That Invalidated Vow

Key Events

A WIXOSS party is being held and Ruko, Hitoe and Yuzuki decide to attend together. Yuzuki hopes to find some other selectors whilst Ruko and Hitoe want to have some fun.

At home Hitoe’s LRIG, Midoriko, warns her to get rid of her as if she doesn’t something terrible may happen and her wish has already been fulfilled. But Hitoe refuses.

On the day of going to the party, Hitoe is early and gets caught up in a battle before she meets up with the others. She loses meaning three losses in a row. As explained later by Hanayo this doesn’t just mean losing your rights as a selector, this also means that the dream you wanted becomes tainted. The example she used was that if you wanted to become rich then you would lose everything and plunge into poverty. Hitoe lost and now becomes unable to make any friends, whenever anyone who has potential to become her friend gets near her, her body will react in pain. Also all her memories as a selector is gone and tainted wishes can’t be undone.

Due to her not being herself and not wanting to admit her feelings, Yuzuki and her brother’s relationship is slowly slipping away.

Later, alone at a restaurant, Akira manages to find Ruko. It seems Akira knew what would happen if you lose three times. She explains that the first battlefield she entered wasn’t her own. It was a battle between Iona and another selector. The other selector was in was sick and had already lost twice. Iona didn’t hold back and won. After that the other selector suffered a stroke and most likely died.

Akira then proceeds on insulting Hitoe and how useless she was. Unable to take it, Ruko decides to battle her to make her apologise.

Thoughts

With the amount of times I’ve talked about death being something everyone would understand, the anime finally went there. Though indirectly for the main part, but we get the point, it’s detrimental to lose.

Is it just me or are some of the BGM for WIXOSS similar to vanguard…? I thought parts near the start of the episode sounded somewhat familiar or do I have too much tax in my brain at the moment to think properly…?

I like how this episode built up, it was good suspense building at the start where not much was revealed. This made me wonder if the whole atmosphere building yet no clues thrown out would continue, luckily clues were given that something was amiss if Hitoe continued keeping Midoriko. Finally, the big consequence of losing came into light and I’m pretty happy with it. It looks like the LRIG’s are reluctant to talk about it, probably because risk adverse people may throw them away if they find about this massive drawback. And who wants to be thrown away right? I can understand them wanting to hide this secret. But because they hide it, most people will probably only know about the ‘lighter’ punishment of not being able to achieve your dream through this method, which as I’ve said before isn’t particularly bad, more of a nothing to lose situation. So it’s very likely people would wish for something that is most important to them. And I believe anyone can understand now that having the most important thing to you become tainted is a very detrimental thing to happen. Losing your memories as a selector probably isn’t as bad, but still something as well.

I wonder why Midoriko didn’t come clean with Hitoe about the consequences. It seemed she was fully ready to be thrown away and knowing Hitoe’s inability to duel properly she was bound to lose in the next one especially if she didn’t know about the consequences as she believed she had no reason to win. I suppose her fondness for Hitoe and not wanting to leave played an important part of her not revealing the truth. Seemed like her resolve was solid, but it probably wasn’t.

Speaking of throwing your LRIG away, surely it can’t be that easy to get out of it right? That seems too easy of a get out of jail free card. I find it hard to believe that there’d be no repercussions to that, otherwise people who don’t want to risk it will chuck the card away at their second loss. The only thing that would stop them is their LRIG not telling them. But even so, Midoriko was very close to saying something so surely there must be a penalty.

What I’m wondering again is why did Hitoe accept the battle? Could’ve refused to fight knowing that she doesn’t need to anymore right? Unless it’s like in Pokémon games and you need to fight if you ‘lock eyes’. Which would explain a lot like not being able to run away from Akira because you can’t refuse a duel. Would make more sense to how Ruko got dragged into a duel when Yuzuki said open even though Ruko had no idea what was happening.

It was actually quite depressing this episode. Hitoe was so happy, only to be shot down into despair. I liked it, Not that I’m sadistic or anything, but if it wasn’t sad the anime wouldn’t be doing what it should be doing.

Some final comments, I think this may be the first TCG anime where after 5 episodes in, I still have no idea how the game itself is played and still probably won’t in the near future. I would read up on it, but as I’ve said before, spare time is not something I have at the moment. But I will once my exams finish, I believe the anime will still be running then, 5 weeks later that is. So that’s fine, if I don’t understand it by the 9th episode, I will by the 10th or 11th, depending on when I read up on it and when the episode airs. Also I wonder what part that building has to play in the story. It’s been mentioned too many times that it has to be related somehow to everything. And also, I wonder if we’ll see the person who beat Hitoe. I would like to, and I wonder if it was Iona.