If you like Kirika, bondage, or fanservice, you're bound to like this episode (pun not intended). I think we've approached the midpoint in this arc, with the arc ending the next episode, and finally with school festival hijinks for the finale. Overall, I felt this episode was quite good, because Kirika is probably my favorite character on the show and that they pulled some sneaky misdirection.
After Alice dropped the mysterious "I'm the culprit" line last episode, there have been homicides happening, clearly sending a message to Fear. The only logical person who might have done this would Alice right? Maybe. What surprised me was Konoha's other persona during their short scuffle with Alice. It's just my opinion, but I think Konoha is probably the most boring character on the show. However, I really liked the badmouth blue-haired version of her. Does she become like that when she takes off her glasses?
Clearly, the star of this episode was Kirika. Back in the first arc, we already found out that Kirika possesses two cursed tools. We knew that the drawback of the bondage gear was that she'd die if she took it off, but we only knew that Kurokawa Karen could be used as a weapon. It turns out that the negative effects of "KKK" is to give its owner compulsion to cause physical harm. Instead of doing it to others, Kirika does it to herself because of how well her two cursed tools match up. Being Kirika is suffering.
It makes me wonder if this was actually what the "blackmail" was referring to. Sure this could be embarrassing to let Haruaki know about it, but it's really not that bad. Could the math teacher be referring to something else when he called her in the beginning of the episode? Nevertheless, I think this confirms that Kirika would probably choose Haruaki's crew over the Lab.
And finally the twist. Who would suspect a loli with such a cute voice to be the killer? After Alice told them to find out what the victims have in common, the group concluded that they all visited Kuroe's barbershop at one point. I really think that this is a red herring. Alice was the one who told them to look for things they had in common, which is probably true, but they found the wrong thing in common. Remember when the classmate was talking about the first murder? The report said that there was an accessory next to the body. Now take a look at the next two screenshots:
Both the victims were wearing crosses. Well, who else was wearing a cross, has a cross shaped weapon, and had the imagery of a cross over her head? It's Alice. For whatever reason, she's misdirecting them. Originally she was pursuing Kuroe, so she must've knew something about that hair absorption thing. Then she used that in her plan to maybe cause some infighting and take Fear in the mix up. For the next episode, I predict that there's going to be a confrontation with Kuroe, with them ending up defeating Alice together.
-Bern
