Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I figured we’d check back in on the drama of Blue Reflection Ray, on the precipice of our first formal magical girl battle. With Miyako’s life hanging in the balance, blue and red Reflectors are squaring off in a kaleidoscopic nightmare realm, intent on either saving Miyako from her self-hatred or conditioning her into a pure avatar of suffering. Can Hiori handle these foes, and will Ruka rise to the challenge and join her!?

Well, probably, though I imagine we’ll be in for some bitter struggles on the road. Personally, I’m intrigued both to see how this show handles a full-on battle, and also just eager to get back to the banter between our leads, particularly if Miyako’s about to join them. Her bitter snark seems like the perfect counterpoint to Ruka’s timidity and Hiori’s false cheer, and I’d love for her to encourage Hiori to really feel mad about her unhappy family life. The show appears to be establishing a binary of positive and negative emotional powers that seems ripe for immediate deconstruction, and with our leads’ circumstances largely established, I’m eager to see more of the show’s actual hand. Let’s get to it!

Episode 3

“Hiding Your True Feelings.” An episode title that immediately calls to mind Hiori’s glib reflections on her absent mother

We open on Miyako as a young child in a bedroom fit for a princess, admiring a handful of jewels. “Ever since I was little, I loved pretty, shiny things”

“They glittered and shined, proving their existence so that someday, someone would find them.” She obviously sees herself in these jewels, holding out the hope that her own glittering form might one day be appreciated by her distant mother

A visual echo of her bedazzled picture frame falling as her phone hits the ground. These red Reflectors are drawing her in by replaying her unhappiest memories

The effects animation seems to echo the strengths of the OP’s fight animation: lots of ragged, energetic cuts with loose, morphing forms and delicate linework. An effective look, both inherently quite pretty and also infused with a sense of irregular sharpness, implying violent physical consequence with a single missed step

“What are you going to do with Miyako and her feelings?” The framing of this “Fragment” system seems to emphasize the distance between our emotions and our actions – we can’t help what we feel, but we can help how we consider and act upon those feelings, and the two Reflector organizations seem to embody the poles of those reactions

Apparently the closed spaces they create are known as “Leap Ranges”

“I can feel her suffering.” Ruka, who is so in touch with her emotions that they’re practically paralyzing her, can immediately connect with Miyako’s pain. Ruka and Hiori seem like a natural pair, offering a clear route for mutual growth as Ruka learns to not be overwhelmed by her feelings through Hiori, and Hiori learns to genuinely embrace her own through Ruka

“How am I supposed to ignore someone when they’re suffering?” Hiori already possessing the Heroes’ Mantle of Responsibility

“I’ll violate the depths of your heart.” I feel like you have to start questioning the righteousness of your cause when your allies are spouting shit like this

Murder-happy Uta’s powers are expressed as a purple goop or miasma, which seems about right

“Our little flower is taking so long to bloom. Maybe it’s because those two are here.” Yeah, it seems like you can bloom into either a red or blue Reflector, depending on whether confronting your feelings leads you to hope or despair

“How? How can you always keep looking forward?” Ruka’s thoughts offer another framing for the same binary: looking forward versus obsessing with the past

Ruka recalls a girl she failed to save, a girl she knew was hurting, but who she considered “none of her business.” After failing to reach out to that girl, she internalized inaction as her fundamental nature

I do feel like these witch world overlays on the backgrounds can make for some overly busy visual compositions. It can tougher to grasp character form and relative distance with so much visual noise in these shots

Momo’s opponent seems briefly put off guard when Momo asks for her name. It seems they all have their own reasons for joining this red Reflector group

The red Reflectors claim they are just going to take Miyako’s fragment, which the blonde girl describes as “ridding her of this rotted abscess, and that “she’ll be saved once she’s rid of it.” So their plan is to simply excise negative feelings, again reflecting this episode’s title

In response, Ruka articulates the healthier approach: embracing your feelings, reflecting on them, and ultimately working through them. Even if your feelings seem self-defeating, simply refusing to recognize them will never allow you to move past them

“I just told myself I wouldn’t be able to help her, and decided how she should feel about me.” Ruka’s usual method, which Hiori already challenged last episode

“I want to change!” And through voicing her desire to change, Miyako’s own Fragment begins to clear. A mechanical reflection of how articulating your regrets and failings can often make others feel less alone, less isolated and buried under the weight of their negative thoughts

I was wondering where I recognized Hiori’s voice actress from, and it turns out she actually plays Maquia from, uh, Maquia. Watch Maquia! Okada’s powers have only grown since she’s escaped the confines of TV anime, and Maquia’s one of her greatest works yet

“Tied down to the past and made to suffer through unnecessary feelings.” The villain’s perspective is somewhat sympathetic, but also oh-so-adolescent. Sorry girl, but the accumulation of loss and regret is a necessary aspect of life, as important in shaping our mature identities as all the happy times

“No matter how sad those feelings, how much pain and suffering they cause… even then, we can’t be the ones to decide for them!” Robbing Miyako of her negative feelings means robbing her of the possibility of learning and growing from them, as Ruka has now learned from her own regrets. If we never experience hardship, we can never grow into our most thoughtful, empathetic selves. If we deny our experience of suffering, we can never reach out to others who have suffered, in the way Ruka just demonstrated

This process is represented visually for Miyako, as she reaches into the imposing darkness of her memories to extract the precious jewels she treasured, the positive lessons she has gained

The blonde enemy Reflector introduces herself as Niina Yamada. Your classic chivalrous warrior type, utterly convinced of the righteousness of her cause

Ooh, I like this cut of Niina melting away in the form of lightning. The effects animation does seem to be this show’s best aesthetic trick

Interestingly, both blue and red Reflectors can prompt one of those memory flashes through physical contact. Momo’s opponent invokes a flash in Momo, making me feel like an idiot for not recognizing that Momo was actually the girl fighting alongside Hiori’s presumed sister in the first episode. So that’ll make for an interesting conversation

“Your case cracked, so we tried to fix it.” “You found me… it’s okay for me to be here.” Miyako’s gems, the symbol of her identity, here validated and protected by Ruka and Hiori

“Are you grade-school boys or something? Hand over those beads.” Miyako makes it about forty seconds before returning to her usual self. Fantastic

“About your sister. You can talk to me about her, if you want. You’re always eager to help others, but when it comes to yourself…” Ruka swiftly pinpoints Hiori’s core contradiction, while also offering a way forward, a path for actually engaging with your painful emotions

Our final reveal of the episode: Hiori’s sister actually switched from the blue to red Reflector side!

And Done

Excellent first battle, girls! This is clearly a production of limited means, but there were still some nice flourishes of animation throughout that first fight, though the direction and art design weren’t entirely up to the task of celebrating them. But that aside, this episode served as confirmation of many of our early assumptions regarding this whole Reflector system, with the conflict seemingly resting on the question of whether you attempt to embrace and work through your negative experiences with people you trust, or whether you isolate yourself, both from the feelings you dislike and the people you might share them with. It’s already clear that the red Reflectors aren’t really unified by any sort of common friendship or guiding principle – they are each alone in their own unique way, and I imagine we’ll soon be learning the reasons each of them chose to turn away from their feelings. Plus, Miyako’s joined our main pair! As long as she’s around and being her grumpy self, I’ll surely be having a fine time.

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