Mysterious Girlfriend X Ep. 08

Oh... my... god.

This episode TOTALLY went in a direction I didn't expect. Heart-wrenchingly so. And while in this blog I let go freely with the spoilers since it would be unreadable otherwise, I urge you to wait until you've watched it before you go any further.

Really.

Now for a long time, my criticism of Tsubaki is that he needs to grow a pair. Well, there's a problem when you suddenly obtain some and don't know how to handle them properly. Male urges are a powerful thing, and if you don't have a grip on them, they can send you to some very dark places. I have also had a revelation about Urabe. The reason she is such a calm and complete master of her reality is because she keeps that bubble of reality very, very small. This whole series has been slowly dragging her out of her comfort zone and leading her into unfamiliar territory, which is why she keeps such a death-grip on her progress. She also has so little context for this that her reactions seem off-kilter to the rest of us.

The episode opens in Tsubaki's surreal dream world, where Urabe has just offered to allow him to touch her breasts, and he gives them a bit of a honk. He is disturbed by this sensation because it persists in his hand after he awakens. He wonders if they feel in reality the way they felt in his dream, and feels guilty about obsessing about such things on a fine Sunday morning in Autumn. He realizes he needs to get out of the house to distract himself, but like a cheesy comedy movie, everywhere he goes he gets reminded of breasts, from the meat pies his sister is offering for breakfast to the bookstore he frequents, where he can't seem to avoid pictures of women.

He gives up on the idea of the bookstore as a distraction, and wanders around. Eventually winding up at the place where he and Urabe part ways on the way home from school. He speculates that she must live in the direction she normally heads off in (a perfectly reasonable guess), and eventually he passes an apartment building and wonders if she lives in a place like that (getting into creepy premonition territory there), and no sooner has that thought crossed his mind than Urabe nearly plants her bike in the small of his back, asking why he's in front of her home (Ding! Freaky Coincidence Achieved.)


He's a bit thrown by this, and actually wants to get away, but she stops him, and invites him up for something to drink.

That fine Autumn morning is starting to turn dark and cloudy. Cue the ominous symbolism. (She also lives on the 10th floor. I'm not sure if that's supposed to mean something, but they do dwell on that for a moment).

She lets him into the (again darkened) apartment, and it is revealed that she's the only one home. She leads him to her room, which is unbelievably spartan, with no art or posters on the walls (Correction, by the head of her bed are a couple of UFO-related items). Although one clue that it IS hers is the book about Paper Art on the desk. She takes off her coat and BAM, he is faced with her figure in a very snug black sweater, leading to near flashbacks to his dream - his hand clenching on its own. While Urabe makes Coffee, he tries to distract himself with the contents of the room, and unfortunately latches on to her bed, taking in her scent from the bedding, where she catches him.


It looks even more like rain. He thinks it's incredible luck that should it rain, he can shelter there.


Urabe's intuitions are still strong, and she bluntly asks him if there's something on his mind. He just can't quite confess, even after he thinks this opportunity is a gift from God. I began to notice at this point the exasperated sigh she lets out each time she lets something like this slide.

The thunder rumbles. The sky turns black. Urabe gets up to turn on a light, and BOOM, lightning so loud she's startled and falls, right into Tsubaki's arms. His hand is around her waist, just a finger's width from realizing his dream....


... and the Scissors come out. She eyes him accusingly, asking him why he was trying to take advantage of the situation, and asking him again for a truthful answer about what is preoccupying him.


And FINALLY he answers her honestly. He tells her about his dream, that he touched her breast in his dream. And either pressing him, or genuinely intrigued, she asks him how it felt. He tells her everything, and mentally questions himself for being so blunt (It's a Japanese thing, I guess.)

Strangely, she puts down the scissors, and kneels on the floor before him. Perhaps it's her urge to experiment with her power. She snakes one hand up her sweater and fondles her own breast, then offers him a taste of her pheromone-laced saliva. The sensation is so much more real than the dream, it brings a tear to his eye. Although I wonder if the source is a sadness of hers. That isn't called, out, but it's my theory. She then says that he may actually touch her himself.


Lightning illuminates the room.


Tsubaki balks, something about "Didn't their feelings need to be in sync first?" (The translations are really different here, and as a matter of fact, the HorribleSubs encoding is extra dark), but she'll have none of it, having gone this far, she actually gives him to the count of three to do it. He does it on Three, apologizing as he reaches out and plants his paw on her breast. It is a revelation, he can feel her heart beating in her chest. He is so overcome by this, he does the unthinkable....


Tsubaki tackles Urabe to the floor. She reaches for her scissors on the floor, just barely in her grasp. As she fumbles with them, and begs him to stop, he sees her ear, and starts licking it. She drops the scissors and starts to cry, but all Tsubaki can see are her lips, and he leans forward to taste them....


And then he sees her tears, and realizes that he has done this. That he got carried away and made her cry, and he feels horrible (as he should). He asks her if she's mad, and strangely she answers that she isn't. But he leaves her there laying on the floor, saying how sorry he is, and runs home in the pouring rain.


Afterwards, she pinches her own ear, and more tears flow. Apparently she's a crier. Maybe it's true that she didn't mind this so much. Doesn't make it right though.


But things never end conveniently. There's always a next day, and the next day is Monday, at School. The story skips what I can imagine is a terribly awkward morning sitting next to each other in class, and instead cuts to lunch with Urabe and Oka - actually, the end of lunch. After polishing off the last morsel, Urabe offers Oka a taste of her saliva, something so rare (at least to get voluntarily) that Oka enthusiastically takes it. Suddenly her body gets hot and face is so flushed that her glasses fog up. She has to ask if something happened between Urabe and Tsubaki, and Urabe admits something did happen the day before. Thinking about it, she says that she experienced a sensation she'd never felt before. Oka asks her specifically what happened, but Urabe declines to answer, and amazingly, Oka accepts that, but tells her that being in love will make one feel all kinds of new things, and it's normal. Urabe is curious, and asks Oka if she's been feeling different things since dating Ueno. And she admits its going slowly, and certainly nothing like the reaction she just had passed to her. Oka speculates that they have gotten even further along than she and Ueno have, and Urabe cuts the conversation short, and actually runs away. Oka's glasses fog up again, and she says that something VERY significant must have happened between them, and she reveals that she's kinda been in competition, thinking that she'd been ahead of them all this time.


Urabe, having run off, finds a narrow space between the buildings to hide. She reaches up into her hair and pinches her ear, flushing and panting as a result. It seems that her ear pushes a button with her, perhaps triggering a memory of her feelings at that moment before, which may not be what we assume.


Finally it's back to class, and Tsubaki is sitting there during Chemistry, thinking about what happened and feeling like a total shit.

Cut now to their walk home, and he is abjectly apologizing. But she asks why. "Because I made you cry." "I told you I wasn't mad." At the end of their walk, as she's about to give him his daily dose, he refuses, saying he's not worthy. He insists that she slap him. He says it's not whether she's mad or not, but that he did something to make her cry. (So really, it's about him getting right in his own head.) She warns him that it will hurt, and clearly it does. But then she pulls back her hair and tells him to touch her ear, then to squeeze it. Her thighs clench together, she lets out a little gasp and starts tearing up. She says that ever since what happened, when she touches her ear, she cries. Her sensations have changed, and even in the face of his apology, she says she doesn't mind it, in fact, she kinda likes it. (She is an odd girl). But if what happened yesterday hurt him, she needs to know, and so she takes a sample from him. And she discovers that her slap really does hurt as her own cheek reddens. She insists that she has some responsibility for what happened, and while saying that relieves Tsubaki a little of his guilt, he still wishes she hadn't taken on the bruising from the slap, because that shouldn't happen to his girl. Those words clearly have an effect on her, and she quickly gives him his dose and runs off, while he flushes.


It's hard to judge, from a number of angles, what exactly is going on in Urabe's head. Perhaps she wants to be "Taken" even though the time wasn't exactly right, and she was both aroused and saddened by the incident. It's true that she did have a grip on her scissors, and then let them go rather than slaughtering her boyfriend. I'd say there are cultural differences going on here, but considering that this is Urabe, I'm not even sure if any Japanese cultural norms apply, so her reactions are alien to me by at least two degrees of deviation. This episode has kicked their relationship way down the field, but almost broke it at the same time. The effect this will have on them in the future is yet to be known.  Maybe it will make them stronger, but at the cost of their innocence.

There's another metaphor in here aside from the weather that's not immediately apparent. On the way to Urabe's house, Tsubaki passes a park with shrubs that are in bloom. On the way back, in the pouring rain, the ferocity of the storm has knocked many of the petals to the ground, clearly symbolizing the damage that's been done.

Posted by: Mauser at 11:02 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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