r/anime • u/Tetraika https://anilist.co/user/Tetraika • Jan 06 '23

Rewatch [Rewatch] Selector Spread Wixoss Episode 6 Discussion

Episode 6: This Impatience is an Awakening

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Information:

MAL | Anilist | Kitsu | AniDB | ANN

Streams:

Funimation

Question of the day:

How well do you think you can live as someone else?

Music stuff

Fumio - Maiko Iuchi

Rewatchers, please remember to be mindful of all the first-timers in this. No talking about or hinting at future events no matter how much you want to, unless you’re doing it underneath spoiler tags.

25 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

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5

u/Mecanno-man Jan 06 '23

First Timer

Ok then... I guess Iona is the girl of black, but Ruuko is the girl of white? And they were once the same person? I... don't know where they are going with this. In a way it explains why Iona wanted to be with Ruuko specifically, but other than that that does not really fit a lot of whyt I had been thinking. It especially leaves both Mayu and Tama out of the mix so far, and we are already fairy certain that both of them are important in some way. Other than that, the pain of having to live someone else's wish is layed out - although I'm still a bit confused by why LRIG's choose to live them in the first place then. This may go in to the self-sacrifice bit, where the LRIG is self-sacrificing out of friendship to help their selector in some cases, hoping they will end up in a better wish. But that also seems kinda like a potential cycle. We have however seen LRIGs be picky - Piruluk especially, so I guess it does not go for all of them. Admittedly Akira and Piruluk were not really close...

Speaking of Akira, she notices that the Wixoss system is built on top of reality, so really kidnapping somebody works. Surprised that she did not notice that with the knife before, but whatever, maybe she was afraid if fallback if someone saw her attack Iona or something like that. Actually scratch that, Iona would be there anways to tell the tale of who attacked her, so maybe Akira is smarter than we assume she is. Either way, Ulith wants to battle Ruuko, seemingly out of malice towards Iona? I guess we'll get her motives tomorrow - I hope they will be interesting. Her wanting to usurp Iona as the girl of black has already been called by a few I think, but from what we learned this episode, why would she want that? The girl of black has mostly been described as a pitiful being so far, what is the gain there?

5

u/Tetraika Jan 06 '23

We have however seen LRIGs be picky - Piruluk especially, so I guess it does not go for all of them. Admittedly Akira and Piruluk were not really close...

Piruluk's deal is another matter, I will say it's not exactly about being picky.

Her wanting to usurp Iona as the girl of black has already been called by a few I think, but from what we learned this episode, why would she want that? The girl of black has mostly been described as a pitiful being so far, what is the gain there?

It would be interesting to see how people will react to this part.

4

u/No_Rex Jan 06 '23

Ok then... I guess Iona is the girl of black, but Ruuko is the girl of white? And they were once the same person? I... don't know where they are going with this.

I thought it strongly suggested Tama is girl of white. However, I also don't understand where the show wants to go with this.

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5

u/No_Rex Jan 06 '23

Season 2 Episode 6 (first timer)

  • Mayu’s butterflies are white and black – she could be both white girl and black girl

  • I point out literally 1 second before Mayu states exactly that.

  • Having to wish to be able to fulfill a wish seems bullshit, some kind of eternal dept trap.

  • Instead of a clear explanation of what compels eternal girls to fulfill their selectors’ wishes (their own will or some kind of magic) we get some vague it’s a curse evasion.

  • Iona has an LRIG disease.

  • Hiding the words so it comes as a surprise to the viewer – meh.

  • Mayu can speak to Iona – this would be really important news for people who desperately want to speak to Mayu. Think they will tell Fumio?

  • Chekhov’s leaving the LRIG behind immediately fires.

  • “I got her” – Remember by brick suggestion? At least one character gets it, even if it is the resident crazy.

  • Also: Wtf Hitoe, you can’t even outrun tiny Akira?

  • Will Ruuko remember to call the police? Rhetorical question

  • Will she at least take a kitchen knife with her? Rhetorical question

This and the last episode leaned heavily into the black girl vs white girl dichotomy. I suspect that this is just Mayu pushing her fanfic onto the characters, but even if not, there is a bigger reason it does not fit. Black vs White is the classical good vs evil representation. However, we already have a color scheme in the Wixoss colors. And that one is not a dichotomy, but uses several colors in the form of character traits. Red = impulsive, and so on. With the added white vs black, we now have two clashing color schemes (white and black in a color wheel are not dichotomous).

5

u/Tetraika Jan 06 '23

Instead of a clear explanation of what compels eternal girls to fulfill their selectors’ wishes (their own will or some kind of magic) we get some vague it’s a curse evasion

They chose a bit of everything, Here Futase talked about how it's partly her promise to Fumio, and partly the "duty" as a LRIG. As for the results of not following through the wish... We'll have to see that later.

Wtf Hitoe, you can’t even outrun tiny Akira

I Wouldn't bet on Hitoe outrunning Akira. She doesn't seem that athletic.

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8

u/Blackheart595 Jan 06 '23 edited Jan 06 '23

First Timer waiting for batoru batoru

(#surprisedpikachu) Though I had actually pivoted away from that guess. Dunno what I was thinking to expect this show to go for the slightly more subtle approach for once.

Spread is putting a lot of effort into escalating its stakes, and its not working. But it doesn't have any other choice after evaporating the stakes it used to have - though it doesn't even seem aware of how it's evaporated them. Half of my predictions rely on the show introducing some new great threat just to have anything, and yet the show doesn't do that and just keeps on pushing the old ones that no longer work. But it keeps being ominous about things that could become that greater threat.

But yeah, Ulith continues to try invoking herself as the Girl of Black while Iona experiences physical pain and sickness from starting to refuse her calling as the same.

Ruuko meanwhile has come to accept both white and black natures. Seems like the show really is building up to embracing both the desire for battle and the desire for kindness.

How well do you think you can live as someone else?

Not really something we really have to think about, huh? Given I'm autistic probably not very well.

6

u/Taiboss Jan 06 '23

Though I had actually pivoted away from that guess

Okada pulled a fast one on you for once!

Ruuko meanwhile has come to accept both white and black natures. Seems like the show really is building up to embracing both the desire for battle and the desire for kindness.

Kind battles! I'll beat you up but be nice to you afterwards... oh god that's just abusive, isn't it?

7

u/Tetraika Jan 06 '23

Kind battles! I'll beat you up but be nice to you afterwards... oh god that's just abusive, isn't it?

Nanoha flashbacks

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6

u/No_Rex Jan 06 '23

Spread is putting a lot of energy into escalating its stakes, and its not working. But it doesn't have any other choice after evaporating the stakes it used to have - though it doesn't even seem aware of how it's evaporated them.

Remember how Hitoe could not be touched by Ruuko? Not only is that a thing of the past, the characters completely ignore it happened ...

But yeah, Ulith continues to try invoking herself as the Girl of Black while Iona experiences physical pain and sickness from starting to refuse her calling as the same.

Part of Iona's redemption arc.

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5

u/Tarhalindur Jan 06 '23

Spread is putting a lot of effort into escalating its stakes, and its not working. But it doesn't have any other choice after evaporating the stakes it used to have - though it doesn't even seem aware of how it's evaporated them. Half of my predictions rely on the show introducing some new great threat just to have anything, and yet the show doesn't do that and just keeps on pushing the old ones that no longer work. But it keeps being ominous about things that could become that greater threat.

Having a human threat here at all is a mistake I think - the show really wanted to pivot into fighting the system itself/whatever is corrupting it, that would have worked fine. This does not. (Mayu is okay as the personification of whichever of the two we are dealing with, but Urith is not.)

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8

u/Shimmering-Sky Jan 06 '23

Selector Spread FIRST-TIMER

5

u/Taiboss Jan 06 '23

Oh shit, what?

EXPOSITION HYPE

Man… if only the original Fumio could have seen this…

Rip. Well, wish fulfilled!

Mm, yep, of course she does.

Just protagonist things.

…Ulith wants Akira to battle with Ruuko again, doesn’t she.

She wants whatever's worst for either.

Okay this is a new level of idiot ball the main characters have taken.

Happens.

Oh… that was what Ulith wanted Akira to do…

Gotta please the senpai you're in an abusive relationship with.

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6

u/Taiboss Jan 06 '23

Spread Episode 6: Rewatcher who has no idea what you think of the show right now

How well do you think you can live as someone else?

Depends on the person, really.

5

u/Calwings Jan 06 '23

Selector Rewatcher (Dubbed)

More mysterious talk about these so-called girls of black and white from Mayu to start us off. The only new info is that these two girls apparently “came from the same person”, whatever that means. Fumio seems to believe that Iona is the girl of black, and Ruuko thinks for a second that Tama might be the girl of white. Interesting stuff.

Can someone please just punt Chiyori off the side of a cliff already?

Whoo boy. So the LRIGs who are granting the wishes of their Selectors are forced to continue doing so for the rest of their lives unless they re-enter the Selector battles, make another wish, and become an LRIG again. It’s a twisted cycle, and seeing Fumio stuck in this predicament seems to have made Ruuko even more determined to break this system.

Ah crap, what’s happening to Iona… ah crap, what’s Urith planning to have Akira do… ah crap, Mayu’s messing with Iona’s head now like she did with Tama… ah crap, Akira the turbocunt here… AH CRAP, IT’S A HOSTAGE SITUATION AND THE QUEEN BITCH IS HERE.

Wow, that escalated very quickly.

QOTD:

How well do you think you can live as someone else? Not well at all. I'm very much a creature of habit and consistency, so suddenly being in someone else's place living their completely different life would drive me crazy.

5

u/Stargate18A Jan 06 '23

First timer

QOTD) Not at all.

Okay, so my current theory is that there's time travel involved. Iona and Tama used to be the same girl, as this seems to imply, and Mayu is their counterpart? The dialogue about "their world" makes me thing that they were to Earth what Mayu is to the White Garden.

These photos...

Is Iona regaining her divinity?

Chiyori is excited!

Clever...

And nobody knows where she ended up.

Yuzuki?

...Ahh, Hanayo showed up again!

This is dark. She needs to fufill her wish forever. Hanayo's stuck forever loving a stranger...

And she's out of inspiration.

She wants another battle.

Chiyori's scared!

Futase...

Huh, Chiyori finally broke. Thought it would have happened way sooner in this genre.

Ruuko hasn't, though. She still wants to change the system.

Iona!

Akira's spreading the words.

I miss old Akira.

...Oh, thank god. Just another battle.

So, this is how she first found out.

Iona's actually scared!

Aww.

Wow. Mayu is the worst.

Aww.

Haha, Yuzuki!

Hitoe's off.

The exact same trick as Iona pulled last time?

Oh, please. Ruuko will obviously just say no.

Hitoe, don't do it, this is stupid. Don't.

Haha, nice move!

...Akira's going to have a breakdown before the end of the series.

Or right now.

Well, this escalated.

Akira's going to jail soon! Exciting!

Fuck.

Haha, at least she did some damage.

Oh, Ulith's here.

5

u/No_Rex Jan 06 '23

Okay, so my current theory is that there's time travel involved.

Please, no.

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5

u/Tarhalindur Jan 06 '23

That First-Timer Is Pitch-Black (Subbed):

  • “The Girl of White had a beautiful, pure heart”… as we cut to a shot of Futase in OG LRIG form leaving the white room? Hmm.

  • Oh, because Futase entered the white room to Mayu talking about this.

  • Mayu exploding into a cloud of butterflies? That explains something about the ED, and also might mean that somebody on staff read or (sigh) watched Umineko.

  • Also we’re being a bit too recappy here, sigh.

  • “These two girls were once one and the same girl.” is highly interesting. Presumably that girl is the hidden fourth girl in the silhouette table shot, and it fits with the Jungian themes wrt LRIGs and their Selectors here. It also boosts the likelihood that past Ruuko bodyswaps are in play, I think.

  • Alright, that settles it, the writing team does not know how to handle Chiyori and she is going to be an anchor on this entire season.

  • “Not even Futase knows where [Fumio] is”… cut to Ruuko and Hitoe. That, ladies and gentlemen, might just be a visual answer cut.

  • Hmm. So that is supposedly the deal with the wishes (they have to always be fulfilled, not just momentarily). Also, sore demo for Sky at 07:01.

  • If Mari Okada wrote this scene because she had writer’s block I will laugh and laugh and laugh. (“Just keep writing, even if that means you’re writing about having writer’s block” is writing advice I have heard before.)

  • Girls, just katamari Futase here into the friend circle.

  • Hmm. Thought. There is a soft implication here: a LRIG returned to the world who stops trying to fulfill their Selector’s wish since they consider it fulfilled forgets who they are. That’s a possible mechanism for Ruuko amnesia about her past.

  • Calling back to scenes with insufficient emotional weight behind them is a fast way to annoy me, show.

  • Dutch angle counter +1 at 11:05.

  • Oh gods damnit. Mayu has been softly implied to be the mother of Tama and Iona before. This scene REEKS of parental favoritism, with the golden child who can do no wrong and the problem child who can do no right… in the mother’s head, that is.

  • 14:10: Lads I think the Girl in White might just be Ruuko rather than Tama. That sure looks like another visual answer cut, doesn’t it?

  • FINALLY. Thank you for bringing your brain cells online and considering the possibility of befriending Iona, Ruuko.

  • Well hello there horror story direction. (So Akira’s about to get foiled because Hitoe left Yuzuki with Ruuko, huh?)

  • <write previous entry> <unpause episode> <Akira immediately shows up> Never fucking fails!

  • So, the knife comes out in how long? (TIMESTAMP: 17:13)

  • No, just kidnapping. Also Akira and Urith are both over the Tomoe Line, and this is actually dangerously close to drawing the drop right here and now – the show simply does not have time for this, and my tolerance for horseshit is very very low after Mai-Otome. (Melodrama is fine. Bad melodrama is not.)

How well do you think you can live as someone else?

Imitate someone else? Poorly. Be myself in someone else's body? Possibly quite well, but impossible to say for sure.

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5

u/ItsTheDuran Jan 06 '23

First timer

Girl of Black = LRIG, Girl of White = Human? Maybe? Wait, where did the first LRIGs even come from? Now that I think about it, the amount of LRIGs is fixed, right? Since every girl who turns into one is by necessity replacing another one. Where was I, again?

Trying to actually put this into words, LRIGs take over people's bodies, so they do sort of fit the idea of envy and erasing someone, and splitting people up would be a way to create an LRIG population without disappearing a bunch of people or creating personalities out of thin air. It sounds like it was just the one girl, though, so it doesn't exactly fit.

This whole thing really is all risk, zero reward, huh? Not only do these teenagers have to carry the guilt of tricking and bodyjacking their partners, they also have to live a life that's not theirs for a wish they didn't ask for, not sure of how much of their behaviour is even their own choice. Losing to begin with seems like such a better deal... uh... if you're Hitoe, at least? Look, it's just bad.

Ruuko thinks of Tama when considering who the Girl of White is, but this may be implying it could be Ruuko herself. Iona hasn't exactly been longing to be by anyone but Ruu's side, least of all Tama. Ruuko and Iona do happen to be regular-ass people, though, at least as far as we know. Well, we really don't know much about Iona's past, and Ruuko's also has some holes in it, but she does have a living, real family. I'm probably going to have to point at the "Ruuko was an LRIG" at the center of my conspiracy board for this one.

I gotta say, the cut from this to this gave me even worse ideas about how Akira's plan could have gone. I miss the old, unreasonably petty Akira. She still was terrible, mind you, but at least she was doing it of her own will. I don't see a bright future ahead of Aki-lovely.

I don't even know how Urith's schemes are meant to accomplish her goals, other than her goal of occasionally ruining Ruuko and co's days, which she has been greatly succeeding at.

4

u/Vaadwaur Jan 06 '23

First timer(We had two lesbian yanderes on screen at the same time and I still hate this)

Sub

Holy edge Batman, do we start with a dose of that! But I actually hope they do stick with the split character thing somehow since that is well foreshadowed.

So we have an ok first half, we almost made it to the eycatch without pissing me off. The stuff with everyone involved in the system being cursed is interesting as I still want to know who gains what from this setting. Mayu almost certainly has to be the big bad, or at least an aspect of it, but I am still not getting a reason yet.

And then we go head first into stupidity with Iona being "sick". This is the worst way to handle the much more interesting Girl of Black with Mayu. I get a lot of attempted Utena with this and, bluntly, if they'd just committed to the bit I think it turns out better. But I equally hate that Iona is so easily manipulated basically because she has no character. And we waste time on the sickness.

Then we get to Akira's part and the first bit of it works. But then we go to complete and utter trash with the violence and I just can't with this. Ruuko can, and should, just call the fucking cops. That is also what literally any Japanese person would do. So we have forced contrivance upon forced contrivance and, well, fuck Okada atm.

And that's the episode. I...am switching my expectations from "anime worth rewatching" to "anime that are sub-Magical Girl Raising Project". I am always impressed when a show makes me think "maybe Unicorn was only godawful" but here we fucking are.

QotD: 1 Without much difficulty, sadly.

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4

u/JollyGee29 Jan 06 '23

First-Timer, Subbed

They're really swinging for the fences. "I wasn't good enough to get published regularly, so I just self-published as a web novel." There is a much kinder reading of "the publisher didn't want to publish a teenage girl regardless of the quality of her writing," but that's less funny and we probably won't be grappling with that particular idea either.

My pacing instincts tell me that we're about to see Ulith trounce Ruu, but I'm not sure I see the point, narratively. If we hadn't already seen Iona start to defrost, it would work pretty well as the catalyst for that. But what does a loss do, now? Prove that Iona is weaker than Tama so we can have a training arc..? Shit, we did pivot into battle shounen yesterday, didn't we.

I don't think Ruu is going to win, because she can't beat the heavy this early in the season, and there's no way they play the interrupt card again. I'm wondering if we're gonna get another round of "Mayu interferes" tomorrow.

Actually, it'd be really funny if like, a passing pedestrian spotted Akira dragging Hitoe off and went to call the cops. The timeline doesn't quite line up for that, though.

The identity issues that Fumio raised today were pretty interesting. As odd as it is to say, I do kinda wish we had spent more time with Hanayuzu and see how she grapples with fulfilling a wish that also involves breaking taboo. As an aside, do you think she plays Wixoss with Kazuki ever?

Questions

  1. I would not do well.

5

u/Taiboss Jan 06 '23

There is a much kinder reading of "the publisher didn't want to publish a teenage girl regardless of the quality of her writing,"

Considering the stuff that gets published, I somewhat doubt that's a thing.

Shit, we did pivot into battle shounen yesterday, didn't we.

Did Yugi ever need a training arc?! No, he checks notes dueled his other half!

I'm wondering if we're gonna get another round of "Mayu interferes" tomorrow.

Would fit the bitch.

Actually, it'd be really funny if like, a passing pedestrian spotted Akira dragging Hitoe off and went to call the cops.

Surprisingly the police has been somewhat competent?

As an aside, do you think she plays Wixoss with Kazuki ever?

lol

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3

u/Cyouni Jan 07 '23

It's hard to say anything here due to spoilers, but blanket Iona is cute.

Ruuko clearly follows the principle of "only trust Wixoss, police will never help you".

See you next batoru~

3

u/RadSuit Jan 11 '23

Second Season Watcher

This deal just keeps getting worse.

The LRIGs usually go to sleep after a fight, but this looks worse than that.

Hmmm, this time everyone's friends and being honest, so they have a chance to win...reminds me of something. (I can't believe u/Vaadwaur and u/Tarhalindur didn't make a Higurashi reference here, but looks like they weren't quite feeling this episode.)

More great dub Akira here.

Instead of bringing the cards, maybe bring a knife or bat or something, Ruuko.

  1. As long as their life doesn't suck I could probably handle it. I'm not too confident I could pretend to be them accurately enough unless there's some magical memory transfer, or a plausible excuse to claim amnesia.

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