At around this point in the first season of Shinigami Bocchan, one overriding impression was that it sure was acting like a show that wasn’t ending in two episodes.  We didn’t know then that a second season was coming of course, and that explained a lot.  As of now, the series is acting very much the same way.  It’s ambling along at manga pace, introducing major new plot threads, giving no indication that it intends to tie a bow on things anytime soon.  Maybe that means we’re getting a third season, if history is any guide.  That sure seems more likely to me today than a second did at this point in the original season.

Are we to believe Rob when he says “smiles”, are his favorite part of a girl?  I have my doubts – he’s old, not dead.  But the opinions of Zain and Bocchan are definitely those of young men.  Keto’s gift of a witch’s broom to Alice was quite generous, but I can’t be the only one thinking that was exceedingly dangerous given the curse.  Zain’s main reason for visiting, incidentally, is to drop off a logbook from the main house, from before the time of Sharon and Bocchan’s curses.  So Zain is certainly willing to employ his time magic on behalf of a friend who asks nicely (and you know Bocchan is incapable of not asking nicely).

Zain and Caff are back soon enough, sent by the ringmaster to hide out after a couple of weirdoes (who we met last week) came looking for them.  Even Rob is excited at the prospect of a slumber party, though sadly he’ll be fiercely disappointed by how the whole pillow fight thing turns out.  There’s not much time for hijinks though, as those weirdoes are not thrown off the trail for long.  They turn up at the detached estate – the young boy (Nico) intercepting Bocchan and Zain and the white-haired lady (Katsuki Masako) Caph and Alice.  Her name is Ichi by the way (Ichi and Nico, for those scoring at home).

It’s a staple of this sort of story to have two distinct magic-users group.  Witches, for whom the power is innate and inborn.  And wizards (or sorcerers, they seems to be pretty interchangeably although not precisely synonymous) humans who wield it and use it like a tool.  And Nico and Ichi are sorcerers.  Nico is full of interesting information, starting with the fact that he was cursed by Sade too – cursed with immortality, which he puts to the test by touching Bocchan (he survives) and stuck in this child’s body.  He was also, he says, the one who killed her – along with the rest of his wizard village, many of whom were themselves killed doing that deed.

The plan now?  Use Zain’s time magic to go back and kill Sade again, this time before she has the chance to curse either Nico or Bocchan.  Setting aside the question of how time paradoxes work with Zain’s power, the plan has obvious appeal.  The issue is that Bocchan doesn’t want to kill anybody (much less by his own hand), not even Sade. He declares that he wants to befriend her in the past instead, persuading her not to apply the curse.  It’s easy so where Nico (whose aim is seemingly simply to die) would be skeptical.  But he invites the quartet to come to his wizardry school while they consider it – even the muggles can learn to fight with a magical weapon, he says.  And for Zain he offers the prospect of co-eds on campus.

As has become the pattern this season – start with a fluff piece, end with romance – we close with a nice little Bocchan and Alice moon-viewing interlude (set once more to that glorious piano piece).  The series is taking great pains to show us just how deeply entangled those two are in each other at this point, and that if anything Alice is even more tortured by their enforced lack of intimacy than Bocchan is.  She even internally admits to some jealousy over the recent expansion of Bocchan’s social circle – even as his isolation has ebbed, she’s had to learn to share him with others besides Rob.  That’s a pretty realistic take, I think, and Alice is definitely in deep with this relationship.