Migi to Dari remains one of the more enigmatic shows of the season.  It defies easy categorization, which is a good thing in my eyes but doesn’t in itself guarantee a good product.  Fortunately this is a good product, strange in a good way as I said last week.  It’s clever, it’s funny, it artfully dances between contrasting moods and styles.  And the deeper we get into the story and characters, the more complexities are revealed.  That’s a sign of a series with a lot of upside, as long as its reach doesn’t exceed its grasp.

To some extent the Michan (the old maid) thread turned out to be kind of a red herring – though perhaps it would be better to call it a misdirection.  I was sure she was suspicious and possibly connected to the boys’ mother.  As it turns out, though, it seems she’s just a loud-mouthed gossip who knows her way around inside every house in the neighborhood (and I suspect she snoops her ass off in them, too).  That does make her relevant to Migi and Dari, though.  After Migi – prompted by an embarrassing exchange about his striped briefs – displays a remarkable mimicking ability (I’m not sure if that was Horie Shun or not), Dari gets the idea to have him pose as their mother to get Michan to blab about paisley wallpaper.

And (unsurprisingly) she’s seen it.  In the Ichijou house, home of Eiji – one of the boys from the scout incident.  In a lovely and somewhat unsettling scene set to Debussy’s Claire de Lune (this show really knows how to use a soundtrack), Dari lays out the plan to approach Ichijou Eiji at school (where the brothers are starting the next day), and worm their way into his confidence (and house).  The problem – Ichijou is in 1-1, the advanced class.  And as smart as the twins are, they’ve probably had little or no schooling apart from what they’ve taught to themselves.

Here Migi and Dari takes yet another interesting turn.  One of the most fascinating elements of the story is ever-more apparent difference in nature between Migi and Dari.  It’s been very shrewdly developed – it was almost hard to tell them apart in the premiere, but gradually through their behavior the gulf has gotten wider and wider.  Migi is naive, sweet, genuinely childlike in many ways.  Dari is suspicious, manipulative, and seems to have the potential to be cruel.  Even to his brother.

There are a lot of implications story-wise.  This dynamic almost has the feel of one where the two of them could wind up enemies someday, as Migi grows out of Dari’s sphere of influence.  It also makes me wonder how much of this journey of revenge isn’t Migi being dragged along inside a fantasy of Dari’s creation, one he’s lived with for so long that he’s come to believe it himself.  Migi falling in love with “Sali” (named for J.D. Salinger) – in fact Dari in a wig and skirt, pretending to be a girl so he can study for exams in the library – was simultaneously absurd and quite moving.  Which is pretty much Migi and Dari to a T.

I believed for a moment that this could get really dark – Dari seemed to be enjoying manipulating Migi way too much – though in the end it stepped back from the brink.  Poor Migi really is a gentle soul, and he more and more seems like the real victim in all this.  As for Ichijou, he goes snooping around while the kids are outside doing PE, and finds the snowflake pendant in Hitori’s clothes.  Judging by his reaction it’s one he’s seen before, though based on past experience with cliffhangers with this series, I’d bet that this is going to be yet another misdirection of some sort.