Recap: With the body swapping put to an end, the group tries to move on and salvage their shaken lives. However, there would be no story without conflict, and the agitator comes once again. Will Taichi stop spakin’ it while talking to Iori? Will Inaba go an episode without being involved in hilarious sexual antics? I know Life hopes to god not.

At first I thought Heartseed’s promise to the group was that he would no longer use the body-swapping power to hurt them. I definitely wasn’t expecting them to drop the mechanism all together. It’s clear from his name that it would appear there is a theme to these powers. He is the Heartseed, and I assume this comes with the power to manipulate people’s hearts, in the classical sense of the term. Body swapping can be taken as the exchanging of hearts. Now, with the introduction of this new mechanic, it would appear his new method is unchaining people’s hearts.

This new addition immediately reaps great dramatic and comedic benefits. Inaba’s desires once again play into my belief that her attempts to force Taichi and Iori together are really to stop her from going after him herself. You can really see the disappointment in her face as her advance was completely deflected by Taichi. Sure, her explanation for the desire would make sense, except she’d be looking at “dirty pictures” at school. Unless she has a folder for that kind of thing I doubt she’d actually be doing that.

I should probably stop before I make Life drool again.

We are also quickly shown how this new effect can quickly tamper with their lives. Without inhibitions, they have nothing to hold them back. Yui, a professed blackbelt, has the strength to break furniture and trash an entire group of dudes, something only kept in check by her sheepish demeanor. Even Aoki, someone without any real physical menace, created enough force that he had to be arrested by the poilce. As shown already, I believe this will affect Yui the most, it’s clear she has the greatest ability to harm. She was the first of the girls to show overt psychological effects from the body swapping, and I can see her harming more people to only cause more blows to her fragile psyche.

I’m really impressed by how the writer managed to change up the formula but still make it feel right, that Heartseed would have that power. I do wish they would all remember he knows kung fu now, as every time they go up against the guy he seems to school at least one of em trying to take him down. However, it does seem we will see at least some themes from the first revelation come up again. Inaba has made a plan to avoid problems, is not even confident in it herself, and most likely it will not be followed.

The biggest mistake made so far was in the final scene. If they have to acknowledge there are desires between themselves that might make being in a relationship difficult, it’s only going to intensify them by keeping themselves apart. I can see this doing nothing but blowing up in their faces, making one of them do something drastic in order to fulfill their suppressed desires. Inaba herself has already almost caused an incident with her desires. With her near breakdown in the middle, there are probably other things hiding that she is scared will come to the surface. As for Aoki, we really havn’t seen much of anything from him as far as character development vis a vis Heartseed’s powers.

I have no idea if this is intentional, or related to the story, but if you notice the ED is entirely focused on Inaba(And made on a shoestring animation budget for some reason). It’s possible she’ll have an even bigger role in the conflict of this arc, as signs have been pointing to her breakdown being massive ever since the first few episodes. I’ve had high hopes for this show ever since its beginning managed to overcome the negative stereotype behind body-swap tales, and it hasn’t let me down so far. With all these timebombs just waiting to go off, next episode looks to be even better.