Stay weird, Fumetsu.

We’re fully back into Fumetsu mode now. The season got off to an uncharacteristically coherent and even brilliant start. But the default setting for this show is weird and clunky. Despite how it sounds that can sometimes be a charm point – too much polish isn’t always a good thing. I’m still more or less okay with current events – I’ve toured the entire spectrum of response with this show and this is nowhere near as disjointed and irritating as it can be at its worst. The halting narrative style and tonal dichotomy are still a lot to take, though.

Anytime Hayase – or her progeny – are involved, you know normal is never going to be a descriptor. Mizuha has seemingly killed her mom, and has no memory of the actual event. Fushi wants to help – it’s what he does. Mizuha just wants him, for her part. She leads Fushi to an abandoned shrine and sets up camp in the main hall, and despatches him to start making supplies (or obtaining the ones he doesn’t have the blueprints to create). She’s in full yandere mode – genetics won’t be denied. Mostly Fushi just seems puzzled her this strange girl and her strange reaction to what’s happened.

Crucially, Mizuha rebuffs Fushi’s offer to bring her mother back to life. There could be several aspects to this but ultimately, what it means is she doesn’t want her mother to be alive. Frankly Fushi should probably find that a lot more disturbing than he does. But as usual he (over) indulges the weirdness of humans. Fushi heads back to shop for necessities, and she calls her dad to apologize for what’s happened. But much to her surprise, her mother seems to be alive and well. And Fushi had nothing to do with that.

The rest of the episode is mostly slice of life, with the disturbing undercurrent of the murder lending everything an oddly surreal air (which is all very Fumetsu). Just why is Mizuha’s mother alive – if indeed she is? Fushi doesn’t know – and he asks the Black One to weigh in but gets no response (which is highly abnormal in itself). Perhaps a clue is to be found in the TV report about “indestructible boys” showing up. One of them is Fushi, but another is someone who fell from a bridge and walked away. “Probably CG”, Aiko says – which is all Greek to Fushi. But it’s hard to imagine this isn’t connected to Mizuha’s mother in some way,

Aiko also scolds Fushi for making money our of the air, on the grounds that it will devalue the local currency (and the Yen certainly doesn’t need any help there). Fushi invites Mizuha over for a visit, and of course most of Team Fushi realizes immediately who she’s related to. Bon arrives back with government ID cards for everyone, and instructions that the young’uns (even Fushi) need to go to school, and the adults get jobs. That’s how you get by in this world, after all – and thus Fumetsu no Anata e seems poised to embark on yet another unrecognizable change of direction.