This episode was better than last week’s, I think.  And it was the second show today that unintentionally made me laugh – that must be a good thing, right?

I won’t deny that there’s a certain sadistic pleasure to be derived from watching Saya gaslighted every week.  It’s like her own personal “Groundhog Day” except it’s her worst day ever, and she just never seems to catch on.  But that grisly pleasure can only take you so far, and I can’t tell you how ready I am for this to get the damn point already.

The absurdity and awkwardness of this is really astonishing.  When Saya slipped on her her school uniform and actually started singing – no kidding – the morning after Tokizane “died” I just burst out laughing like I haven’t laughed in weeks.  Of course it’s obvious by now to us that Tokizane and all the others who’ve died are just props, and they’ve had no character development so seeing them pulped has no meaning, but it really is remarkably inane to see Saya go through her paces. There’s a kind of Twilight Zone effect here, where it almost seems as if the show is aware of how lame all this is  – but then, they’ve still given us 10 episodes of it so is that really possible?  It’s a mystery.

The elder bairn this week was an interesting one – quite stylish to look at.  And we did get some progress towards putting an end to the farce, as Tsutsutori-sensei called it.  Fumito’s guimauve is clearly made with blood – I guess I should have picked up on that by now – and it’s obvious that Saya’s “father” feeds on blood as well, as Fumito let him  take a bite out of his arm.  With Sensei pointing out to Saya that all the “ancient” books and scrolls in her shrine’s storehouse are fresh from Kinkos and the annoying twins miraculously back, the cat must surely be out of the bag now – I don’t see how even Saya could fall for this charade any longer.

So now the questions left for those who still care pretty much boil down to who was responsible for the bet that put Saya in this situation – presumably Fumito – and just what the purpose of it was.  Sensei is obviously not a NPC but some sort of functional entity, as is Fumito and Saya’s father – about the only other being who hasn’t died is the class rep, so he could conceivably either be a real being or a NPC.  I guess we’ll find out next week.  For my part, I just hope this gets resolved at least to some degree in the actual series, otherwise I’m going to feel severely pissed off about slogging my way through 12 episodes of this.