SERIOUSLY, GIVE HER A COOL DRINK

Kirakira Pretty Cure à la Mode
Episode 26 - My Own Review

SERIOUSLY, GIVE HER A COOL DRINK

Having spent the bulk of her youth in landlocked Paris, Ciel is obviously filled with ocean awe.

Aoi donning, like yours truly, her frogwoman gear (the Mediterranean here is not as teeming with bright colours as the Pacific, but still full of life)...








Oh... oh... c'est la vie...
How much in peace both Yukari and Akira seem!

SNAKE SNAKE SNAKE SNAKE SNAKE!!
While our OTP keep calm and carry on, their younger teammates are even more shocked.
Especially Aoi.

LITTLE BILBERRY: Master Noir...

Right, Kirarin...


They should have let Aoi handle the shaver as well... but, of course, this ice-cutting knife is a two-hand sword, and she can't have her left hand free!

Noir gave Bilberry the power to satisfy the dark loneliness within her

And, once Iru has finally had his thirst quenched, it's up for his mum to power him up as usual:
BILBERRY: KIRAKIRARU! Stained in darkness!
Noir Filling!

Looks like Iru got a sunstroke, which got even worse after downing such a cold drink that quickly...

Dreams... and hopes... (Yume wo... kibou wo...)
Let's la mazemaze!!

Parfait tells Bilberry that she doesn’t have to be alone




As usual in this cour, Parfait does the Finishing Move:
KIRAKURU RAINBOW!!

#AoiApproved

MY OWN HUMBLE OPINION:
What a fricking ice cave is doing on a South Pacific coral island is the least of our concerns.
Seriously, Bilberry needs a cool drink of shaved ice (blueberry flavour, what else?). Not any Xanax or anything ethylic, but a cool drink of shaved ice.
This episode right now in the hot August sun also made me thirsty for blueberry shaved ice. You know these times when fiction influences reality. Ciel literally poured all her heart into hers, while I purchased a cupful of industrial shaved ice... speaking of which, the chemistry between the PFM and the Technician is impeccable. Any Cielberry shippers out there aside from yours truly?



Ciel defending Bilberry from a very angry Iru, in true taking-the-bullet style.

Like a bridegroom carrying a bride over the threshold. Significantly, Bilberry is the "bride."

Reacting to Parfait's "You don't have to be alone" in such an awkward manner. Maybe because the only person Bilberry has ever shown any kind of love happens to be male, decades older, and evil through and through --not to mention her metaphoric deflowerment!--...
Maybe this season I have a beta OTP as well...
Parfait wants to eat the shaved ice together with Bilberry, even if they are enemies. Know thine enemy indeed. And our resident Ace also got her McGuffin trinket after saving the angsty Perky Female Minion's life and her spirits... this arc's Gotta-Catch-Them-All storyline is beginning at a great pace!
Anyway, Ciel/Kirarin did exactly what I would have done to this poor little sinner. Bilberry, like Shut, only needs a cool drink, a hug, and some reassurance. Right before a much expected identity crisis and the ensuing heel-face turn.
After all, seeing that her child self was an orphan streetrat until Noir picked her up and promised her to give her all his ai love (selfless love, like the one Akira Kenjo represents: it can be parental or sibling love), hence why Bilberry speaks so much of her ai love for the Overlord: because he's her guardian, because he adopted her, raised her, and cared for her (but were Noir's feelings honest?), and she reciprocates the warm feeling. He even gave her Iru as a security plushie, as a transition or comfort object. And she seriously appears to have a bad case of the Oedipus/Electra crossed over with Stockholm syndrome. The fact that her adopted dad shoved darkness into her little heart to satisfy her loneliness, and the words he said to her, it all sounds like something far more serious that an adult male can do to a helpless orphan girl against her will... Yes, it's a metaphor for something that begins with an R and rhymes with nape, right?







Furthermore, Noir makes Iru from the negative emotions he's so violently sapped from the poor little girl's heart... making the muppet literally their bastard baby.


Many Perky Female Minions have such a backstory about why they are addicted to garnering attention and always that outspoken, and so afraid of loneliness and being overlooked; if not literal orphanhood, at least parental neglect is often involved: Ty Lee, for instance, was the fourth sister out of seven, giving her an extreme case of middle child syndrome. Which makes me wonder if the relationship between Azula and Ty Lee is more or equally toxic than the one between Noir and Bilberry! Anyway, the latter employs a metaphor for deflowerment, which makes it even darker than Azula's sadistic childhood tricks on her equally young handmaiden.
Iru turning against Bilberry is also a masterpiece; much like the Grottekvarn that grinds salt on the bottom of the ocean since it wrecked the ship whose captain had overworked the giantesses who kept the mill grinding to make then greatly expensive salt. Or the Crane Maiden who, under too much pressure from a husband who has her constantly bent over a loom weaving silk, claims her wings and finally resumes her migratory avian existence. Or Frankenstein's monster turning against his maker --both the maker and the monster are known as Frankenstein, so I had to establish that they are different characters in a really dramatic conflict against one another--. Simply put it, Iru has had enough.
It was nice to get Bilberry's backstory as well as Giulio's. Now the past of Glaive, Elysio, and Noir himself remain to be seen throughout the course of the series.

We also got this scrumptious OTP moment:

The girls end up mistaking a vine for a snake. They all react except for Yukari and Akira, and then you get Akira’s brilliant reaction to having almost everyone hide behind her. 
Seriously, in that little incident you two look like a husband and wife...


IN THE NEXT EPISODE (27):

It's not Sziget or Rototom, but still a welcome one...
this festival in which Aoi'll outshine the August sun!!

Under the bright corn moon, Elysio makes sudden advances...
Be wary, Miss Tategami, so prone to taking chances...