Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to return to Blue Reflection Ray, after an episode that proved the series’ strongest yet. With our core team of Ruka, Hiori, Miyako, and Momo established, the team set to work hunting down “Princess Yuki,” who appeared to possess the power to remove the Fragments of others. However, this turned out to be a ruse – the true Yuki was being manipulated by the sadistic Uta, who only wished her to become so isolated that her own fragment would naturally emerge.
Alongside serving as a fine mystery caper in its own right, that episode offered a satisfyingly nuanced exploration of social media’s positive and negative potential. To those who are isolated within their own lives, the internet can become a lifeline, a path to community and mutual support. But at the same time, the inherent distancing effect and public nature of online discourse can make anyone a lightning rod for abuse, offering a sobering reminder that anonymous strangers make fickle confidants.
As an antidote to this crowdsourcing of intimacy, Miyako offered herself, making a genuine, vulnerable connection with the lonely Yukiko. I quite liked how this resulted in the episode ending without a fight altogether; rather than banishing Yukiko’s negative feelings via magic, Miyako actually challenged the emotional root of the problem. She’s already proven a key voice of reason within the group, and I’m looking forward to seeing how her journey continues from here. Let’s get to it!
Episode 6
We open with a quote by renowned Romantic poet Lord Byron, stating “Tis Done! Love, Hope, and Joy alike adieu! Would I could add Remembrance too!” An appropriately melodramatic quotation by a man of profound emotional intensity, and also a fitting line for Blue Reflection Ray, where Byron’s desire to forget his painful memories is essentially the main mechanic being manipulated by our heroes and villains alike
Back at Chateau Villain, Uta is living her best life, smiling as she gets choked out for disobeying orders
Niina calls Uta’s feelings “lukewarm. Hiding your loneliness with a sneer and relying on pain just to feel alive.” It’s true – Uta has embraced a profoundly adolescent philosophy, little different from any emo kid attesting that joy is fleeting and only pain is eternal
“There are plenty of people like that in this world.” Yep, it’s a very popular phase
“Resonating with some smiley-psycho girl won’t bring out my pure potential.” I’m sorry Uta, but ya basic
Even as Niina walks out the door, Uta attempts to maintain her poise. Very in keeping with Blue Reflection Ray’s general nuance of characterization that Uta’s affectation would be swiftly recognized as such, a performance of self-confidence papering over a void of genuine personal identity
Niina instead elects to join with their elder sister, who is apparently still a mystery even to them
Meanwhile, our heroes are prepping for a Tanabata festival
Ruka rattles off the entire Tanabata Festival paragraph from their dorm arrival pamphlet, which greatly impresses Hiori
A very Ruka way of keeping conversation going – she’s still not offering many personal opinions, merely filling space with information like she’s responding to a teacher’s question
“It’s all crooked again. Why?” “Because you’re clumsy.” And this is why – Ruka is accustomed to being frank and accurate rather than sculpting her statements to accommodate the feelings of her conversational partners, which can easily get her in trouble. As such, she normally just doesn’t talk much, and restrains herself to only answering neutral, factual questions
Miyako cross-referenced the name “Kana” from Yuki’s story against all the taped interviews by Momo, and discovered a girl with that name stuck to her bag. She really is becoming an accomplished detective
I’m only now coming to realize how the magical girl genre naturally dovetails with mystery fiction; in Sailor Moon, most episodes opened with a “find the lurking enemy” plot leading into the action, and that’s holding true here as well. I suppose I was somewhat mislead due to my first brushes with magical girl fiction falling more in the Nanoha-Madoka lineage, which have a bit more in common with shonen action in their focus on training and combat
Miyako successfully foists her festival work off on the others, claiming she is overwhelmed working on all this reflector business. Love her
And thus the tanabata trees are adorned with wishes, yet another ritual I have some purely secondhand nostalgia for due to watching too much anime
A young girl stares up at the tree. This show’s color design can result in some odd visual effects, like this girl’s gradient orange-yellow dress
Aw jeez, and then we jump right into this girl being abused by her single mother at home. Clearly this episode isn’t going to be any lighter than the last one!
I appreciate it, though. A show’s philosophical takeaways can only be as weighty as its subject matter – if Blue Reflection Ray really wants to demonstrate routes out of self-hatred, it can’t skimp on the conditions that bring about such feelings in the first place. And as Niina’s conversation with Uta clearly demonstrates, this writer understands the difference between life’s actual, incidental cruelties and the melodrama of self-serious adolescent fiction
A televised discussion on manic depression gives us a clear guidepoint for her mother’s behavior, while she engages in the heartbreaking activity of wetting napkins and eating them just to put something in her empty stomach. That’s the sharp stuff – well-observed details like that strike with more impact than a dozen Uta speeches
Devastating moment of this girl “forgiving” her mother, saying it’s just the sickness that makes her do these things
“You can go ahead and eat whatever’s in the fridge,” she says again, even though there hasn’t been anything in the fridge for days. There are parts of a loving mother here, but she’s just not in a condition to be caring for her daughter
With the TV program maintaining congruity between scenes, we cut to this same girl years later, revealing both this was Niina’s childhood, and that her life has remained consistent since then, still sitting in the dark watching figures on a screen
Walking outside, Niina learns a woman has been stabbed in the apartment next door
“I don’t want there to have to be any more people in this world like me.”
Niina heads out looking to gain some money through compensated dating, in which she is helped by a girl named Nozomi. We’re really not pulling any punches in terms of how folks naturally slip through the cracks of society – given the “opportunities” she has been, how could Niina have done anything else?
“Why are you being so nice to me?” “Do I need a reason?” There are indeed decent people in the world, but growing up in an abusive home, particularly as the daughter of an unmedicated and extremely bipolar mother, will naturally teach you to distrust charity
“I want to believe that goodness is more than just a word and happiness is more than a dream.” Thus she was introduced to the works of Byron
The persistent intrusion of television programs covering people like Niina at large aren’t the most graceful device, but I do appreciate how they divert the message from merely being a condemnation of Niina’s mother, instead rightfully pointing out situations like Niina’s as reflective of a society that cannot care for either children or the mentally ill
With Nozomi’s help, she begins to learn how to smile
But then Nozomi disappears, and a new girl appears at the apartment claiming she’s Nozomi now. So the name was tied to the apartment, presumably chosen by the girl’s pimp
“The other Nozomi probably did something to piss Saki off.” Yep
With nothing left to cling to, Niina heads off to destroy herself and Saki together, but is held back by Byron’s words – now offered by a new face, the girl who must have initially placed the book in Nozomi’s apartment, who is also Hiori’s big sister. Niina’s guide into the world of Fragments
No wonder Niina finds Uta boring. Her own story is so much sharper than any of Uta’s speeches, and Byron’s prose is far superior to Uta’s attempts at poetry
Back in the present, Niina completes her connection ritual with her recruiter, seemingly discovering some dark truth in the process. Given the rest of this episode’s drama, it’s easy to draw a line between their “big sister” and Saki, both predators eager to manipulate those abandoned by society
And Done
Oh wow, what a mess! I figured the show might ease off the gas a little after that last episode, but Niina’s story proved even more sharp and devastating than Yuki’s, and more than clarified both why she’d lost her hope in this world, and also why she’s so dedicated to Hiori’s sister. We’re clearly moving far beyond the standard complications of adolescent identity-forming, digging into the painful realities of insufficient social services and exploitative alternatives that ultimately leave us abandoned and despairing. It is so easy to fall through the cracks of this world, and the injustice of Niina’s past makes it all the more tragic how she clings to this system as an escape from pain. Get in there and save her, heroes!
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