[barnstenchfartface]

It's not something you touched on at all, I imagine because it's just mostly dumb and not worth devoting any mindspace to, but a year after this episode's airing I still can't get over how stupid the traitor in this traitor plot is portrayed here. Where Chigusa alleges that Fenix is the Bigger Bad, and so links up with the Deadmans...one would think out of some misguided sense of necessity, but at the same time she's become a true believer for no reason? Like, Fenix being secretly bad doesn't mean the Deadmans are secretly good, they're very open about also being evil. She asks Olteca for his motivation and he just goes "I'm the smartest boy in the world and I deserve to rule the world!!!" and her answer is "omg your so right." It's such fucking nonsense and it makes any attempts to make her getting backstabbed or Hiromi's feelings about it land fail entirely.

This little Hiromi arc is by far my least favorite in the series and really poisoned my enjoyment of the characters within and Revice as a whole (mainly on my last rewatch). That's maybe more drastic than an episode like this deserves, but it doesn't get any better with time!