Guess I gave Ruler a bit too much credit than she deserved. I still think in her own way she did care about her team but she had a much bigger ego than expected when you see her real self. Ruler has the problematic nature of overestimating her own worth and in doing so pushes away others under the guise that they are not at her level. Problem is that when you push away everyone you have no one who can point out your own faults and thus never improve as a human being. Ruler was a big shot at school but when she entered the working world she started bottom of the rung and was doing pointless odd jobs. Seeing as she had the ego the size of a small continent this naturally didn’t sit well with her and she used her Magical girl identity to flatter her ego. It’s funny when you think about it, she couldn’t rule the world of adults so instead she chose to rule over children. Truly she was petty creature which doesn’t deserve much sympathy as she killed off this episode.
Much like my opinion of 91 Day’s I am not fond of putting someone in the spotlight in the exact episode they are killed off or involved with a twist. To the viewer it then becomes obvious that whoever gets backstory is going to die and thus ruins the surprise of the episode. I knew that with Rulers attitude that it was really only a matter of time before she was killed off and the coup d’etat was really inevitable. However I didn’t expect it to happen this quickly and the way she was killed was rather unexpected. I don’t mean that I didn’t know Swim Swim would betray her as I pretty much pegged that by the last episode. I even was right on the money about Nemurin being the one to inspire the revolt in the second episode. But Swim Swim, despite the very silly name, could be turning out to be a very interesting villain. Despite her magical girl appearance, Swim Swim is very young and is quite intelligent as seen by how she purposefully distributed the stolen candies from Snow White in a manner that would leave Ruler in last place.
But what makes this interesting is that she didn’t kill Ruler because of hate, or because she saw her as a poor leader. In fact she seems to hold great respect for her even after ending her life. Basically it seems that she was following Rulers teachings in that all the members of the team should strive to become her. However in Swim Swims mind this meant that she can’t become Ruler if Ruler is still around. Thus logically Ruler must be eliminated. So in Swim Swim’s mind she sees this as carrying Rulers torch and quite honestly this makes Swim Swim rather scary. She’s young, smart, and can kill without remorse but is also highly impressionable. She is working with an entirely different ruleset and morality. She spent a large amount of time with the worst role model and now could start a bloodbath while seeing nothing wrong with it. I originally pinned Calamity Mary down as the villain for this arc but right now it could be possible Swim Swim is the true villain.
As for other matters the writing continues to not really be on the level of quality it needs to be on. Souta really should have known better to run off after the twin angels when he knew they worked in a team. I also find his power to be a little too on the nose. An expanding sword? Really? We all know exactly what that symbolises and quite frankly the show does as well. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he holds the sword directly in front of his crotch. The action scenes lack real excitement though it could be just this fight that wasn’t particularly exhilarating. Souta has pretty much confirmed that he will be acting as Koyuki’s protector in this fight which makes me fairly certain that he’s going to die. We have another Magical girl targeting Snow White and it looks like everyone is dividing into factions as Top Speed and ninja magical girl meet up with the nun magical girl. This series still does have the potential to deliver on it’s premise and we have enough of a build up to really get started. I hope it can at least live up to the magical girl battle royale it is promising as we have far too many Dark Mahou Shoujo failures.