A SUNNY MORNING

 A SUNNY MORNING

A Swedish Summer Idyl by Evert Taube

Translated from the Swedish by Sandra Dermark

on the 23rd of July MMXXIV

********************

The sails flutter in ocean breeze against the pier,

around the masts the squawking of seagulls you can hear...

The air's scented of rowan, flowers bloom in the glen...

It is a sunny morning in Northern Bohuslän!

It is a sunny morning in Northern Bohuslän!

******************

A maiden with a bucket we in the woods hear sing...

She's going forth alone to fetch water from the spring...

She hears a young captain's call: "Why are you so divine?"

SHE: "I only drink spring water, no spirits, beer, or wine!"

"I only drink spring water, no spirits, beer, or wine!"

*****************

HE: "Come here my little maiden, my darling, get on board!

You'll learn all knots and sailing terms on our own accord!

What can on terra firma a maiden like you learn?

You'll know who is my ladylove, to whom I shall return!"

"You'll know who is my ladylove, to whom I shall return!"

***************

SHE: "I know and everyone so, don't fool me come what may,

I know down south in Marstrand town, there lives your fiancée.

She sits always in front of a typewriter, on her own,

and if you wish to call her, well, here there is a phone!"

"and if you wish to call her, well, here there is a phone!"

****************

HE: "How could you be so foolish, really, my little maid,

believe I'm setting southward course for Marstrand, have I said?

Then you're, in truth, a fool, Miss, for this whole island knows

the name of my true ladylove to whom my heart life owes!"

"the name of my true ladylove to whom my heart life owes!"

******************

HE: "Who could it be? Riddle me this, whom I'd give a ring?

The maiden who went out for water to the woodland spring!

And if she from her bucket should give me the first drink,

the nectar of the gods would even be worse, I would think!"

"the nectar of the gods would even be worse, I would think!"

*****************

SHE: "I know no one better than you, so that drink you'll receive...

but tell me whither you are sailing and don't me deceive!"

HE: "Well, this boat's setting straight course for the port of I Do,

and that is why I have come here, my true ladylove to woo!"

"and that is why I have come here, my true ladylove to woo!"

****************

The maiden who went out for water with a song to sing

saw suddenly the captain to terra firma spring.

HE: "I'm burning on the inside, but I must kiss you first,

and if I did not kiss you now, I'd die of heat and thirst!"

"and if I did not kiss you now, I'd die of heat and thirst!"

********************

It was in the green forest, by the bridge her feet got wet,

where the maid with the bucket the thirsty captain met...

He kisses her still with the same passion he kissed then:

such heat and thirst give maidens in Northern Bohuslän!

such heat and thirst give maidens in Northern Bohuslän!

UNA MAÑANA SOLEADA

UNA MAÑANA SOLEADA

Un idilio veraniego sueco

Por Evert Taube

Traducción de Sandra Dermark

el 23 de julio de MMXXIV

..............................................

Con la brisa marina, ondean las velas y

gaviotas y gavianes vuelan en torno al mástil...

Huele a serbal el aire, brota más de una flor:

¡en Bohuslän, es una mañana que hace sol!

¡en Bohuslän, es una mañana que hace sol!

************************

La joven con el cubo va cantando esta canción:

ELLA: "¿por qué la varita de avellano tanto ardió?"

Oye que alguien la llama a ella, ¿por qué bella es?

ELLA: "¡No tomo vino ni cerveza, hete aquí por qué!"

"¡No tomo vino ni cerveza, hete aquí por qué!"

*********************

ÉL: "¡Ven, súbete a mi barco, mi marinera sé!

A atar nudos y navegar, todo te enseñaré...

¿En tierra tú que puedes aprender, dulce primor?

¡Aquí también te enseñaré el nombre de mi amor!

¡Aquí también te enseñaré el nombre de mi amor!"

****************************

ELLA: "¡Eso lo saben todos, tú no me engañarás!

En Marstrand vive aquella joven que desposarás...

Se sienta detrás de una máquina de escribir,

y aquí hay varios teléfonos para ella y para ti."

Y aquí hay varios teléfonos para ella y para ti.

*************************

ÉL: "¿Cómo ibas a creerlo, eres tan ingenua tú,

que a Marstrand y a mi prometida voy, un poco al sur?

Estás equivocada, pues otra es mi pasión,

¡toda esta isla conoce el nombre de mi amor!

¡toda esta isla conoce el nombre de mi amor!"

****************************

ÉL: "Adivina adivinanza, ¿quién mi querida es?

La joven con el cubo, la que a por agua fue.

Y, si ella me refresca con lo que va a traer,

ni al néctar de los dioses se va eso a parecer!"

"ni al néctar de los dioses se va eso a parecer!"

*******************************

ELLA: "Yo no conozco a nadie mejor que lo eres tú,

¿a dónde tú navegas, al levante o hacia el sur?"

ÉL: "Al puerto del sí quiero, nos vamos a casar,

¡y por eso he venido aquí, te voy a cortejar!"

"¡y por eso he venido aquí, te voy a cortejar!"

******************************

La joven a la fuente, a por agua, ya llegó,

y el capitán a tierra por impulso saltó.

ÉL: "Primero quiero un trago, también te besaré,

¡y si no te besara ya, me moriría de sed!"

"¡y si no te besara ya, me moriría de sed!"

*****************************

Fue en la fuente del bosque, el puente fue a cruzar

la joven que avivó allí la sed del capitán...

Él ha saltado a tierra, la besa con pasión...

¡Tal sed dan las chicas de Bohuslän cuando hace sol!

¡Tal sed dan las chicas de Bohuslän cuando hace sol!

JOHAN DE MYLIUS ON "THE ICE MAIDEN"

While the Ice Maiden at the start of the story is first and foremost described by her deathly aspect, her self-reliance, and power to seize, hold tight, destroy, and drag down into the abyss, she will later in the story attain another, more supple (and supplent), form of appearance.
When Rudi has met his sweetheart and fiancée Babette, and his desires have therefore been given a new direction, he meets on the way home (the chapter, the fifth one, is titled "On the Way Home,") among the rain fogs up in the peaks, a maiden:
Right by Rudi's side there walked suddenly a young maiden; he had not paid heed to her until she could not be closer to him; she wanted to cross the mountain range as well. Her eyes had a power of their own; one had to see into them, they were so strangely crystal-clear, so deep, bottomless.
She offers Rudi to show him an alternate way, which he yet refuses, because it will lead him "to fall into a crevasse in the ice." She encourages him to give her his hand, so he can help her with their ascent, but that he does not want, he has no need for her help to rise - and he has said himself as well that she will rather make him fall into the glacier crevasse. When he has turned her back upon her and heard her laugh in the blizzard, he knows to himself that she has something to do with the Ice Maiden.
The awakening sexual desire contains in itself both the ascent towards Babette and the downfall into a deathly nature, a perilous sexuality, the temptation from the Alpine maiden.
She appears once more when Rudi, yet another time, is crossing the mountains, home from Babette's. It is when he has discovered that he has a rival, an English gentleman who is courting Babette as well. In Chapter the Twelfth, "The Powers of Evil," it is told that, on his way across the peaks, he feels completely ill and out of himself. Suddenly, he sees before his eyes a newly-built wooden cabin, which he has never beheld before,
and in the door there stood a young maiden; he believed that she was the headmaster's Annette, whom he had once kissed in the dance, but it was not Annette, and yet he had seen her before, maybe somewhere near Grindelwald, on the evening he returned home from the hunting contest in Interlaken.
Jealousy loosens the ties that otherwise restrain Rudi's sexuality, and temptation stands there in flesh and blood before him, with all its certainty and all its peril. It is the maiden from before (from Chapter the Fifth), for she says - quite surely, of the goats which she affirms that she herds up on the mountains - "not a single one do I lose, what is mine remains as mine!" This leads the thoughts directly towards the Ice Maiden, who, in the first chapter, "Little Rudi," said: "Crush, hold tight! The power is mine! [...] He is once more among the humans, he herds the goats on the mountains, climbs upwards, always upwards, away from the others, not from me! He is mine, I shall claim him!"
In the seductive persona of the Alpine maiden or the headmaster's Annette, the Ice Maiden pours out an intoxicating drink for Rudi, who wants to kiss her. But she wants something in exchange, his "engagement ring:"
he drank. Joie de vivre streamed into his blood, and the whole world was his, or so it seemed, why should he worry? Everything exists to enjoy and brighten us! The stream of life is the stream of elation, 'tis torn away with it, lets itself be carried away by it, it is exhilaration! He looked at the young maiden, she was Annette and yet not Annette, as little as she was the troll-like spectral presence, as he had called the one he had met at Grindelwald; the maiden here on these peaks was as fresh as newly-fallen snow, as soft and rounded as an Alpine rose, and as light as a fawn, though, at the end of the day, she was a human like Rudi himself. And he flung his arms around her, looked into her wonderfully crystal-clear eyes, it was for only a second that, explain, relate, put it into words for us - was it spiritual or deathly life that filled him? Was he uplifted or did he plunge down into the deep, killing chasm of ice, deeper and always deeper? He saw the walls of ice like a teal-coloured glass, endless crevasses yawned all around, and the dripping water clinked like a glockenspiel and besides shone so crystal-clear in bluish-white flames. The Ice Maiden gave him a kiss, that ran as an icy shudder down the vertebrae of his spine and into his forehead; he uttered a scream of pain, tore himself away, staggered and fell, and everything turned dark before his eyes, but he opened them again. The powers of evil had played their game.
Gone was the Alpine maiden, gone the sheltering cabin, the water surged down from the eroded rock wall, the snow lay all around; Rudi shuddered with fear, drenched down to the bones, and his ring was gone, the engagement ring which Babette had given him. His shotgun lay on the snow by his side, he took it up, wanted to fire it, it clicked. Ominous clouds hung like the fixed masses of snow in the crevasses; the vertigo was there, in ambush for the helpless prey, and underneath her it rang into the deep crevasse, as if a block had fallen off the rock, crushing and tearing at everything that attempted to stop its fall.
The sexual ecstasy of the instant is described as a downfall into an aimless and lawless sexuality. It is, simultaneously, a fall backwards into the traumatic near-death experience of his childhood. He has fallen home to the Ice Maiden's.
The "supernatural" scenes in the otherwise generally realistic story begin, as we can see from these aforementioned quotes, to create a pattern, a chain of linguistic elements and imagery, a layer of Leitmotive, which lead away from the realistic and into the symbolic layer of the narrative.
The maiden he met near Grindelwald had eyes "so strangely crystal-clear, so deep, bottomless." The same elements return as descriptions of the ice walls of the glacier crevasse that he believes he is sinking down into. A new element is added, the glockenspiel, which sounds up in the mountains like an "Alpen-Echo of the pealing of the church bells" (Chapter the First, "Little Rudi.") But here it is a glockenspiel of droplets dripping down into the abyss in "bluish-white flames," a synaesthesia of sound and colour, that strikes the reader due to its modernity. There is such an expressiveness in the metaphor that it reveals that decisive powers are playing their game.
Thereafter, Rudi will try to fire his gun, but find himself unable. It clicks. And the engagement ring is lost.
The Ice Maiden has seduced him with intoxication and sexual promises, but what he receives is a deathly kiss already before the final deathly kiss. The Ice Maiden, or whoever she might be, seizes him around his upwards-striving strength, but emasculates him, makes his shotgun useless. The kiss shoots through his spinal column and out into his forehead as wild pain, a phenomenon known from several ritual initiations which subjugate sexuality and repress it, letting it sleep into some kind of death.
Rudi's striving has reached its zenith - or its deepest abyss. The story's unfurling forth towards a goal, a kind of Bildungsroman at a smaller scale, is succeeeded by a prelude to the decisive instant, when, in the most literal sense of the expression, it is a matter of rise or fall.
It is the wuthering instant of intoxication - and it is the instant, full of happiness, which Rudi experiences together with Babette out on the island in Lake Geneva, on the eve of their wedding day:
"So much loveliness! So much happiness!" the two young lovers said. "There is nothing more than Earth has to give!" quoth Rudi. "An evening like this is a whole lifetime! For how long I felt my happiness as I feel it now, and thought that, if everything came to an end right now, if I were only to die, 't were to be most happy!"
This is the highest ascent, experienced in a single satisfied instant. And it is at the same time the conclusion, the moment of death.
For that is the instant when Rudi is spirited away by the Ice Maiden - back to the glacier crevasse in which he was born. His external life-story, himself being unaware of it, has been a long attempt to break free from the Ice Maiden, who wants to seize him and take him back to the cleft from which he was born. His life as a chamois hunter and mountaineer is a flight from the death that he was once torn out of.
The series of images that begins with the glacier crevasse and continues with the two encounters up in the mountains with the Ice Maiden in the guise of seductive young human girls concludes with the description of Rudi's death, when he swims out into the lake to fetch the boat, but is frozen through and through in the deathly cold waters, and sinks down to the bottom:
Cold and deep was the clear, bluish-green ice-water from the glaciers of the Alps. Rudi saw down into it, only a single glance, and it was as if he had seen a ring of gold fall, glittering and playing with the light - of his lost engagement ring he thought, and the ring grew bigger, widened out into a dazzling circle, and within in it shone the clear glacier; endless deep crevasses yawned all around,  and the dripping water clinked like a glockenspiel and besides shone so crystal-clear in bluish-white flames. Within an instant, he said what we might say ourselves with many long-winded words. Young huntsmen and young maidens, men and women who had sunk into the crevasses of the glaciers, stood there all alive, with eyes wide open and smiling mouths; and deep beneath them pealed the church bells of sunken villages; the congregations kneeled beneath the archways, icicles created organ pipes, the currents of the rapids were the organists; the Ice Maiden sat on the clear transparent bottom, she rose up towards Rudi, kissed him on the feet, and a deathly chill coursed through his limbs, an electric shock - ice and fire! One cannot tell the difference between these by such a short touch.
"Mine! Mine!" it rang around him and within him. "I kissed you when you were a little one! Then I kissed you upon the mouth! Now I kiss you upon the toes and upon the heels; MINE is the whole of you!
And he had disappeared into the cold, clear waters.
Everything was silent... the bells ceased to peal... the last notes were hushed with the glow of the red evening clouds.
"Mine you are!" it rang in the deep. "Mine you are!" it echoed up to the heights of the skies, towards infinite space.
Lovely it is to fly from love to love, from this Earth up to the Heavens.
A string was broken, a note of sorrow rang, the icy kiss of death vanquished what is due to fade; the prelude ended for the drama of life to begin, the off-key note dissolved into harmony.
Is this what you call a sorrowful story?

Johan de Mylius - Forvandlingens pris: H.C. Andersen og hans eventyr
Translated by Sandra Dermark

ONE FLEW OVER LITTLE SANDRA'S HEAD

There are animated films that throw in risqué Easter eggs for the older teens and adults in the audience. The kind of ambiguous randy jokes that get completely past the radar of the innocent. And my own childhood and adolescence were not entirely bereft of such innuendoes and double entendres that my twenty-something self can finally understand... Here are, of course, my top picks:

Lord Farquaad's surname
At first, I thought Farquaad (as in the villain of the first Shrek film) came from "far" and "quad", with an extra A for more archaic orthography. But nowadays I understand that it's a respelling of "f*ckwad..." Which has not stopped me at all to enjoy this memetic visual pun:



Lord Farquaad's Tower (and Napoleon Complex)
Speaking of Lord Farquaad, the first appearance of his castle of Duloc can be quite imposing, what with this overly tall white tower rising up to pierce the skies. Which prompts the titular ogre to ask the following rhetorical question:

"Do you think maybe he's compensating for something? He he he... he he... he he..."

He's a pretty short midget, that adult lordling... and at first I thought, in my early teens, that the green fat ogre was referring to His Lordship's overall height. But nowadays I can take a gander at the fact that he's also alluding to another Napoleon complex of Farquaad's... ie to the dimensions of what lies down there!


Snow White's Arrangement
Speaking of Shrek (1), Lord Farquaad consults a magic mirror for advice about potential princess brides and Snow White, comatose in her glass case, is among the candidates... The mirror, which the Wicked Queen must have given to Lord Farquaad for not needing it anymore after disposing of her stepchild, replies:

"Although she lives with seven other men, she's not easy. Just kiss her dead, frozen lips and find out what a live wire she is!"

What was so special with Snow White living with seven guys (be they dwarves or bogatyrs)?, my child self asked herself. I was so innocent back then... but I would understand what was so special and so risqué about the arrangement, and about kissing a girl in a coma, at 17-18 at last.


The Uvula
Monster House was an exciting crowner for a Halloween in my teens - particularly because the titular character was a sentient abomination that devoured everything that moved. Three tweens trying to stop said kaiju from rampaging around Samhain in autumnal suburbia by simply going inside. Knowing what a sucker for Fantastic Voyage Plots I am, I was naturally in. Let me first tell you a little about the cast: Jenny is the girl of the group, a redheaded preppy in Prufrock-Prep-like uniform (my headcanon: it IS a Prufrock Prep uniform) who obviously fills also in the role of the superego and the Smart Girl of the team. Chowder is the chubby blond, and he happens to be, of course, the Nervous Wreck and the big eater who serves as the id, as comic relief (DJ is the leader, but he plays no role in this exchange). Once they have entered the maw of the monster, armed with loaded water guns, the boys target a glowing thing that hangs from the ceiling, taking it for the heart they have to quench, but Jenny thankfully stops them in extremis:

Jenny: Well, if those are the teeth, and that's the tongue, then that must be the uvula.

Chowder: Oh, so it's a girl house...

Jenny: [looks at him] What?

As explained later on, the host of this Fantastic Voyage Plot, who reincarnated as the Lovecraftian titular kaiju, was female (Mrs. Constance Nebbercracker), so Chowder was right all along. But why did he sex the monster because there was a uvula in her throat (I mean; guys have uvulae as well!)? In my twenties, about a lustrum later, I finally have got that he mistook redheaded preppy smart girl/smurfette Jenny's mention of "uvula" as "vulva." Not to mention the fact that the little dangly thing in our throats looks a bit like the cherry in a beaver (ie the clitoris) ;)



RECTUM: EXIT ONLY
Speaking of uvulas, there was another uvula-related joke in Osmosis Jones that had an aspect I misunderstood, and another that got completely over my radar. Unlike in Monster House, the host of this Fantastic Voyage Plot is male... and also straight (this latter detail has relevance to the joke that got over my head):

Ozzy: What the heck is a uvula?

Drix: It's that little dangly thing that hangs down in...

Ozzy: Boxer shorts! Okay, here we go! (drives down a road leading to "Rectum - EXIT ONLY")

Drix: Not THAT little dangly thing, the one in his throat!

Ozzy: (Beat) I knew that. I knew that.

At first, the "little dangly thing" I understood to be the private parts... when it actually most surely referred to haemorrhoids. Something I would not understand until I got my first haemorrhoids at 20, as a university freshwoman (and yes, haemorrhoids, like uvulae, are a unisex feature!). So that is more of a semantic mondegreen. What flew COMPLETELY OVER my little coppery head was the sign for directions towards the rectum.

Now I knew what a rectum is, I have always known what a RECTUM is, but what I did not understand was the EXIT ONLY part. I mean, I know what the function of the rectum is, but it took me a decade as well to finally get that some guys (girls as well) like it when things enter their rectum. Particularly hard and tubular and more or less phallic things, from willies of flesh and blood to carrots or cucumbers. Even sharp things like knives or cattle prods or fishing hooks... And, since the rectum in this film is signalled EXIT ONLY, it means that the host only uses his rectum to store feces and defecate. Not for any arousing purposes. Long story short, that he is straight (and, seeing how slovenly and vulgar he is on the outside... no one would ever think he was queer, right?).


The Honeymoon Earthquake
The Aladdin trilogy reaches its amazing conclusion with The King of Thieves, in which we find out that Aladdin's father is still alive, that he is the titular leader of the Forty Thieves, and that they are currently after the hand of King Midas, which still retains the golden touch.
Unfortunately, this all breaks out right in the middle of the royal wedding, with Aladdin and Jasmine about to be pronounced husband and wife right when the Forty Thieves storm into the palace and the ground begins to quake with their vigorous strides. The Genie, who is obviously the best man...or rather, the best jinn at the wedding, makes this unforgettable quip:

"I thought the Earth was not supposed to move until the honeymoon!"

Like... can the Genie's cosmic powers really predict seismic activity? At first, as a kid, I thought he was foretelling a literal impending earthquake, but now, lustrums later, the quip has finally found its intended risqué meaning.


Lightyear Spreads his Wings
In Toy Story 2, we finally got to know Woody's female counterpart Jessie: a more active female figure than Mrs. Potato or Bo Peep, right? And Buzz Lightyear appeared to be as impressed as I was as a tween, spreading his wings as he gasps in response to Jessie's acrobatics.

At first, I thought it was due to surprise. "Buzz is surely flabberghasted when this cowgirl nails her landings." But now, seen through through twentyish eyes, it appears that something else also rises... For even space commanders have erections, don't they?


Sexing the Flower
In the dub of Bambi into Spanish, Flower is a girl skunk, both "flor" and "mofeta" being feminine in Spanish. Rolling among flowers and having long lashes just supported that. Which makes her a lesbian when her first kiss is stolen as an adult in the springtime scene and she turns stiff and shocking pink. In the English original, Flower is a straight male. But still he turns shocking pink, instead of scarlet, at first kiss.

At first I thought that the skunk was merely being stiff out of shock and fluster... but, like the Lightyear wings scene above, be this character a straight male or queer female, I see now as a young adult that Flower cannot be more aroused.


Evinrude's Power-Up
As a toddler, I just loved The Rescuers. Especially when the bayou gang comes to the rescue with all those fireworks... I was impressed by the fact that the bayou's married couple of redneck rodents, the husband even more than the wife, loved to quaff a drink that made them breathe fire...
When the Rescuers' method of transportation, the dragonfly Evinrude, is sent as a messenger for reinforcements to the redneck village, the journey across the bayou has obviously taken its toll, leaving the poor little thing exhausted. Evinrude collapses after entering the rodent couple's home through the chimney, and, compassionately, the wife pours a single drop of the firebreathing drink down his throat. The results are amazing:

Evinrude is back up on his wings, shooting off like out of a cannon as he buzzes a reveille call!
At first, as a kid, I thought it would be some reconstituent... like, the reason why a hyperactive child like Yours Truly was forbidden to drink Coke and coffee. But nowadays I am pretty sure that it was a far more intoxicating draught... right?


Don't you eat that yellow snow?
The part of Monsters Inc. with a Himalayan setting was one of those barren wastelands that tickled my inner Sturm und Drang romantic. Aside from the barren wasteland, there is also mention of a local village (of humans), not to mention the surprisingly cozy ice cave of the Agreeable Snowman.

However, what puzzled me was the looking disgusted at the Agreeable Snowman's cones of yellow snow. I supposed, as a kid, that they were lemon cones (and yes, the Agreeable Snowman makes lemon cones; it's a really thirst-quenching flavour, and he could frighten the village fruitseller to obtain his daily quota of lemons, which are pretty scarce in the Himalayas).

Yellow snow is typically known for having been urinated on. The Yeti recovers by saying that it's lemon. Oui oui, you were such an innocent li'l girl a decade ago, eh, Sandra?

ONE BAD BILBERRY - PART ONE

Kirakira Pretty Cure à la Mode
Episode 31 - My Own Review

ONE BAD BILBERRY (SPOILS THE WHOLE BUCKET)
PART ONE

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it Supergrover?

No, it's the Glaivemobile!

As you can see, Kirarin (with enough calories under her belt) can change directly into Cure Parfait, without going through a stint as Ciel!

Of course Chocolat gets curbstomped... maybe she was already burned out still after last battle (an exhausting one!)...

...which gives Parfait the chance to counterattack, which we had barely seen.

When was the last time they did Sweets Wonderful à la Mode?

Why is our resident sissy villain looking at her like that?

I hope it's merely gloating... Glailysio is the pairing I prefer, but I wouldn't mind Elysio being bi. What would tick me off would be him being straight to the bone.

Get a little more torn in the maidenhe- I mean, stained in darkness. 

Scream, writhe, until your strength wears off and you surrender completely...

Noir gives Bilberry the power to wager everything she is.

Like Rhiannon in Blindsprings, here we have a dandere/perky female minion who has transcended the border from cute and psycho to utterly psycho. Such sang-froid is unusual in her.

Anyway, that "selfless love" for her guardian, who rescued her from destitution but metaphorically deflowered her, hurts. Bilberry can definitely give Harley Quinn a run for the money in this department (even though Bilberry's love for Noir is ai, while Harley's love for the Joker is koi).

BRACE YOURSELVES, PRECURE, AUDIENCE, BILBERRY AS WELL...

MY OWN HUMBLE OPINION:

Aside from the coda, the only saving Glaive... I mean saving grace of this episode is this universe's counterpart of Brian Blessed (if Kumojaki is in another continuity, does he count as well?).

So I gave this arc/cour finale the title of One Bad Bilberry because... you see. If not, read back above. Once more, like when it came to Lock's character arc, we have an already empowering moment at this point at the start of the finale to raise the stakes... even more when all the McGuffins have come together as one. In the next episode, we will hopefully learn more about the Big Good and maybe Noir's backstory as a few hints -- let us hope that the excitement is as justified as for Hard Lock 

Hallelujah two years ago... 

The next episode will have some time travel into the past and the Kirakiraru Creamer will be made out of all these McGuffins... 

Definitely, the plot thickens.

IN NEXT EPISODE (32):