天下制覇

HAUUuuuuuuuuuuuuuu~!

Impressions:

It was worth suffering through the last three episodes of godawful art, nonexistent animation, and pure wankery just for this. Hell, why didn’t they just make this the entire bloody Rei OVA? Between the magic pants and Daybreak, Deen’s shown themselves to be remarkably good at comedy and parody, but they seem enraptured with making silly faces instead. Oops, starting to get angry and bitter here.

This episode was hilarious from nearly start to finish and easily as good (if not better) than the first comedic episode of the Rei series. Rena’s rapidly flipping moods between murderous obsession and pure adulation were fantastic. They even managed to fit in a nice little emotional confession at the very end between Rena and K-1. Granted, I doubt we’ll see any more Higurashi from here out (although there’s still Natsumi’s story and they keep doing new chapters with every new port), so it doesn’t really mean much in the grand scheme of things, but it was a nice capstone to the series. I did think that the mah jong bit went on a little longer than it needed to, especially given that it was time that so could have been spent on more Takano/Rena cuddling, but that’s the biggest complaint I’m going to level at this one.

Brief Summary:

Hanyuu tells Rika that a magical whatsit has gone missing… a pair of magatama that makes the holder of the red fall madly in love with the holder of the white. Elsewhere, K-1 and Rena are enjoying cookies when they’re interrupted by Tomtake and Takano. After Tomitake teases them, Rena starts Hauhauing like a mofo and swallows something that fell from the sky. That night, Rika and Hanyuu track the magatama box to the junkyard, but the magatama are gone.

The next day, Rena’s lovesick as all get out and Rika explains about the magatama to the rest. Rena eventually runs off, and they follow to find her throwing herself at Tomitake. True true love. Rena eventually snaps and goes crazy at Takano, but then declares she’s taking Tomitake home and wants to know what nurse outfit she should wear for him. Takano storms off and the kids attack Tomitake, but can’t find the white magatama (protip: Note who was searching his pants). Rena’s also disappeared in the confusion.

Takano’s suddenly ambushed by Rena, who cozies up to her and wants to call her "onee-sama" and be her everything. She snaps a little but, but goes back to lovey lovey mode just before the kids arrive. Takano changes her mind and accepts Rena’s love. Mion accidentally lets slip that the white magatama is important, so Takano refuses to give it up and goes skipping off, leaving Rena to take care of the opposition before she goes merrily skipping off as well.

Having lost both of them, the kids go to Rena’s hideout and find mah jong books all over the place. They head to the mah jong parlor and find Rena snuggling Oishi. He won’t give up the ‘lucky’ magatama either, so K-1 joins with Akasaka against the Reina/Oishi Love Love Team to defeat them. Despite Hanyuu’s failed attempts at cheating (because she’s a nimrod), K-1, Mion, and Akasaka use their magical telepathy to pull off the win… and then K-1 swallows the white magatama when Oishi drops it.

Rika takes them back to the shrine to deal with it properly. Rika tells K-1 that it may just be the magatama’s power, but she felt her heart skip a beat when he said he’d save her earlier, and that she really really loves him. The next day, Tomitake and Takano are fighting over who gets Rena. Rika explains that’s the real curse of the magatama.