We’ve definitely reached the stage of Mieruko-chan where I really want to get some answers.  This series can be a little same-y to be honest –  while it does introduce plot wrinkles, the basic structure is pretty much the same every week.  Hana eating jokes, Miko seeing a bunch of scary stuff and inner monologuing, clumsy fanservice, repeat.  I like the way the writing expands the mythology but it doesn’t actually tend to tell us anything concrete, and that’s gotten kind of frustrating for me.

Fortunately, we do seem to be headed in the right direction on that score.  And it’s now or never, as we’re down to the last two episodes and while the show is quite popular there’s nowhere near enough material for a second season yet.  They have to throw us a bone, and I think we saw the first steps towards that in the latter part of this episode.  Before that, though, we got another steady diet of the usual.  I’ve found myself thinking that there damn well better be a point to all this Hana stuff, because it’s transparent pandering and not nearly as funny as it’s supposed to be.  It looks like there is, FWIW, and it seems to be more or less the Occam’s Razor explanation – her spirit-attracting aura takes a ton of energy to maintain.

One interesting element of that is that, if I interpret events correctly, Yulia (who’s still terrified of Miko) can see auras but Miko can’t.  Unless you count Toono of course, but that’s not really “aura” per se.  I guess it’s not surprising that there were be different types of second sight – not everyone who has it sees the same things.  Yulia in fact almost spills the beans to Hana about the hidden world, but fortunately Hana is as bright as the bulb in a glove compartment and the situation is easily rescued.

Speaking of Toono, he’s seriously messed up.  Not just a cat-killing sociopath, but seemingly in a good deal of mental discomfort too, as if he does what he does out of need rather than for enjoyment.  Given the usual M.O. of Mieruko-chan so far, there’s more to this than we know – some deep-seated reason why psycho-sensei is the way he is.  I think this show is very fond of an “opposites” strategy of misdirection, which would imply that Toono is eventually going to be played as sympathetic (and if so, that’s going to be a hard sell).

Speaking of opposites, we saw this at work with the balloon boy Miko encountered at the part as well.  He was fundamentally different than any of the other spirits we’ve seen – he started off looking normal and transformed after Miko acknowledged him.  And then he clearly tried to attack (or at least interact with) her, implying that any spirit could do the same once acknowledged.  This was serious enough that the ghostly shrine maidens had to save Miko again, which is two of her three get out of jail free cards.  I wonder if she can buy three more for another ¥500?  This was easily the most interesting part of the episode, and it felt like the first tug on the string that will start to unravel Mieruko-chan’s mysteries, at least a little.