Cast felt naked for a bit, we’ve got some new friends (and enemies) to eventually kill.
So, this episode starts (after a motion comic flashback. On purpose? Probably. Jarring? Still yes.) with Goro having stayed home from school for a while, in that time resolving what he wants to do post-Akitsu. Specifically, he believes that if his friend was willing to lay down his life for this shot on the future, he’d better take it, and thus he’ll fight going forward if that’s the way through. This makes Lall pretty happy. Honoka shows up, though, and introduces the next plot hook: a rumor going around school that sounds an awful lot like something a candidate would say or do.
This rumor is of the “Little Angel”, a mysterious student who, if you tell him your problems, will see those problems magically solved in short order. There are even loads of testimonials from folks who have seen their wish granted. Honoka and Goro split up and begin to search.
This causes Goro to almost immediately run into a little mad scientist girl with the green color scheme. He checks his phone to confirm she’s not a candidate, but I’m frankly unconvinced despite that. In any case she’s a complete loon who believes that Goro searching for the Little Angel means that he wants to join her science club, where she’s also looking into the mystery.
Shockingly for how batty and loud she is, she brings her new “assistant” right to the prospective Little Angel, a meek young student who you know is important because of his bright yellow highlights. He’s approached by some sort of tough guy delinquent in a shade of orange just a hair darker than Akitsu’s, who was the character we saw in the opening flashback dealing with bullying of his own years ago. Ono briefly appears before them, but decides to not unload with powers on a possible normal and scurries off. He gives Honoka a call and shares what he knows, only for Orange and Yellow to walk right by her.
She pursues the two, and uses her phone to confirm that Orange is holding on to the power Control Freak. Her ambush is fairly effective and it even seems like she stabs him good, but a later cut shows her laid out in the hallway, seemingly catatonic, when Goro can’t get a hold of her.
Science Girl eventually lets Goro go for the day, and he returns home to do some more digging into the Little Angel rumors, discovering that everyone who had their wishes granted seemed to drop off the radar immediately after. As he learns this, he gets a call from Science Girl, begging for help and ultimately saying she’ll be killed if he doesn’t come, which breaks through the natural layer of annoyance with her nonsense. At the same time, the accounts Goro was watching go live again and send him a message to come to the school. There, we see Yellow standing at a pulpit, glowing angel wings behind him and masked students all around.
If you can actually get into the story Kamierabi is delivering, it’s still fairly standard death game fare, again like Mirai Nikki or Fate Stay/Night… but it’s executing well. Honoka is fun (and I give it 98% odds that she’s both alive and retrievable from whatever mental whammy has been done to her), Goro is learning his lessons and finding resolve, and the side characters while insane and loud are at least largely entertaining to watch. This new arc even promises to give us the ever-frustrating challenge of relative “innocents” being in the crossfire, in the form of the mind-controlled students. Usually, this provides a pretty good movement for a decently moral hero with a creative power like Goro and his Fool’s Sutra. If I still thought this was twelve episodes I might be worried about the pace, but again there’s intel that it’s likely to be 24, so we’ve got time to take our time with this mind controller and resolving the relationship if any between Gas Mask and Science Girl, and dealing with the promised second and third Akitsus, and so on without needing to get things done in a single episode.
As such, the current outlook is one of cruise control for cool, nothing wild or innovative but enough entertaining. But, Yoko Taro and to a lesser extent Jin have a violent and abiding hatred for molds, so time will tell if they go ahead and break this one.