Just finished watching the third and final episode of the ‘Real Onigokko Rising’ Special and once gain Japan has done it! They have managed to surprise me! You see, I was this close to giving up on the episode half-way because it was heading in the direction that I so did not want and the main character was not my cup of tea when it comes to personality traits. I think I hated her with a passion at some point.

But Japan was like ‘HAHAHA the joke is on you’ because that ending took me by surprise! When I watched the trailer it gave me the wrong impression of the main character so when she started changing at around the mid-way my enthusiasm was dwindling by the minute! But thank the Lord for that ending!

Eh, I might as well say it now since I am sure you have seen it if you read the previous post. Despite the trailer giving an impression of a BAD END, the poster itself not painting a positive picture, this third episode was a GOOD END! In fact it was the best end out of the three (or two since episode one is irrelevant). Why is it a GOOD END? Well it was lacking something to get to that level – There was no kiss!

It is interesting really when you compare the second episode with this. In the second episode we got to have some great yuri moments throughout the story and yet that was balanced out with a BAD END – OniOni returned back into doll-form and Marika went mad after losing her. Or maybe they merged who knows.

Anyway we got real yuri but a BAD END in episode two and yet here in this final episode we got a GOOD END (by that I mean the ‘they live happily ever after’ kind of ending) but as a sacrifice, there was a lack of yuri moments throughout the story’s progression. In fact the most yuri moment happened way after the climax towards the end – it was the last scene actually.

This balance made me happy at the end of it all! I got to experience two different takes on yuri and both of them are not that bad! We could have gotten a BAD END with this episode and that would have cancelled out all the yuri because it would have made our main character nothing but a deranged girl! She wouldn’t even be considered a lesbian if she would have done what it would have taken to make this a BAD END!

But we got a GOOD END and our main character turned out to not be a crazy lesbian after all and actually a pretty nice girl. Instead the other heroine our character was crushing on turned out to be crazier than her which-Oh snap, that is a huge plot point. Best jump right into it then, eh?

Kitaura Ayu as Sakumi

Takeda Rena as Ayano

Our main girl Suzuki Sakumi is portrayed by actress Kitaura Ayu. The last time I saw her was in that heart-breaking friendship movie ‘Kimi no Tomodachi’ in which she starred alongside our girl Ishibashi Anna and the well known Yoshitaka Yuriko. Since then I haven’t seen her in anything. She plays Sakumi in this story and Sakumi is one crazy lesbian. Well, she is actually a good girl but you only learn this towards the end. Her character infuriated me so much especially in the middle way but by the end I was in love with her. I guess that’s what they call character development.

Meanwhile a girl that I am not familiar with, or maybe me I have seen her but did not register her since she seems pretty popular online. It was very easy getting pics of her. She even has a twitter account! Her name is Takeda Rena and she plays the girl that Sakumi has a major crush on – Satou Ayano. Ayano was the cutest girl in school and either way you looked at it, there was no way that she would have ended up with a girl like Sakumi who was by all standards, a creepy stalking lesbian!

Before we proceed I want to apologize. I wasn’t paying much attention through the beginning of the episode and nearly stopped watching mid-way because I am one of those that can’t stand certain scenes. I will get to that but what I am trying to say is that I am going to fly through this one because I was below 40% in concentration while watching this episode. It was also the last thing I watched before going to bed because I wanted to retain the details so I could write about it at work and thus could not get a chance to re-watch it even as I so wanted to after that ending! These days I am so busy I only have 5 hours of free time at most and since most of that is spent browsing the net then I have to watch the weekly Idol shows, I barely have any time left for anything. And so most of the episode went over my head and I only have the summary of the early stages in the story.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Is this Sakumi vision? ‘Cause Ayano is super glowy there!
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

The story is told from Sakumi’s POV and thus we follow her on this journey. From the very beginning you already know she is a stalker but you just don’t know to what extent. She is always watching Ayano during breaks, dreams of Ayano when she takes a nap and raids Ayano’s desk in the evening after classes are finished and the only people left are those doing club activities.

One time during one of her raids of Ayano’s desk where she found Ayano had left her eraser (I thin it was a eraser) Ayano walks into the classroom! Sakumi is of course shocked to see her but it seems that Ayano had lost her phone and thought she had left it in her desk. She comes over and searches her desk for it. She asks Sakumi if she had seen it but Sakumi says she hadn’t. For a moment I thought she was lying and maybe that was what she had grabbed earlier but it was too small to be a phone.

Sakumi has an idea where her phone might be though and they head to the toilets. It turned out that Sakumi had been right. Ayano’s phone was indeed in the toilets, rested in front of the mirror over the sinks. Ayano asks Sakumi how she knew but she just says that it was just a feeling. Inside her mind she tells us viewers that it was because Ayano always came here before heading on home! Of course she would know that, she is a stalker!

That was their first time talking! They even learn their names there in the toilets. Sakumi was so happy that Ayano had not only talked to her but had called her name that she was literally in heaven! Once Ayano had left, Sakumi turns to the storage room in the corner and pulls out a recorder! She had placed a recorder in the toilets just to get Ayano’s voice! How creepy can she get!

She listens to that recording of their conversation in the toilet over and over again just to hear Ayano say her name and also to remind herself that it was not just a dream to have gotten to speak with Ayano. That girl has it so bad that even the next day she is still listening to that recording on her way to school like it was some kind of prayer! Her world got that much brighter because that morning Ayano ran up to her, calling her name to gran her attention. I think Sakumi might have combusted right then! Ayano thanks her for before and then asks Sakumi to help her with her studies when she finds out that Sakumi is actually very bright.

They hold their lessons in the clubs equipment room and while they study, a boy walks in and invites Ayano to a get together, begs her because one of his friends wouldn’t shut up about her. Ayano doesn’t look very happy to see him. She says she would not go and the buy says he will tell his friend then that though she is cute on the outside, Ayano is actually ugly on the inside.

Yeah, I was ready to cut a bitch! But since I never saw him again, there was no need to dwell on him and really, this brought Ayano and Sakumi closer together so all was forgotten!

Sakumi tells her that she shouldn’t listen to him. She says Ayano is very cute on the inside as well. I waited to hear Ayano’s reply to that but she didn’t react to it. This was another flag that I missed but then again, everyone missed them I am pretty sure. The first flag was when Ayano walked in while Sakumi was at her desk the day before. She did not mention this or ask why Sakumi had been at her desk at such a late hour. Ayano wasn’t dumb, in fact I don’t think she even needed help with studying at all since she didn’t seem to be paying any attention to said study sessions. Oh my god, could it be that from the very beginning Ayano was…nah! It can’t be!

Anyway once the boy leaves and Sakumi asks what that was all about, Ayano drops the bomb! She says that she is being stalked! It has been going on for a while and she is getting scared to the point of being afraid to get close to any guy! She really does look disturbed and here I was like, oh man, it’s over! That was the shortest lived ship ever! There was no way that Ayano would not flip out when she finds out that it was Sakumi stalking her all along! But I kept watching because I wanted to see that moment of reveal.

Sakumi volunteers to help Ayano catch the stalker. She says that they have to think like a stalker in order to catch one and Sakumi takes them to the place she knows a stalker would keep his stash! They head down in the underground level and there is a locker there. Sakumi opens it up and inside is the Shrine of Ayano! There are all kinds of candid photos of Ayano from any angle and any place in school you could think of (Well, apart from the toilets). And in addition to the photos, there are accessories that obviously belong to Ayano. She came off as a very forgetful girl and all the things she had lost were there.

But more interesting, now that I know the whole story, was Ayano’s reaction, or lack there of! Any sane girl would be freaking out about read y to faint at the discovery but not Ayano! I really should have picked up on that but like I said, I wasn’t that invested at the time. She seemed more awed by Sakumi for finding the hidden place!

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

  
 
 
 
 

The two got even closer. Ayano was spending more time with Sakumi than her friends like she had been doing before getting to know Sakumi. The two even played the chase game that we discussed last episode. You know the one that I gave an example of happening to me when I had just hit the teens. Sakumi and Ayano had it too when Ayano said they should practice how to chase down the stalker. She told Sakumi to act like the stalker and run and Ayano would chase her. The look on Sakumi’s face at this was priceless! I was had my eyebrows raised and thoughts went into over-drive.

I was like, what if Ayano knew that Sakumi was the stalker? What if this game was actually real and Ayano had her friends hiding somewhere to jump Sakumi and make her pay? That would lead into the scene I saw in the trailer that spelled BAD NEWS and indicated to Sakumi going full on Jason on the girls’ asses! But it turned out to be a harmless chase game which of course ended up on the floor with limbs tangled and Sakumi trying to mount Ayano. I was like, did the person that wrote the second episode write this one too? But sadly there was no kissing or awkward tension and instead they just got up and continued on with the chase.

Speaking of the scene, there was this moment that had to have the worst, and I mean, the worst mistakes in filmography that I have ever seen! As the girls are getting up from the fall to continue on their chase, you can totally see these joint guards on their knees to protect them from hurting themselves as Sakumi tripped and fell taking the two of them down. But right in the next angle those guards are gone! How did the editor make such a mistake? That angle cut with the guards was only like 4 seconds and camera had the girls’ legs in full frame! There was no way they could have missed it! Why did they leave that cut in there?! I don’t know, it was just so distracting!

Ayano tells one of her friends that the stalker is real and her friend totally freaks out and thinks that maybe they too had been followed and had their photos taken. She was like what if the stalker had planted cameras in the girls’ toilets and all that. Really, she was acting like Ayano should be doing. Interestingly, Ayano defended the stalker saying that they wouldn’t go that far. Her friend was like, how did she know and why was she defending the stalker!

And yet another flag that I totally missed! This story was just so well woven that there was no way you could have figured out the truth without seeing the climax! Sure it had that big flow in editing but the story was solid. After watching the end you then realize all these little clues that were there that you totally missed when you think of them.

This turn in Ayano affects Sakumi quite strongly. If she loved Ayano before to the point of stalking the hell out of her, then now she loved her like before but x 1000! Yeah, that means she got super crazier! You would think that the happenings as of late would give her the courage to confess her feelings straight out to Ayano, especially since she has seen what a nice girl Ayano actually is, she instead goes into the opposite direction.

She return to her stalker self and one evening as she sat and played with Ayano’s desk, her feelings spill over. She gets out some paper and a marker and writes in the book ‘I love Ayano’ over and over gain and the more she write the crazier she gets. I really couldn’t stand this scene! And it went on for a while which almost made me drop the episode and go to bed because I thought that they had broken Sakumi and that would mean she would be acting worse towards Ayano who would then end up hating her.

But I endured! A noise comes from the corridors signaling that someone was coming. That brought Sakumi back to her senses and when she looked down, she found that she had been writing directly on Ayano’s desk! She had thrown the sketchbook on the floor sometime during her crazing! She looked shocked at that meaning she had done it without realizing it. The words where the same ‘I love Ayano’ but this time there was a signature at the end saying ‘from XXX’. I couldn’t catch the same and for a second I thought that she had written her own name. Sakumi didn’t even try to clean up, then, before high-tailing it out of there!

The next day Sakumi looks really bummed! She arrives late to school and it seems like she was planning on coming clean and telling Ayano that she was the stalker. She would then stop doing such things. It was around this time that I began to pay attention! Maybe there was salvation for Sakumi after all. A stalker that actually feels bad enough to confess? And right when her feelings were going out of control?

The deeper into the school she gets, things get weirder. The walls have been painted with the same words she hard written on Ayano’s desk! It was like something out of her nightmares and I thought for a second that we were seeing her dream. When she gets to class, even the board is filled wit the same words, the walls too and Ayano’s desk has a huge ‘X’ in red on! Ayano, her friends and other students stand around her desk wondering what the hell is going on. Blames are thrown around and a fight was looking about ready to break out but Ayano cried for them to stop! She looks ready to lose her mind, which happens when their male teacher shows up and tries to get closer to her.

I was thinking and I believe everyone else was, that this was all Sakumi’s doing. What if she had done it without knowing just like that bout she had at Ayano desk the evening before? Maybe she had stayed in school and went on a ‘I love Ayano’ rampage. But apparently she seemed to think she wasn’t the one that had done that. She makes it a point to catch this other stalker! There can only be one stalker and no one loves Ayano more than she! Sakumi falls back on the tip she has given Ayano before and thought like stalker in order to find this other stalker. When she goes to one of those stalker hiding areas, she finds a note from the other stalker calling her out to meet. Sakumi grabs an Oni mask, puts it on and goes to meet this other wannabe stalker!

 

 
 
 
 
 

Now Kiss!
 

 
 
 
Twisted Love ~ dum dum!
 

 
 

 
 

When she gets there, there is no one in sight. She takes a looks around and on one of the desk tops, she finds a pocket knife. When she picks it up, the other stalker enters the room. They are wearing the track suits similar to the one we saw Ayano and her friends wearing as they stood next to the branded desk of Ayano’s. The stalker is also wearing a mask and has their own knife. They raise the knife and Sakumi glances at hers. The other stalker runs at Sakumi who backs away. When Sakumi is cornered, the stalker swings the knife but instead Sakumi is the one that makes the cut around the stalker’s arm. This makes the stalker back off and then runs out of the room.

Sakumi makes chase and soon the stalker is cornered. The stalker tries to attack again and the tumble makes her lose her knife. She backs away and is trapped against a wall, weaponless. Sakumi gets closer and places her knife close to the stalker’s throat, indicating that she should stay still or else!

It was at this time that I start to get a very bad feeling! I think of that scene from the trailer and I am like, ah crap, here we go! Sakumi reaches forward to take the stalker’s mask off and voila! It was Ayano under the mask! My jaw dropped! I had been thinking of this taking a very different direction! I was so not expecting this. I didn’t even have a theory pointing to Sakumi being crazy! Well, I did mention that I wasn’t paying attention for most of the earlier parts of the story but still.

Sakumi takes off her own mask and what was interesting was that she was the only one shocked at the reveal! She is at a loss of what to think. She asks Ayano why? The answer was another shocker to me! From what I understood Ayano was angry because her stalker (Sakumi) had stopped stalking her. She tells Sakumi to keep on stalking her. She begs her to always look at her!

I sit there in my chair watching this scene with my mouth wide open and mind blank! What was going on!?! So Ayano was actually enjoying being stalked like that?! She was popular enough, she had a stream of friends, guys lined up for her and she had like the best looks in the whole school! She had everything so why?! I guess then that she was the damaged one in this third story. After all, Sakumi was turning out to be a good girl the more the story progressed! Her love for Ayano seemed more pure then!

Sakumi asks takes a hold of Ayano’s arm and takes a look at the cut on it. She asks Ayano if it hurt but Ayano says that it doesn’t. Then Ayano says that if Sakumi really is her stalker then she knows what Ayano was thinking. Sakumi nods her head and raised the knife to Ayano’s cheek and I am screaming wondering the hell she was doing!!

But then I took a look at Sakumi’s face and she didn’t look like she liked what she was about to do. She presses the blade deeper until it cuts skin and goes deep all the way to the bone! It was such a sickening scene! I thought for a second that Ayano! But instead Sakumi stopped and then embraced Ayano thus sealing their love for one another!

That is one twisted love! Not even KumiRei are this twisted! To choose to cut your face, the loveliest face in the whole school!!!, just so you could have physical proof of your love is just….

Magnificent! I ship it!

I can’t believe I was that close to dropping this half-way! That twist slapped my soul out of my body and back! I am definitely watching this again tonight when I get home! I just know I’m going to enjoy it infinitely better than the first time! And while we are at it, I will re-watch the second episode too, even though the experience won’t be as grand in that one seeing as it has a BAD END.

But anyway, as you can see there has been a lack of great yuri moments between these two apart from the confession and that chase scene. But we do get one and it is oh so lovely! This is the last scene too. Sakumi wakes up from a nap some place. She turns and on her right lies Ayano. She looks at her sleeping face with eyes full of love and the raises her hand and starts caressing Ayano’s cheek!

The camera did this thing where they showed Ayano’s face in a way that hid her cut cheek. I thought for a moment then that maybe Sakumi had dreamed of the whole thing! The first words that come of Ayano’s mouth aren’t encouraging when she says that she had just had a strange dream! But then she turns her head to look at Sakumi and the scar is there!!

I literally pumped my fist in the air and shouted ‘YES’! Everything had happened! And better yet Ayano had been awake when Sakumi was caressing her face!! And when Ayano gets up and extends her hand to Sakumi to help her to her feet and says ‘Let’s go’ and the two run off in a chase once again, I was ready to cry! Those two were an official couple and they were both alive by the end of a horror story!!

Heaven!

To think that a girl, a girl that was supposed to be a creepy stalker and wouldn’t have lived past the first 20min of any story actually ended up winning the Alpha girl in the whole school! This is a school that has boys, and Ayano has had boyfriends! This is a first ever! This is not like Shizuma-sama who was only interested in girls to begin with or Chikane who only had eyes for Himeko! This is a new feat!

Now that I think about it, this series just aired, like 1^st of this month and two out of the three episodes are yuri! Since the first one did not have any romance in it makes this 100% yuri! Could it be that Japan has finally embraced the power of rainbows? Are we in for a great deal of yuri projects from now on? I mean, there are a lot of novels and manga waiting to be adopted to anime and movies so maybe the talks have began! My God! What if the equivalent of comic book movies in west is LGBT movies in Japan!?!

Nah, but I can dream.

Anyway this ends the ‘Real Onigokko Rising’ SP and I only wish there was more now after seeing the different ways they tackled these two yuri stories. What would have been the endings for the other stories? Would it have been a ‘WORST END’ or perhaps a ‘BEST END’?

But I am satisfied with what I got. I am surprised that they actually even went there! Japan never fails to surprise me! Sure Korea might have won the year because of ‘A Girl at my Door’ but Japan comes in a very close second! Not only did they give us ‘Houkago Lost’, ‘Shishunki Gokko’, and these lovely and surprising Onigokko SPs but they also gave me the Blu-ray for ‘A Girl at my Door’. Actually scratch that – Japan wins the year! Sure Korea made the movie but Japan is giving it to me as it is supposed to be given so more points to Japan!

Now I only wish Japan actually learns from these Korean projects and breaks more barriers! Sure they have been giving us yuri over the years but we rarely get any GOOD ENDs and that fact frustrates me to no end! They are changing though so I have hope!

That’s that. If anyone wants the episode go to the previous Onigokko post! There is links to all three episodes.

See ya around