The train has gone off track for Ringo. She’s so far from destiny, but despite this, it’s not as if anyone could convince her otherwise. Become friends with Tabuki-sensei and go bird-watching? In Ringo’s twisted mind, this means she has to stalk the young teacher. A kiss from her prince by the pond? Whoops, sorry Ringo, but the wrong guy just kissed you. And now, Ringo thinks news of a possibly murdered girl at the subway fulfills her destiny.

I don’t usually do plot speculation, but oh, what the hell — for this anime, why not? adaywithoutme speculated that the two brothers might be on a journey to the afterlife. So I got to thinking, “Hey, maybe Ringo’s dead too.” The artifice between Ringo and Yuri this episode gave me this thought: the diary is a script; there are scenes and parts for everyone to play. Everything must go according to plan, and Ringo is like a twisted actress/director who’s going to make it all happen. And what do we do with plays? We rehearse the same scenes ad nauseum.

I’m still inclined to think that the diary is neither fate nor destiny. For the moment, I can’t imagine that the diary is anyone else’s but Ringo’s. So… what if it turns out that she is dead? What if she’s stuck in this vicious loop where she constantly dies and returns to life? Ringo relives the events in the diary until it leads her right back to the cold embrace of the sea. Drowning is the other thing I want to get to. At times, we see Ringo at peace “underwater.” This episode twists the association between Ringo and the sea into something a little more sinister. She nearly drowns when she was, ironically, pretending to drown. As the saying goes, “There are two sides to every coin,” and might this be Ringo’s “destiny?”

We know from the previous episode that a father is missing from Ringo’s life. Naturally, then, we might conclude that her infatuation with Tabuki-sensei is a way to cope with this loss. What if she had failed before? What if it led her to suicide? So as punishment, Ringo lost her memories but regained her old diary and now is “destined” to relive her horrible life over and over again. If the brothers’ mission is to ascend to the afterlife, perhaps what they gotta do throughout this series is help others (like Ringo) move on with their lives. At the same time, however, the brothers, especially Kanba, refuse to allow Himari to move on; she’s supposed to be dead, after all.

Anyway, this is all just speculation. I’m sure the following week’s episode will prove me dead wrong, but it’s fun to indulge every once in a while.

Stray Observations

• The anime sure likes to play around with the idea of smell.

Last week, it was curry and love. This week, we’ve got a skunk on the loose while Ringo’s plans gradually fall apart. Let’s not forget the salarymen on the train from the last episode making idle chitchat about some “foreign” smell. It’s easy to assume they were talking about curry, but what is foreign about curry and Japan?

• We see relatively little of Kanba this week, but we do find out that he’s a bit of a lady killer.

Oh, if only those girls knew what a siscon freak their ex-boyfriend is as well.

• For some reason, the news reports the loose skunk as a planned theft. Why would anyone want to steal a skunk?

• I thought Yuri’s singing voice was annoying as hell.