This week’s episode sheds some light on the strange alternate universe our characters inhabit. For instance, there’s a tragic lack of children running around. According to Sanda, there are only 50,000 kids under the age of 15. As a result, adults are deferential to children. Odd. We even learn later that kids can straight up kill an adult and it won’t be considered a crime. This is a world where Japan’s (and maybe the whole world’s) birth rate has completely plummeted, so children are treated as national treasures. But why has it plummeted? Is it due to personal choice? Probably not. Adults wouldn’t be coddling these kids if adults are simply choosing not to have babies. I think it’s more likely that something has damaged humanity’s ability to reproduce. But that’s still just speculation.

But enough about the state of the world for now, because we have that smirking boy from the end of last week’s episode to deal with. His name is Amaya, and he’s actually one of Sanda’s roommates. When they’re alone in their room together, he quickly tazes Sanda and knocks the latter out. Our boy wakes up to finds himself as Santa. Not only that, he and Fuyumura are both all tied up. I wonder how Amaya knocked her out.

So what does Amaya want? For now, seemingly just amusement. We’ll find out what he’s really after towards the end of the episode, but even then, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. But we’ll get to that later. At the moment, Amaya claims that he’ll free the two if they kiss each other. Not just a peck, though. He wants full on tongue-on-tongue action. Even if Santa is a 14-year-old boy on the inside, the optics are bad. Shouldn’t have to tell anyone this, but old men can’t be making out with children. To nobody’s surprise, however, Fuyumura doesn’t mind kissing Santa, because to her, there’s no meaning behind the act. As long as Santa helps her find her friend, why sweat the small stuff?

Eventually, Amaya angers Santa enough to awaken the latter’s next ability: he can protrude razor sharp sleigh runners from his feet. Our hero proceeds to quickly free himself. He was going to discipline Amaya until the headmaster shows up. Why does the headmaster have such creepy looking hands? Is he actually an old guy pretending to be young through nefarious means? Why yes… yes, he is. The nonagenarian apparently injects himself with chemicals in order to maintain a youthful appearance. The side effect being that his facial muscles are pretty much dead. Hell, he can’t even bleed if you cut his face. This seems like commentary our obsession with youthfulness. I’ve met plenty of people in their 30s who are already injecting their faces with junk, because god forbid we have wrinkles. Me? I’m all natural, baby. I’m still as ugly as the day I was born. But I digress.

So what does the headmaster want? He’s obsessed with kids. He thinks kids can rebuild Japan to its former glory. But at the same time, if kids misbehave, he’ll quickly “bring you in to set you straight.” What does that mean? Even though children are precious, if you have “trauma” of any kind, you are brought to the “semi-basement” for correction. One has to wonder if Fuyumura’s friend also disappeared for the same reason. Still, the logic here doesn’t quite make sense to me. On the one hand, you tell me that kids can straight up murder adults and go to school the next day. On the other hand, decrepit dudes like our headmaster can just disappear a child and do god knows what to them in the “semi-basement.” It doesn’t add up to me. If this headmaster is such a problem, why don’t we just kill him? It’s not a crime, right? It’s arguably self-defense. Maybe later episodes will explain this better. Or maybe Amaya is just flat out wrong about kids being allowed to commit murder willy-nilly. I’m just not sure, because neither Santa or Fuyumura corrected him when he was yapping about this earlier.

Naturally, a protector of children’s dreams like Santa won’t let Amaya get taken. He quickly jumps into action with his new sleigh runners, and defends his roommate from the headmaster. But does saving him here and now even solve anything longterm? The headmaster has seen Amaya’s face as well as Fuyumura’s. What’s stopping him from disappearing these two kids the next day? Do they need to go into hiding now? Or are we just going to forget this incident ever happened? After all, the headmaster could barely remember what he ate two nights ago. He could very well just forget he even ran into the trio tonight.

Now that they’ve eluded danger, Amaya has some explaining to do. He claims that he only wanted Santa to “start making his rounds again,” because his family runs an old cake shop. Naturally, no one’s gonna buy Christmas cakes if Christmas isn’t a thing. But how does making Santa kiss a teen girl accomplish this? Or was this just Amaya trying to have some fun? Most of all, this whole situation is just so silly to me, because Santa is all like, “Argh, I’m determined to make these children’s wishes come true!!!” But on a list of problems to solve, reviving Amaya’s family’s cake shop seems like a piss poor reason to bring the myth of Santa back. We literally have a missing girl on the one hand, and a fucking cake shop on the other. It’s not the same. It’s not even in the same ballpark.

I’m with Fuyumura here. This kid tied them up and tried to mess with them for funsies. Why are we buying anything that comes out of his mouth? Even if he’s telling the truth, he’s an idiot for trying to make them french kiss. But according to Santa, Amaya is telling the truth. He can tell, because… uh, because he can see the cake shop from really far away? Well, there’s the whole “Santa Claus can see if you’re naughty or nice” part of the mythos, so Santa having super vision isn’t exactly outlandish. Maybe he can use it to accurately read a person’s character… even though Sanda himself never suspected that his roommate was such a shithead. Well, shithead or not, Fuyumura gains two allies out of this, so maybe we can get something wholesome out of this after all.

Before the episode comes to an end, we see the headmaster on the phone, talking to a member of the St. Nick Pursuit Unit. You’d think a world that overvalues children would also place a high value on Santa, a figure who makes children happy. I can only wonder how the story’s going to explain why the government seems to have an issue with our jolly St. Nick.

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Stray thoughts & observations:

• Man, how tall is this girl? Her head almost reaches the door frame.
• And it’s five kids to a single room? Sounds claustrophobic. Plus, on average, teen boys aren’t exactly the most hygienic. I don’t even want to imagine what the room must smell like. If kids are so important, why are you packing them in like sardines?
• Fuyumura is only here to drop off a box full of jelly beans, but this is enough to get the rumor mill going. Y’know how it is. A boy… and a girl… together?! It can only mean one thing!
• Not only is there a lack of children, the country is getting poorer by the day, so one of the kids implies that meat might not be on the menu for long. But again, the world-building isn’t quite ready to give us all the answers, so we have no clue why Japan is in its current situation.
• With the seal being broken, Santa’s personality will keep leaking through. For instance, despite being in his boyish form, Sanda tries to coddle his roommates because Santa just has a natural affinity for children. Most of all, he finds that he’s no longer attracted to Fuyumura. After all, Santa can’t be thinking of children like that. Does that mean Sanda as we know him could possibly disappear one day?

• Not remembering what she’s wearing is one thing, but did Sanda really need to slap a pixel filter on Fuyumura in his imagination?
• Don’t you think anime camera angles can be kinda weird sometimes?
• Good, good, Santa needs to go John Wick on this kid.
• With Santa unlocking his abilities one by one, are we going to see reindeers at some point? Or elves? What about Mrs. Clause. C’mon, there’s gotta be a Mrs. Claus. Santa ain’t single.
• Santa warns Amaya not to try and charm Fuyumura with his good looks, because it won’t work. I wonder if this is yet another hint at her sexual orientation.
• Okay, sure, a poorer country won’t splurge on Christmas presents. But even if there are less kids around, people would surely still celebrate the holiday. I’m a grown ass man and I still celebrate Christmas (as secularly as possible).
• Plus, aren’t there plenty of holidays you could celebrate with a cake? Why put all of your eggs in one basket? Come up with a cake for, I dunno, Hinamatsuri. My local cake shop does this all the time. For this year’s Lunar New Years, they did some sesame cake with some Asian fruit I don’t recall anymore.
• Fuyumura doesn’t trust any of the adults, but she also concedes that all kids will eventually grow old and resemble their evil headmaster. Surely, not all adults in this world are bad, right? But supposing that she’s right, what’s even the point of growing up? Not only that, Santa is the only adult she can trust, but Santa is also a 14-year-old boy whose identity might or might not be gradually subsumed by his larger, more boisterous personality.
• Yes, we still haven’t gotten an answer to this mystery.