Punch Line

Episode 6

By the standards of a series which has practically thrived on pairing revelations with new questions, this is a Big Reveal episode. Many recent or long-standing questions are answered while only one major new question is tossed out there. Admittedly, though, that one question is a doozy: is Yuta actually biologically a girl, as Meika claims?

That one gets tossed out there during a New Year's Eve party which serves as the more light-hearted lull between the dramatic action of the first part of the episode and the dramatic turn of events at its end. Events pick up with “Kenji” powering up with an aura similar to what Strange Juice uses, which was dubbed “Yubafying” last episode, and proceeding to kick some masked dude butt with the help of Strange Juice. The problem is that the masked dude can also Yubafy, and more powerfully and efficiently than either of the self-proclaimed heroes. The battle doesn't turn until Kenji calls out for Yuta to get into the fray – and lo and behold, he's the one who has the missing shaker of cinnamon from the end of last episode, just for this reason! With that Yuta possesses Rabura again and goes ape on the masked guy, finally putting him down for good. The masked guy turns out to be Ito's homeroom teacher, who has an unprofessional obsession with Ito and was being possessed by the spirit of terrorist leader Tsubouchi Qmay, who had worn out his own body because one side effect of repeated Yubafication is rapid bodily deterioration. (Hence the reason for Mikatan's medicine, as seen last episode, and why he killed the girls who were bullying Ito.) The bear cub figures into this because its regenerative capabilities can offset the negative consequences of the Yubafication, so it's a perfect vessel for Tsubouchi.

But the revelations aren't done with that. The downtime sequence, which includes karaoke and fireworks and a bottle rocket loaded in a mecha suit's cannon (did you really expect anything less from this series?), reveals more detail about Meika coming to look after and train Mikatan and that the mysterious Ishigata probably died insuring Mikatan's escape. Couple that with the claim that Yuta is actually a girl and the terrorist leader's reaction to seeing the G branded on Strange Juice's neck back in episode 1 and it raises the probability that Tsubouchi is actually Pine (i.e. the boy with the P) in the flashback at the beginning of episode 4 and the possibility that Yuta may, in fact, be the other girl in that scene.

And that's still not it. The last couple of minutes of the episode confirm that Kenji is Yuta's body, but the big twist is that it is not being inhabited by a different person; it is instead him from a different timeline – or, rather, Yuta's spirit is out of his own timeline? Either way, the physical Yuta makes statements which suggest that he has traveled back in time several times in an attempt to stop the asteroid collision with Earth from happening. This attempt is a failure, as the asteroid that was going to miss the Earth has suddenly diverted to making an imminent impact, but spirit-form-Yuta can travel back to stop whatever sequence of events led to the asteroid being diverted. The episode ends with him returning to his battered body from the wake of the busjacking.

Whew. That's a lot for one episode, and it even finds a little time for some more light-hearted bits, too, such as some interesting musical selections, the suggestion that Mikatan might be sweet on Yuta, or Meika's parody-laden way of telling about her finding the young Mikatan. With most of the basic story now out there, the way the seemingly-disparate elements from over the past few episodes come together to form the full picture now makes sense, which fully justifies the patience of viewers who have stuck with the series in the hopes that something like this would eventually happen. And it does all of this while still giving the story some interesting avenues to travel; will we now find out what Yuta was doing in his room while his spirit was off with Chirinosuke, for instance? Armed with the knowledge of what will happen, how will Yuta try to do things differently, or will he just be fulfilling what the physical version of him was trying to do?

In other words, this has become a full-blown Groundhog Day or Edge of Tomorrow-like scenario. Granted, that possibility was always there, though more as a joke than the core nature of the plot. Now, however, that mechanism is being taken seriously, and that plumps out the story quite nicely.

Rating: B+

Punch Line is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.