It seems as if Ringo no longer needs to adhere 100% to fate. In my opinion, she didn’t even hit the 95% mark other bloggers are talking about. After all, having another woman eat your curry with your lover is a far cry from a 95% or 100% success rate. It nevertheless pleases the girl as she stamps her diary entry anyway by the end of the episode.

We’ve known since the last episode that Ringo is a deranged stalker so, naturally, the weird girl must have a loose grasp on reality. But to say things like “I think the first food cooked by humans may have been curry” clearly demonstrates a girl who is overcompensating for something, but what? All the signs in this episode would point toward the fact that she’s missing a family terribly.

Tabuki’s girlfriend gently prods Tabuki for having a curry day; she remarks that it makes him somewhat of a child. Like Tabuki, Ringo has a curry day. The very notion of setting aside certain days of the week or month as curry day, pork chops day or what-have-you is something a family would do. It’s not necessarily something you’d expect to find in an unpredictable, passionate relationship between lovers.

Although curry is regarded as an aphrodisiac by some, I think Ringo is playing fast and loose, again, with the idea of love. As she is cooking her curry, she muses; deep in her thoughts, Ringo mixes the ideas of romantic love with parental love. It’s hard to imagine that Ringo has a good grasp on either concept.

The start of the anime opens with a calming underwater scene. We later see that this is reminiscent of Ringo’s bedroom. Is this where she goes off to daydream and fantasize? In the background, we can hear a young Ringo enjoy a precious family moment with her mother and father. They both embrace her after she eats from a plate of her mother’s curry. The underwater scene ends with a photo of the family altogether.

When we later see Ringo, the father is no longer in the picture. Ringo’s mother tells her that she has to work late again and thus Ringo should try to eat dinner with her friends. Ringo looks somewhat dejected, and she seems to want to say something important to her mother, only to then point out that her mother still has a curler in her hair. Clearly, familial bliss and communication have long abandoned this family.

So what to make of the events of this episode? Unless the opening underwater scene is a red herring, I think Ringo is in need of a father figure or just a loving parental figure period. As a result, this may explain her obsession with Tabuki, but somewhere along the line, she has mistaken this infatuation for love.

Stray Observations

• Apples in my curry? Uh, no thanks.

Sweet Honey Apple Curry? Doubly no thanks. What the hell — that just sounds nasty.

• Did you notice Kanba turning down all of the picture frames on a nearby shelf?

I wonder why he did that. Why doesn’t he want Ringo to see what his family looks like?

• For the first time, the brothers question Crazy Himari’s existence. There’s no narrative continuity in this particular scene. The brothers first appear handcuffed, then they are not. Crazy Himari suddenly appears in a cow suit, then she’s not. I think it’s only natural, then, to ask how much, if any, of Survival Strategy is real.