Recap: The Mage of Chaos is brought to the Kusaribe Clan and begins spartan training with the ever annoyed Mahiro. When Jun meets up with Yoshino and Hakaze, he spills the obvious to our oblivious princess.

Still a bit of a slow episode this week, but it’s obviously a buildup to something big coming up next. As predicted via my amazing powers of OPremenition, Megumu is sent off to the Kusaribe’s to figure out his true nature. Learning quickly he is a buffoon and definitely no killer, they decide to train his skills for a new plan they’ve set up. It’s good to see Mahiro not acting rashly. Far too often in shounen plots you’ll get the overreaction scenes which always seem so forced. Instead it just seems like he’s decided to take his frustration at failing to find her killer again by beating the crap out of the poor guy. It appears to be working well for the both of them in the long run, though.

Once again, since this show forces you to never believe in coincidences, there has to be some connection to the death of Aika and Megumu suddenly finding this Yu-chan on the very same day. The way he describes her is very similar to the way we’ve seen Aika, both being described by the main pair and in the flashbacks where she’s actually appeared. Could Aika somehow have faked her own death? This goes back to a theory Life had once that perhaps she herself is the Mage of Exodus. If she was able to somehow slip away and find Megumu it would explain how he also came upon the powers. Still, at this moment we can only speculate.

Meanwhile, we get some development on the relationship front as Jun comes back just to blunt force make Hakaze realize her own feelings. It was funny watching her try to deny she cares deeply for Yoshino while simultaneously talking about him like he was the greatest thing ever. While this scene was really cute, something about the beginning felt a little forced as far as the acting was concerned. I suppose I could just be spoiled by Miyuki Sawashiro’s amazing performance as Inaba in Kokoro Connect. Still, there are legitimate complaints for the flow visually, at the very beginning of the scene Jun tells Hakaze how she feels, she has a reaction shot, and then they make a cutback to the same frame as the one previously. It was totally jarring and really took me out of the experience. It just made it seem like Hakaze had something wrong with her, being calm, snapping, then returning to the same state in an instant. The end made up for it, proving that she’s still the queen of gap moe.

The bigger point to be taken out of the entire scene is Jun’s last words. The tree’s logic seems to be incredibly far reaching. If I am wrong about Aika’s true identity, could it be that the Tree somehow knew Hakaze was going to fall in love with Yoshino in the future, and murdered Aika so they could be together? This would imply some seriously intricate planning, but I suppose a lot is possible for a nigh omnipotent being.

With the revelation of the suit, it would appear the identity of the power ranger dude has finally been resolved. Unfortunately this means we probably won’t be seeing any more surprises as far as new characters go. Still, it will be fun to see such a sheepish guy as Megumu don full sentai armor and go fight the tree like he’s performing a stage act. Since no one’s plans ever really goes the way they want to, I’d say the Tree isn’t going to take getting itself blown up by some wimpy guy in a power suit for too long. How it will do that? We’ll just have to find out.