When real Konoha returns to the party, she finds Menoa’s her half-sister berating the poor girl in front of everyone. This seems rather gauche for a noblewoman, but no one around them seems to care. I guess it’s okay to act like a petulant brat if you’re bullying a child born from a sordid dalliance with a mistress. Well, thanks to Reddit, I’m so over step or half-sibling drama. As an only child, I simply can’t understand wasting so much time and energy hating on someone like this. Perhaps real Konoha seems to agree, because Iana suddenly steps in and takes the “blow,” i.e. a glass of red wine to the face. The choice to make it look like she’s bleeding from her eyes must have been deliberate. I guess this makes her look like a villainess? Well, she certainly still has that reputation, so now everyone thinks Iana is out to get the mean half-sibling.

My biggest problem with this show is that it often feels like real Konoha is huffing her own fart. For instance, she gets to see this sort of cheap, hackneyed nonsense play out in front of her on a daily basis, but does it ever make the adult in the room cringe? Of course not. Real Konoha is proud to have written this slop. Becoming an adult hasn’t changed her tastes whatsoever. It’s the same reason why I come down so hard on romance series involving adults. Everyone is like, “Finally, a story that doesn’t involve high school kids!” But is that true? Is it really? I say no. When I watch shows like My Awkward Senpai or My Tiny Senpai (real creative titles, I know), I don’t feel like I’m watching two adult individuals fall in love. Rather, I feel like I’m watching to two kids fall in love. The only difference is the uniforms they wear. Unfortunately, it’s the same shit here. Real Konoha hasn’t grown up; she’s not a mature adult. So at the end of the day, I’m watching a child drool over a child’s writing. This is still just a wish fulfillment anime. The only difference here is that there are two of her, so real Konoha gets to have both of her cakes and eat them too.

Unfortunately, it looks like Yomi won’t be going anywhere anytime soon, which I find rather exasperating. ‘Cause I mean, what have we learned? Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. When we last left off, an injured Sol wasn’t just close to losing his duel to Yomi. There was a real chance the former could die to the latter. Yeah, Yomi is not a good guy. Yomi is crazy enough about Iana to murder for her. The worst part is that he’ll never change his mind about Konoha. He simply will never believe Iana that she and Konoha are not enemies. And yet we fight to keep him around for what? Because he’s hot? Tch.

Honestly, real Konoha is being real pathetic in this week’s episode. Sol and Yomi are destined to clash, and she believes that no matter who dies, her death flag will be triggered. But as the story unfolds, she begins to hold some rather outlandish positions. For instance, she thinks, “He may be a villain, but he isn’t rough or stupid.” Um, okay? Who cares? You think it matters if a villain has class or not? If a villain has manners? Let me spoil it for you: they’re still a villain who wants to hurt the people you care about. Real Konoha reflects on why Yomi was created in the first place. At the time, she was fueled by petty jealousy over her classmate getting special treatment from a boy. Naturally, Yomi needed a backstory, so cue the sob story about being bullied by his brothers and whatnot. Real Konoha ultimately concludes, “I have no right to be exasperated with Yomi.” Nonsense.

These days, the sisters have been getting along swimmingly. After all, real Konoha is so enamored with her ideal self that it’s almost embarrassing. So far, it doesn’t seem as though ideal Konoha has any flaws whatsoever. She’s infinitely nice and infinitely forgiving. She’d probably be infinitely powerful as well if she was allowed to awaken to her powers in this timeline. Basically, real Konoha wrote a Mary Sue character. But that’s understandable, because so far, we’ve only seen flashbacks of real Konoha as a child. I don’t expect a kid to write an interesting, nuanced character. I can’t help but wonder, then, if ideal Konoha will ever change and evolve. As we keep tracing a path through real Konoha’s fiction, will ideal Konoha reflect the former’s growth as a writer? Will ideal Konoha suddenly become more than this two-dimensional Mary Sue that we see before us? After all, the boytoys in the story are evolving in their own way — sorta.