about a strange flashback, in which monsters attacked the village, surrounded by flames.
Random cute moments:
– Ibara, casting her spell half-asleep, in gibberish.
– Randagio, getting caught in the act by the girl. And correcting her when she calls him a cat.
– Afterwards, when Akazukin and the others appear, Ringo does hold Souta’s arm.
^^
Overall, it was a very nice episode, though I think this is one of those episodes at which I really need to see the subbed version. I bet that I’ll love it even more when I do. ^^;
