Red Data Girl 11 – Masumi, You Continue to Confuse Me…
I think he is a representative character of how confusion inducing this show is.
Summary:
Suspecting that Takayanagi placed a curse before the war games, Mayura, Manatsu, Miyuki and Izumiko search the school grounds at night.
Miyuki remembers the Himegami commenting that something inhuman is around.Miyuki finds a cursed test tube from the science club.
Mayura and Manatsu call Masumi for help.
The next day, Miyuki returns Izumiko’s cellphone from episode two so they can keep in touch even if they’re assigned to different areas.
Suddenly, the science club releases a suspicious balloon.
Izumiko manages to call Miyuki to tell him that the balloon is indeed suspicious.
It’s also a big deal to her that she can actually use a cellphone now, an achievement Miyuki fails to recognize.
And so the war games finally begin.
Takayanagi and his posse appear before Izumiko. He explains that he has a mindset towards globalization which is why he’s opening himself to foreigners.
Miyuki hears their conversation and rushes to Izumiko.
Izumiko finally softens up to Takayanagi and they agree to meet again later
Izumiko gets the feeling that she’s forgetting something.
Izumiko meets Takayanagi’s other friend who takes her to see him.
Izumiko starts seeing ghosts among the students.
Miyuki tells Mayura about Takayanagi making advances on Izumiko.
Mayura changes the subject and asks Miyuki if he can pretend to be her fiance to appease a family member of hers who came all the way from the province to see her.
Their discussion gets interrupted when one student asks for Mayura’s help for the war games.
Izumiko enjoys some tea and crumpets with Takayanagi and co.
Izumiko realizes that Takayanagi has been manipulating her when she suddenly remembers Miyuki.
Izumiko’s anger turns into distress when she realizes how she can’t be normal with her powers.
The ground shakes in Izumiko’s wrath as Miyuki rejects Mayura’s proposal.
Thoughts:
A little bit of a momentum breaker, this episode. It wasn’t as fluid and engaging as the previous ones and became quite confusing sometimes. Well, I pretty much figured out that Takayanagi was playing tricks on Izumiko from the start. What I didn’t get was how he did it. That grey balloon was never mentioned again. Neither was the cursed test tube. So what did he do? Use his natural charm and charisma to win Izumiko’s affection? The thing is, a lot of these were never explained. The scene with Takayanagi gets cut off by Miyuki running around and when the figurative camera goes back to them, suddenly the mood of the conversation changes with no going back to show how it got to that point. Then there’s Mayura’s case with the relative visiting her. All I saw at first was some random guy waving at her. How was I supposed to know what that meant or how it mattered in the story? For all I know, that was just some random fan of hers. I had to sit it out until the show finally explains the thing a significant amount of time after it happened. This is just me, but I think those scenes should have followed each other. You know, keep the viewer from being confused and irritated as much as possible? I’d get it if this was some sort of mystery show where the writing really should get people scratching their heads looking for an answer but that’s not the case with RDG. All these confusing things are the effects of poor storytelling, really. Well, if there’s one good thing this episode did, it was show just how much Izumiko has grown. The cellphone brings us back to a time where Izumiko was wearing dorky glasses, depending on others to use devises for her and clinging on to whoever she could cling on to. Look at her now, going out on her own, trying to deal with her own problems. I’d say this would be really impressive character development if it weren’t for the fact that Izumiko still has too many faults. Like I said, these little panic attacks just revert her image back to the weak character she was from the start. I always said that Izumiko’s character would come full circle if she could over come these moments and she almost did with chanting the protective spell Miyuki taught her, but then she went into a rage and then had another panic attack…Oh well…