So the point of the episode is the exposition regarding Guardian, Shizurucia and whatnot, but why did they have to mix in the stupid mystery Like, it wasn’t even a good mystery in the first place, so they should have just scrapped it for a more streamlined story.
Maybe if the script had been something like this:
- Shizuru drags Lucia to the club room. The atmosphere is understandably awkward. She hands Kotarou the tips from her mailbox (that thing was adorable btw). Cue exposition same as the anime. Lucia is visibly disturbed and tells them to not pursue this one then she storms off. Kotarou says he’ll talk to Yoshino and then we cut.
- Yoshino does the same stuff but doesn’t hand Kotarou the list, so he can’t progress.
- Left without an option, he turns his focus to Lucia and Chihaya’s fight. He goes down and talks to Shizuru. She tells him the entire story about Lucia’s powers, but it’s off screen, so the viewer doesn’t know.
- Using this information, Kotarou tricks Lucia into helping with a fake investigation. After that you can splice in Haruka scenes to get sympathy and show Lucia’s inner struggle between facing up to her problems and avoiding them.
- Santa Brosia scene could play out basically the same; you just need a place for Kotarou to explain that Shizuru told him.
This theory crafting is extremely hard without a grasp of how long scenes would be, but I guess that’s about it.
Other random ramblings then. I have a bit of a love/hate thing with the vocal Sunbright. It’s a cute, catchy song, but it makes reference to an awkward scene from Harvest Festa which I would rather not remember. It also slightly bothers me how they show Lucia firing her gun on the cue “Lock On.” It should end with her pointing at the screen after having found her target; she shouldn’t actually fire. There are arguments for doing it like they did, for example, how holding the gun up is a more recognizable pose then pointing it at the screen, but it doesn’t mesh with me.
Finally, Lucia’s battle outfit just looks silly. Why would it be a frilly dress? Shizuru’s outfit looks like it’s from Matrix, and Lucia’s outfits looks like it’s from a maid café. It preserves her silhouette, but I can’t help thinking that I’m just going to laugh my ass off every time I see it.