[Kurona]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamSword

Not only telling Rie that he doesn't care that she wants to ruin her crush's' wedding and replace said crush's' wife, but outright encouraging her to do so? Kind of a bad message to send! This ontop of him constantly belittling and talking down to both Ankh and Eiji

Yeah, I figured it'd be that -- but to me that scene reads less as outright encouragement, and more as "I dare you". Not "you should do this", but "you can -- but do you want to?". OOO is a show about desire, after all; so what I got from this episode is a situation where both Eiji and Ankh are not equipped at all to handle Rie's desires, but someone like Date who's older and more experienced in different things is. It's the show introducing a new, wildly different player when it comes to the theme of desire; with his first set of post-new year episodes showing that in full force. This is his style of doing it -- Eiji would talk someone through it and try to convince them it's not what they want, while Date does practically the opposite and has them realise on their own it's not what they want. He gets that in this sort of situation, it's a thing where you're only going to truly come to that conclusion on your own.

It's also an episode where an older man goes "Aaah, I see, it's a young girl; so obviously it's about love!", so it's not a favourite of mine by a long shot, but beyond that I can see the underlying themes the episode was going for.

As for belittling Eiji and Ankh... ehhh, not really? Like, he's pretty playful with Eiji, sure; but only in the sense of once again someone older and more mature being able to navigate emotions in a way Eiji isn't capable of -- and as we've seen laid out in many many episodes, Eiji is really not emotionally stable or in a right state of mind to think of things concerning himself. And when it comes to Ankh... well, that's just comedy revolving around two strong personalities clashing.