We got a Tohru episode here, folks!

(Spoilers in this review) 

This week, Tohru gets to learn more about humans over three different segments.

She observes Kobayashi at work (while using cloaking magic) and notices that humans work together in order to achieve goals that would otherwise be out of their reach. However, she still insists that dragons are better since they can easily destroy human society. It also turns out that Kobayashi has a crappy boss who pushes his own work onto Kobayashi, so Tohru continues to trip him over and over out of rage.

Kobayashi calls out to the invisible Tohru after work, claiming that she could sense Tohru there. The two have a brief heart-to-heart where Tohru admits to wanting to know more about Kobayashi. As they walk home, Kobayashi thinks back to the words of a co-worker, who said that Kobayashi seems happier these days. Kobayashi also tries to remember how she was before she met Tohru, but is content to say she’s forgotten all about that. That line, as well as this entire scene of her walking home side-by-side with Tohru, signifies to me that Kobayashi has now fully embraced the fact that Tohru is an integral part of her life. So it doesn’t matter how Kobayashi was before Tohru came into her life – Tohru makes her happy and she finds her presence both comforting and natural.

The second part has Fafnir declaring that he’ll also reside in this world. While Kobayashi tries to walk him through the complicated process of finding a place to live (living in the mountains wasn’t working out since humans were reporting sightings), Fafnir observes that Tohru has become too similiar to humans and wonders if she can even kill humans once she returns to her original world. That really struck me as interesting because Tohru has always been quick to look down on humans and to claim that dragons are better than humans. Tohru had even warned Kanna not to become too comfortable living with humans yet Tohru has really settled in with this “inferior species.”

Kobayashi answers that she’s never returning to her own world and that she belongs in this world. She understands that she’ll be more sad if she lets herself grow more attached to this world, but she thinks living in the here and now is worth the future pain (plus being with Kobayashi is a huge plus).

Tohru ends up asking Makoto, Kobayashi’s co-worker, to house Fafnir. Surprisingly, Makoto is okay with it and Fafnir wants to play more video games. These two will probably enjoy being with each other.

The last segment involves Tohru and Kanna becoming obsessed with ESP (after seeing a hack magician bend a spoon with ease) which leads to them going through some ridiculous training. While Tohru claims that she’s only chasing after ESP because dragons have to beat inferior humans in everything, Kobayashi personally believes it’s because Tohru actually really wants to understand humans, which is why Tohru is deseperate to learn more about the things she doesn’t comprehend.

That kind of paints Tohru’s observations in earlier episodes in a different light, doesn’t it? Tohru can’t stop herself from watching humans, but it only serves to remind her that she is, despite her appearance, not like them. Perhaps all of her talk about dragons being superior to humans is just her attempt to cope with that fact. All of this frentic ESP training, therefore, was because she thought it would help her bend a spoon like a human can (since she can easily bend a spoon through pure strength) so she can be more human-like.

Unfortunately, Kobayashi accidentially accentuates the fact that Tohru is not human by encouraging Tohru to focus on the things that only she can do (aka things that are impossible for humans to imitate). Tohru ends up feeling downcast and Kobayashi realizes she messed up, but Tohru is quick to brush it aside. Later on, she teleports and manages to interfere with another stage trick (this time, the trick involving a magic assistant teleporting between two closed boxes).

Oh, and after each segment we got to see Saikawa fangirl over Kanna. A young girl should not be putting her ahegao face on display so often (she ends up doing it three times this episode alone), but I guess we can’t blame her since this is Kanna we’re talking about.

Thoughts on this episode:

• So…since Kobayashi always comes home late and Tohru was watching Kobayashi at work, who picked up Kanna from school? Or does Kanna usually just walk home by herself?
• Kobayashi looks very different with her hair down, I have to say. The Kanna scenes in this episode make her look really cute, too (the way she handles chopsticks, oh my gosh). She doesn’t get to say much and she’s primarily in the background scribbling or reading, but she’s still adorable! She can even make Saikawa look forward to eating sweet-and-sour pork with pineapple, which Saikawa haaaates.
• I kind of already pointed out that Tohru seems to have conflicting feelings, but I admit I found it interesting that she shot down Fafnir’s declaration to destroy the world so quickly. Perhaps Tohru is actually more fond of the human world that I initially thought.
• Is every dragon going to get paired up with a human? Hmm…
• I actually really liked this episode. We get some indirect and direct peeks into Tohru’s mindeset, Kobayashi is more openly appreciative of Tohru, and Kanna continues to give me my fix of cute heart-warming lolis. We also get to see more of Fafnir, too!