Plot: Ichigo and the Mews face off against the aliens as they try to protect the Mew Aqua that was extracted from the Christmas tree. Pudding manages to stop them from accessing it with her Pudding Ring Inferno, but sadly her efforts just made things worse.
Apparently, this was all part of a trap laid by the aliens. They wanted to use Pudding’s attack as a detonator. Since it’s made of energy similar to Mew Aqua, the Mew Aqua itself becomes very active. It will soon explode and take out the entire Kanto region.
Since Pudding can’t dissipate the Pudding Ring on her own, the other Mews decide to destroy it with their attacks, but the aliens won’t let them through. Pai traps them within a swirl of wind while Kisshu tries to finish them off with a blast of lightning.
Just when it looks like it’s the end, The Blue Knight shows up and stops the attack. He faces off with Kisshu and manages to wound him. Pai and Taruto decide to flee with Kisshu since the Mew Aqua’s almost at the critical point.
The girls all lend their power to Ichigo so she can unleash their energies towards the Mew Aqua and contain it. The explosion is not fully stopped, however, so the girls create a barrier around the Mew Aqua to stop the destruction from reaching outside.
In spite of their best efforts, some of the energy was still expelled outside of the barrier. The girls are knocked backward, and as Ichigo falls, she sees Aoyama running towards their location. He’s suddenly shot with a bolt of Mew Aqua and falls unconscious.
Back with the aliens, Pai and Taruto assess Kisshu’s wounds and determine that he needs immediate medical attention or else he’ll die. Deep Blue suddenly appears and tells them to forego treatment. He was able to absorb some of the energy from the explosion and now he’s amped up more than ever to get more.
He tells Pai and Taruto to let Kisshu die since he no longer needs him, and commands them to go get more Mew Aqua. Both Pai and Taruto are displeased with this order, but are unable to defy Deep Blue.
Meanwhile, Ichigo attempts to destroy the Mew Aqua in anger that it hurt Aoyama, but Shirogane stops her and tells her to transform back so she can tend to him as regular Ichigo, not Mew Ichigo. The other Mews head off to collect the shards of Mew Aqua that were scattered from the blast.
Ichigo transforms back, and Aoyama suddenly wakes up for a minute to worriedly tell Ichigo the situation’s dangerous before falling back into unconsciousness, seemingly recognizing her as Mew Ichigo.
Aoyama is rushed into surgery to mend his wounds. He pulls through the surgery, but the doctor expresses concern over him possibly not waking up, so she tells Ichigo to keep talking to him to help bring him out of it.
When the girls have collected most of the Mew Aqua shards, they wait for more news on Aoyama’s condition.
Ichigo confesses everything to Aoyama in his sleep, even stating that, after all this is over, she’ll go back to watching him from afar and accept his breaking up with her if he’ll only wake up. She cries over his sleeping face, which triggers a massive reaction in the Mew Aqua Ryou had left at the Christmas tree.
The reaction causes a light snowfall over the Kanto region, and Aoyama slowly starts to come to. Happy to see Aoyama waking up, Ichigo decides to make good on her promise immediately and starts to leave the room. The sound of her bell catches Aoyama’s attention and he calls for her to wait.
He gets up and says that they should go out. They go to the Christmas tree, just as they had planned earlier, and Aoyama admits that he knew she was Mew Ichigo for a long time, from way back when he first came up close to her at the special tree where his grandparents met. He had always wanted to tell her he knew, but felt it might cause problems if he did.
He admits he has secrets of his own, so he decides to tell her of his past.
He was an orphan with no memories of his parents, and he was adopted by a nice family who wanted an intelligent child. Ever since, he has strived to do everything perfectly, to be a ‘good boy.’ He was surrounded by people who depended on him, but he felt empty because he knew those people weren’t really his friends – they were people who benefited from knowing him.
Ichigo was different. She liked him for him and not for what she’d gain by being with him. She helped him show his true colors, allowed him to relax and laugh, and because of that, he fell in love with her. He doesn’t care that she’s a Mew Mew, he’ll do everything he can to keep her secret as long as she keeps being herself and helps him become happy again when he’s down.
Ichigo tearfully embraces Aoyama and shows him her present – the Tears for Christmas. She tells her it will shine if you have love in your heart. He thanks her, and they happily watch the Christmas lights in peace, both knowing everything will turn out okay as long as they have each other.
Breakdown:
– I want everyone to know that I didn’t plan for this to be posted so close to Christmas. Trust me, I don’t have that kind of discipline with my posts, haha. This was just a mini-Christmas miracle, I guess. 😛
– I suppose this confirms that Mint can fly….though sometimes it seems like all the Mews can fly. I dunno, they’re inconsistent with that, but Mint definitely flew, carrying Pudding as a passenger.
– The dynamic between the humans and aliens has always interested me. In magical girl shows, it’s very much cut and dry good vs. evil, but the aliens do have very good points in their objectives. To them, the humans truly are the evil aliens destroying the planet. Sure, the way they go about reclaiming the planet is wrong, but their motives are understandable.
How would you like to be purged from your home, be forced into terrible living conditions, be promised that you can return home to a beautiful and lush planet only to find a new master species has overtaken it and ruined it? Earth’s far from a desolate wasteland, but an entirely new species has completely claimed it and turned it into something unrecognizable. You feel bad for the aliens, but on the other hand, it’s hard not to sympathize with the humans when you are one.
It’s like Shirogane says, humans have only known this world as their home too. We have people we cherish and want to protect just like they do. It’s not like we purposely ‘stole’ their home from them nor did we intentionally ‘destroy’ it.
Obviously, we want the aliens to lose, ultimately, but you also want to wish the best for them to find a new, better home.
– Since when are the aliens so powerful they can easily bat off the full onslaught of Mew attacks?
– Hehe, nice faces Pai and Taruto.
– Nice recycled animation during the barrier formation, guys. Top-notch.
– Pai: “That’s a deep wound. If we don’t treat it, he may die.”
Wow, I better turn away when the camera actually allows us to see his body so we can see this *camera turn* *totally invisible what-the-hell-does-he-even-have-a-wound wound.*
– Aoyama only woke up after Ichigo transformed back, so why is she so freaked out that Aoyama saw and recognized her as Mew Ichigo?
– They’re taking him into surgery? For what purpose?! What surgery do you perform on someone who had a magical energy shoot through them yet leave seemingly no visible mark?
– Aoyama just had major surgery, I guess, is ‘unstable’ and in a coma….yet he has absolutely no machines hooked up to him. This room barely looks different from a bedroom.
– They really couldn’t be arsed to go and fix that clear coloring error from that clip way back in the earlier episodes where Aoyama has brown hair for a minute? Good job, Pierrot.
– Can I direct your attention to how Aoyama’s body is proportioned in bed? Judging by the shadows on the sheets, he must be eight feet tall.
– Why exactly did Ryou leave that shard of Mew Aqua under the tree? That’s the first place the aliens would look when they returned.
– Probably Aoyama: “I just had a severe injury, major surgery and was in a coma for a bit, but I can get up and walk around fine. No worries.”
– I’m also pretty damn sure the nurses would ‘nope’ Aoyama right back into his bed.
– As shmaltzy as it is, it was perfect to set this revelation on a Christmas episode, especially given that the music is wonderfully fitting. That ‘Silent Night’ rendition at the end was touching.
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I may have more nitpick notes than the previous episode, but I still really liked this entire two-parter. It was, pretty much, a perfect way to have Ichigo reveal her Mew-ness to Aoyama and it was a great arc of their relationship as well.
I was pondering if maybe this would’ve been a good time to show that Aoyama’s The Blue Knight, but I swayed away from that thought because it might’ve been too much, particularly because Aoyama doesn’t even know he’s BK.
Still not sure why Ichigo believes Shirogane might be BK at this point, though. He’s explained his Mew powers, so there’s no real reason he’d be keeping that a secret too. If she’s so curious, why doesn’t she just ask?
If there was one other thing of irk to note….I’m a little peeved, just a tiny bit, that the other Mews were relegated to support again. Their attacks either made matters worse (Pudding’s Pudding Rings) or their energies were used for an Ichigo attack or they were relegated to barrier duty again.
At least this time Ichigo was also part of the barrier, but they were so disinterested in this being a big moment for anyone but Ichigo that they reused their old barrier animations that, I think, have been used twice before already, at least. Ichigo’s the only one who got a new animation, and that’s just because she’s never been in the barrier formation before. And, of course, her shot looks a lot better than the other girls. Also, she’s the only one you hear when they zoom away from the shot so it seems like she’s the only one who matters in it.
However, it doesn’t mar an otherwise great episode.
Next episode, Ichigo’s on cloud nine because she’s finally been honest with Aoyama. But a dreamy life can quickly turn into a nightmare.
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The Anime Madhouse 