Alto’s true identity as Shirogane has been revealed, to Ichigo anyway, so it’s backstory time.
They went into a bit more detail with Shirogane’s backstory in the reboot than they did in the original anime or the manga, but not too much. Just peppered in a few more details here and there. They’re welcome details, but nothing really to add substance to much. They did, thankfully, not include the dog from the manga so I really appreciated that.
One thing that confused me about the way they portrayed his backstory in the remake was that the monsters/Chimera Animas (?) that attacked…..caused the fire….and then randomly died in the fire? Did I miss something? Is that what happened in the manga? I forget. It’s just a bit confusing.
Anyway, the rest of the episode is what I like to call ‘light filler’. As in, it can easily be construed as filler, but there’s enough that happens for it to not really be officially filler.
Mint and her brother have created new massive robots that are vacuums for the ocean called UMISOUJI. They suck up trash in massive amounts, and they’ll be deployed all over the oceans of the world to clean up the water, which is a great idea in concept….that I think is horribly flawed because any vacuum that is big enough to suck up trash would certainly also suck up ocean life too, right? Am I wrong? These robots are like the size of houses. Would that not kill untold amounts of fish and other sea creatures?
Pie targets the robots, saying that humans are foolish for ventures such as these because, despite the robots cleaning up trash, eventually the robots themselves will become trash and become a bigger problem. Well…I mean, not really. If the robots produce less trash than they clean up in their lifetime then it’s not creating a bigger problem. Also, that’s assuming they don’t recycle the parts of the robots when they cease to function.
Anyway, Pie uses some algae creatures to force the robots to spew out some nasty red algae that will destroy life and even inorganic matter in the oceans and eventually make their way up the shores. He also creates a Chimera Jellyfish to keep the Mews occupied.
Hehe…..OccuPIEd….Hehe. That was funny in my head, I promise.
Lettuce gets another time to shine, which is welcome. It’s her turn to use the Mew Aqua Rod, and the Mew Aqua is in a place only she can access since it requires strong swimming abilities. She needs to swim into the strong vortex of pressure and currents created by the robot to get to it. She vehemently asserts that she can do this job, even against Shirogane’s insistence that it’s too dangerous. (They are keeping some ShiroganexLettuce shipping hopes alive in this episode. I’m glad they didn’t just ignore that after he turned her down. Even though this is kinda awkwardly placed given the opening where there’s a bunch of ShiroganexIchigo ship tease.)
She gets her green Mew Aqua Rod, stops the robots and the jellyfish and cleans the ocean of the algae.
Ichigo, meanwhile, is sidelined by the Blue Knight….somehow. He tells her to stay back during the fight, and she just stops doing anything. *shrug*
Some background on that – they still haven’t revealed it yet, but the Blue Knight is Aoyama, and they show in this episode that he’s started having nightmares about Ichigo crying. So it’s possible his desires to protect her are becoming so strong that he’s started subconsciously wanting to keep her out of the fighting entirely instead of just protecting her during fights.
Still, though, Ichigo could have continued fighting. She just chose to listen to the Blue Knight’s direction.
This is more than just me nitpicking a possibly sexist moment – Ichigo feels bad about not doing anything in the battle….even though, ya know, seven times out of ten she gets the most to do in battles.
Her inability to just not listen to the pointy eared swordsman and continue doing her attack anyway made her realize that everyone else has goals and dreams now – Shirogane is dedicated to the Mew Project, Mint is doing things with her brother and her family’s company, Zakuro has a great career in singing and production, Pudding wants to be an acrobat, and Lettuce has really come into her own and become much stronger. Ichigo, however, is realizing she also needs a change in her life as she doesn’t have goals or aspirations like the others.
With the next episode preview, we can conclude that her goal will be to tell Aoyama the truth about being a Mew Mew so she can have an honest relationship with him at last.
Also, for some reason, they put the credits over the ending scene and didn’t have an ending theme song today, like this was a really important episode when it, honestly, wasn’t. It is the mid-season mark, so maybe there was a break after this so they did that, I dunno.
Overall, pretty enjoyable episode with some nice moments. Good lead-in to Ichigo’s eventual reveal to Aoyama. Good portrayal of Shirogane’s backstory. Pretty great Lettuce moments. Just a bit fillery is all.
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