Sarazanmai 9 & 10
“I Want to Connect, but I Can’t Express It” and “…but I Can’t”. Once again, I’m combining two episodes because once again I didn’t have much to say about the first one. The title of that second one, though…
I think there’s something about the Toi episodes that make them predictable for me. Not all the details, but just in how the emotional arc has to go. I think there also actually was less content in this one, given the lengthy post-credits flashback sequence.
So what do I have in the way of screencaps? Well, we have Toi in a textbook emotionally-abusive relationship with his brother:
Ikuhara reminding us that he did Utena:
(I tried to do comparisons but couldn’t find good shot-for-shot matches. But trust me, it’s the same.)
And
but also
So…um? I guess that’s our explanation for the otters—they are the literal embodiment of desire? Or something? I don’t know, I don’t quite get it but it probably isn’t going to get explained any more than this, so whatever.
Oh, but I did appreciate that the famous soccer player’s name was Lionel Kappa.
That’s it. That’s episode 9. Oh, also there was a dorky gangster who Toi’s brother shot, and then Toi’s brother got shot, and also Enta’s probably not going to live out the night. Whatever.
EPISODE 10. This is (nearly) it. We’re out of time for more story, and things are breaking up anyway, so here we go. It does seem to be kicking off better than Episode 9—
Okay, I had this all wrong before, but it doesn’t change much. Leo and Mab were Keppi’s guards, or maybe the kappa king’s guards, but got captured and conscripted into the opposing side when the Otter Nation attacked. They were never human in the first place.
Aww. In the middle of this horrible moment, we see Kazuki showing real care for Enta. It doesn’t make a difference to Leo, though, who brings them all to the Otter Desire Factory…where Mab is waiting.
…pause. For a show that’s putting as much emphasis on the word “desire” as Sarazanmai, I think the translators dropped the ball here. The word Mab uses is 望む, which does mean “(to) desire”, but which I’d usually translate as “to wish”, as in “I’m not the man you wish for.” I think it’s important here that Leo still has an emotional connection to Mab, not just a physical desire—in the “love or lust” box, he’s still on the “love” side. And so translating this as “desire” confuses the issue rather than linking it to the bigger theme.
Leo, for his part, rejects Mab in a fit of anger, in what I’m only realizing now is a lot like Kazuki rejecting Enta for his betrayal. And for once, Mab has an emotional reaction.
This is what leads to Leo turning, as I sort of predicted, but there wasn’t really a redemption scene where he was welcomed back or anything. More on that once we get out of the factory.
Meanwhile, we finally get the explanation of “Dark Keppi”:
Okay wait so what if this is Keppi’s kappa form, and when he rejoins Dark Keppi he’ll turn back into a humanoid? Like Midna (Twilight Princess spoilers), or the cats in Nightmare City, or…well, Sara-chan, I guess.
Also, another translation note: I don’t like that they decided to start capitalizing “Otter” here. Japanese doesn’t mark titles or (most) plurals, so the same sentence could be “captured by Otter” or “captured by the otters”. But I like the latter a lot better here, even though we’re kind of seeing that the otters may have some kind of unified consciousness. Maybe there’s some subtlety in the original Japanese that I’m not getting that’s encouraging this translation, but I feel like it would have been fine to just leave it as “the otters”, as in previous episodes.
Anyway, apparently otters go in through the nose.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this was Japanese folklore canon, but it might also just be in contrast to the kappa, who use a different orifice.
Let’s skip ahead…to Leo’s moment.
WAIT HANG ON HE’S ALREADY A KAPPA WHY DOES HE NEED KEPPI TO EXTRACT HIS SHIRIKODAMA TO TRANSFORM well never mind, whatever.
It’s interesting to note that (1) this is the first time in the “sarazanmai” song that the thing to “take back” is explicitly “connection” (a four-syllable word in Japanese, つながり, when all the previous things have been only two), and (2) the Mab-zombie doesn’t try to defend itself at all. Unlike the zombies we saw earlier in the series, Mab wants his “secret” to get out.
It is clear in the aftermath, though, that this is the normal course of affairs, the original duo that were in charge of the sarazanmai.
And…it cannot end happily.
This is the fulfillment of the “zombies are retroactively erased” Chekhov gun we saw earlier. Mab is gone. And Leo—
—forgets.
…and oh, Toi shows up and shoots Leo, the credits go but they’re more of a commercial break these days, Kazuki revives Enta despite having a gun pointed at him, and then Dark Keppi shows up and convinces Toi to join the dark side.
Okay, I breezed through that a little too quickly. Kazuki couldn’t not revive Enta, but during the credits I was thinking about how to phrase the wish more strongly. “Everyone who died since we became kappas comes back”? Well, that would include Leo, though probably not Mab. And it still leaves out Haruka, which I feel is some kind of message about wishes and the real world: you can reset things to the way they were, but they can’t actually get better. The world of the kappa can’t actually affect the human world. Or something. That doesn’t exactly make sense for this show, but it feels like the kind of message it could have, so maybe it’s in there anyway.
…and then Dark Keppi shows up and convinces Toi to join the dark side. Whatever.
We’ve got one episode left, and I’m not sure what the point of it all was. I think I liked the preview better than any of the actual episodes. But we’ll see if the finale pulls one last twist out of its hat.