If Mu wants to keep people from waking up, maybe she should do a better job listening to them. Remember how it looked like Mifue had two moms in the first episode? The first mom was really skinny and anemic-looking. She also said something about how she wish she could eat like her daughter. She was probably anorexic or bulimic. Well, shortly afterwards, Mifue bumped into Mu outside her balcony, and without even questioning why a pop idol could float, the girl wished that she could just eat dinner with her mother. So what did Mu do? She gave the girl a whole new mother. Gosh, I wonder why someone would find something weird about that. I mean, if that’s what Mu wants to do, then she should’ve at least wiped Mifue’s memories of her first mother. But this is anime, and your average anime storytelling is rarely ever subtle. Fake worlds are bad? Sure. But why are fake worlds bad? Because your mother can literally be replaced and that’s bad. Like c’mon, dial it back a bit. Still, there are some interesting moments to take away from this week’s episode.

Again, Mifue is basically on a quest to find her first mother. This somehow leads her to a bizarre tea party full of cute, chubby princesses indulging themselves in a torrential pour of sweets and tea. I’m not even exaggerating. At one point, desserts literally begin to rain from the sky. Why did Mifue even come here? She got the impression that this was a place where rumors end up, so she was hoping to get a tip or two regarding her first mother’s whereabouts. But was that gaunt woman even her real mother? Isn’t this just an artificial world? The girl repeatedly tries to get information from the chubby princesses and Sweet-P, their ringleader, but it’s to no avail. You have to be cute and you have to eat. You also have to name yourself after a flower (Mifue went with Himawari, i.e. sunflower). The whole cutesy shtick is instantly suspicious. Sure, a lot of girls like cute things, but they rarely go this far. It’s almost as if Sweet-P and her posse of dessert-guzzlers are overcompensating.

At first, Mifue tries to play along, because she’s desperate to get some answers. But everyone has a limit, and the girl eventually can’t take it anymore and snaps. She rages out and calls them all disgusting for being fat, gluttonous slobs. This is when Sweet-P turns the tables on the girl. She taunts Mifue with the fact that the latter had actually wished her first mother away. After all, Mu just wants everyone in her world to be happy, so the pop idol merely granted Mifue her wish. Mifue only has herself to blame, right? No, not right. Like I said, Mu clumsily replaced Mifue’s mother instead of just tweaking one aspect of the woman’s personality. That’s plainly obvious. Maybe the story should’ve approached this conflict with a little more subtlety. At the moment, however, Sweet-P’s argument makes no sense. Still, it’s enough to shake Mifue to the core. Sweet-P goes further and needles the girl for her outburst: “…you harbor an awful lot of hatred towards ugly things.” Perhaps Mifue is projecting. Maybe, just maybe, Mifue actually hates herself for being fat.

But wait, Mifue’s not fat! Or is she? At one point, Sweet-P and the chubby princesses begin to indulge in ramen. This is odd, because up until now, this had been a tea party full of sweets up. Since when did ramen become a dessert? Naruko, the resident gossiper is also in attendance, and she begins to notice something odd about Sweet-P’s mannerisms. More specifically, even though Sweet-P looks like a generic kawaii anime girl, she sure does eat ramen like a notorious mega ramen otaku that Naruko has seen before. Do people really flip their ramen bowls at the very end, though? That seems terribly rude and messy. But that’s not an important question to answer, so I digress. To get back to the topic at hand, this is when the Sweet-P begins to crack. It turns out she is that ramen otaku. See, in Mobius, you can become whatever your heart desires. Or at the very least, Mu tries her very best to accommodate your wishes. So at this point, we really have to wonder if any of these characters’ physical appearances actually resemble their real life counterparts.

Maybe Mifue has issues with her own weight in real life, and as a result, maybe her first mother is just a reflection of her own insecurities towards food. This might even explain why she feels so guilty about the fact that she might have erased her mother. It’d be like erasing a part of yourself. Even if you hate some aspect of your personality, it’s still you. Anyways, Sweet-P is embarrassed that someone managed to see through her facade, so she runs out of the room in tears. Both Mifue and Naruko just end up leaving the tea party on their own accord. I’m not exactly sure what Sweet-P was attempting to accomplish here. Like what was she (he?) hoping to do? Ply Mifue with enough sweets that she’d just forget about looking for her mother (who may or may not even be real)? Or did she plan on Mifue cracking, then taunting her into submission? Seriously, what was the gameplan? The Musicians, i.e. the bad guys, want to rein in the Rogues, i.e. the good guys. Sure, I understand that much. I’m just not sure how the tea party fits into this. Oh well. At the end of the day, Mifue finds herself a new potential ally, since it seems as though Naruko is also waking up from this dream world.

Anyways, there’s not much to say about either Ritsu or Kotaro and Suzuna. Suzuna has decided to hide out in a library, because apparently no one goes there. Okay. In the meantime, Kotaro will go and look for other people like them. Y’know, people who are “woke.” As for Ritsu, he spends the majority of the episode wandering around the fake city just lost in his own thoughts. After all, he has to “understand” the problem before he can even hope to find a solution to it. I don’t know why that would take him all day, but he eventually concludes that he needs to take up Shogo’s offer. If you’ll recall, that guy had invited Ritsu to rendezvous at the music prep room. Alrighty then, back to school we go… even though that’s where we want to escape from. In any case, the anime won’t spill the beans on what exactly Mobius is yet, but we do get to see this room full of presumably people trapped in tanks as they are forced to live their lives out in Mobius. Fun.