I haven’t gone back and checked what the longest a series has ever gone without a comment on LiA is, but I’d have to think Shinigami Bocchan to Kuro Maid is getting pretty close (since July).  It’s interesting – some of you (not a lot) are reading, but the level of engagement in the show seems to have gone down everywhere even though it’s better this season in every way.  Not least the music, so in evidence during the lovely final scene this week.  It kinds if reminds me of Yoshimori Makoto’s soundtrack for Natsume Yuujinchou, actually – and believe me, that’s high praise.

It was another jam-packed episode this week, starting as they often do lately with a fluffy intro piece.  This one finds Viola (who I still find a lot to take) visiting the circus and hanging out with Caph before the performance.  Garden variety CGDCT stuff really, but reasonably well-executed.  The real action begins when we return to the witches’ world, where Bocchan and Alice have been released from their bonds and joined Daleth in her church, where something of great importance to Alice is to be found.

A few things are clear here before Daleth even starts talking about Sharon.  Daleth has obviously fallen hard for Walter, despite the challenges to this age-gap (some centuries) romance.  As for Walter, he’s bound and determined to break his brother’s curse.  The reason he posits is that his becoming the heir has no meaning if he doesn’t beat an uncursed Bocchan fair and square, and as prideful as he is there’s no doubt some truth in that.  But given that Walter is basically an ultra-tsundere (it runs in the family, though seemingly skips the eldest), it’s also obvious that he genuinely wants to relieve the brother he “hates” of the terrible burden he carries.

Alice gets the revelation she came here for, and with it a look at her mother.  She’s skeptical, but deep-down she senses that Daleth is telling the truth.  Daleth also shares the fact that the story about Sharon having died in an accident was a lie engineered by Rob.  Daleth takes the others inside her memories of the time of the curse (she makes Walter the eldest, but he’s less than enamored), and makes it perfectly clear that it was Sade who was behind both Bocchhan’s and Sharon’s curses.  But she doesn’t know why – nor, it seems, does she know how her seemingly invincible sister died.  Sharon is a possible source of answers, so Daleth has considerable motivation to wake her up in addition to “rather liking her”.

Next up, Bocchan has his curse lifted!  You’d think that would be the headline, and as fast as this is glossed over it is a rather monumental event on the face of it.  It comes courtesy of a genie, fresh from a lamp that was another of Zain’s mischievous-cum-thoughtful magical gifts.  The first wish is the obvious one, and I certainly don’t blame Bocchan for being skeptical until it was proved to be real.  But the third (the second spent on the proof) was just as obvious – once the genie told him the curse was too strong to break and had just been moved to someone else (Rob), Bocchan would never have let that stand.  He’s just not that sort of guy.

Finally, one of the most romantic and frankly bittersweet scenes in anime this year.  After a goodnight punctuated by a message from Alice to Bocchan to “think of me when you do it tonight”, she’s so overcome by feelings of love (which is kind of powerful already) she returns.  She blows steam onto the window, write “kiss me” (backwards from her perspective, impressive) and these two tragically unfulfilled lovers kiss through a pane of glass as Watanabe Takeshi’s jazz piano completes the mood.  It’s tacked on at the end of the episode almost like an afterthought, but for me one of the most beautiful and powerful moments in the series so far.