We’re back to full on WTF mode this week on Ben-To, and that’s a good thing.  This is a show that does much better with comedy than drama.

After giving us a novel twist on the pool episode, Ben-To takes a crack at twins this week.  We caught a brief glimpse of them last time, but they’re at the center of this episode.  Confusingly, both Sawagi twins – wolves, and the Student Council President and VP at Saga’s school – are named Kyo, and they’re voiced by Tamura Yukari and the great Horie Yui.  Tamrura-san voices one Kyo, a bit of an airhead who makes up for her lack of verbal dexterity with a maniacal obsession with Yarizui.  Ho-chan’s sister acts like the older, feeding her sibling suave dialogue and generally acting as a limiter on her insanity.  But much about these sisters is inexplicable, and it it weren’t confusing enough for them to both be Kyo, each calls the other “Nee-san”.

Somehow (I never did figure this out either) the twins have convinced themselves that Yarizui is lying in a hospital bed wrapped in bandages from head to toe, when in fact it’s Satou.  And how did Satou get there?  Why, diving out a fifth-floor window after his precious Sega Saturn, which Yarizui threw out the window in a fit of piqué after losing endlessly to Saga, Asebi and Satou.  At least she had the decency to apologize later, but the real culprit here was Saga, who asked the doctors at the hospital – known to her because it was owned by Asebi’s family – to wrap him like a mummy even though he wasn’t seriously injured.  Seriously?

If all that sounds strange, it doesn’t really do justice to how weird the entire ep was.  The scenes between Kyo #1 and the mummified Satou, with Kyo #2 feeding the first lines through a headset while monitoring Satou (who both still think is The Ice Witch and Kyo #1 is desperate to know intimately) on a laptop are some of the most surreal of the season.  Naturally all this ends up with Satou running naked through the hallways of the hospital chasing after Kyo and being called a pervert – Satou streaking has become virtually a weekly occurrence.  The Sawagi twins dropped on the show like a bomb, and left nothing sensible in their wake.  Are they funny?  Well, sort of.  I don’t know how well that act would hold up on a weekly basis, though.

Scoring major points for the episode was the relatively major role played by Asebi, who’s really grown on me (Uwah!  Uwah!)  I’ve never seen extreme bad luck and breathless happy enthusiasm paired quite this way before, and she’s certainly an adorable and entertaining package.  Love the barber-pole thigh-highs, too.  And of course we get out weekly dose of Oshiroi (still not enough), who’s struggling with her ongoing composition of rape fiction starring Satou until she sees him naked in the hospital hall, with Asebi’s glass of hot milk spilled all over him.  Totally fappable?  I guess if you’re Oshiroi, it really floats your boat…