Sara Talks Anime

I better get into talking about the actual episode now…which requires me to backtrack a bit to the end of Episode 6.

During the end of Episode 6, Soji meets a guy who seems to take pity on him and even offers to hold Akari’s hairclip…only to burn it. And unlike Soji, this guy’s fire was red, showing this guy to be a ragebaiter through and through.

Yes, I’m still refusing to actively use the term flamebaiter. FIGHT ME.

This actually leads me into a theory I have about why Soji got a power that was previously only associated with ghost accounts, while we have this guy with red flames. Not only are your cyberkinesis powers determined by how you use your device (as on the surface, all ragebaiters are basically the same), it’s also determined by the intent of your actions. The perfect example of this is Soji and the other ragebaiter.

In fiction, blue is commonly used to denote the “heroic” side while red is commonly used to denote the “villainous” side. If we apply that same logic to Soji and the other ragebaiter, Soji got the blue flames (which were previously only seen with Sad Boy K) because while he was a ragebaiter, he was doing it for a good cause. This is where my theory comes in: the other guy ragebaited just for the hell of it, hence why his flame is red.

I don’t know, maybe that’s something that’s supposed to be easily picked up on. But I’m thinking! That’s good, right?

Anyway, Soji and this new ragebaiter guy fight, and during the fight, Soji grabs the same part of the new ragebaiter that’s being used for fire with cyberkinesis. I’ll let the next screenshot speak for itself.

…seriously, what witty commentary am I supposed to pair with this? “Oh, my ship-dar’s going off! I’m pretty sure the two ragebaiters are a popular ship because dynamics like this, from my experience, are ones that people go crazy over!” is just like…do I even have concrete evidence for that?

Anyway, this guy’s from Class 1-A, his classmates come to pick him up, and then we get to see how the character who was my favorite Class 1-A student speak. I gotta admit, it’s funny. He seems like he’s genuinely apologizing, and then…

During this, we also get to see the interactions of the other members of Class 1-A, and this guy instantly got beaten by the guy who was like “Bananas make me think of yellow! Yellow makes me think of bananas!”, because he genuinely seems like such an interesting person.

But, alas, Class 1-A leaves…

…oh, and that happened. Along with “things happening”, we got another scene at the actual beginning of this episode where Sad Boy K and his associate talk, but…like, I didn’t really feel like it added anything. Yeah, you could argue that it was hinting towards something later in the episode, but there’s no guarantee that we’re going to see the immediate effects of it yet.

…I’ll cover that other thing once we finally get to it.

Anyway, after they all were basically like “see you at the A-B Battle”, we get a scene where Soji gets healed, and then basically a montage of how the kids are training. Eventually, the time for the A-B Battle comes, with the kids being driven over to where it’s supposed to happen. We also find out that Hajima is bringing herself along via box because she uses less spirit power the closer she is to the doll she’s using.

While the previous year the A-B battle was done in the mountains, this year it’s being done in a copy of the main town. At least if I’m understanding the episode correctly. From what I understand, someone had the power to make a copy to have it occur in a residential area while keeping the actual residents safe. So, like…don’t quote me on that part.

The plans are simple: Class 1-A is trying to get one person in their class per person in Class 1-B, while Class 1-B is more creative than that!

They manage to get the guy who was my favorite alone and work towards beating him up, which gives us…this subtitle from Crunchyroll.

Again, a casual viewer likely would’ve either missed this error in the subtitles or have consciously filled in that hole themselves. But like…how many times have I pointed out issues with the subtitles in this series? Like, I don’t think the errors are as bad as another thing were the subtitles can range anywhere from “literally perfect because this was licensed here before” to “why are some of these decisions being made??”, but it definitely feels like these subtitles aren’t getting the quality check they deserve. This could mean–

No. I’m not going to do that. I’m an aniblogger, not a meitantei. Plus, I already rambled for way too long about what Crunchyroll not taking action on the episode titles yet means. I am not doing that again.

While at first it seems like their plan is going to go easily, as it turns out, this man has a second phase (aka he cut the goo from Urusugawa straight off of himself), and was strong enough to both take out Hajima’s doll and block the way for escape, with Class 1-B now needing to figure out what to do.

Overall, I enjoyed this episode! While I’d like to see more interactions between Class 1-A, this episode has been doing a good job of establishing things further! I can’t wait to see how the A-B Battle continues, as I’m positive we’re going to get that next episode!

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