keyofnik: Everything in this escalating situation (1 2 3 4) has built to this. Rei has come to her friends for help (in her own, totally unclear Rei way) and has found the exact opposite. Not only is Usagi dismissing Rei, she’s actually making things WORSE. Rei’s response? Aggression. If you can’t help, Usagi, then shut the hell up. She flicks Usagi away, Usagi goes down on her butt, and then the usual “Rei-chan you’re so mean!” and tears. Tears which even Mako is like, “Dude, really?” about. But again, all of this underscores to Ami and Mako that it’s nothing actually important. (And let’s ride that, because while this episode is REALLY clever with Rei and Usagi, it sells Mako and Ami way the hell short to get them out of the way ASAP, and they need all the help we can give them.) Because they — well Ami, really, I’ll catch Mako in a second — is so used to this process, it doesn’t raise any alarms at all. Rei says something, Usagi blows it off, Rei gets pissed, Usagi cries, lather, rinse, repeat. Nothing to see here, move along folks. Now Ami I really really have a problem with in this episode. By this point, she should know Rei better than this. She should recognize that if Rei IS opening up to them, then it’s something that Rei, at least, is genuinely concerned about. Still, Ami only looks at the surface “facts” (Grandpa being silly, Rei overracting, Grandpa manipulating Yuuichiro to trick him) and doesn’t stop to question it any deeper. What the episode is doing to shroud Rei’s real worries in what appears to be everyday crap is good, but it shouldn’t be so good that AMI doesn’t even consider another option. AND then she gets more pissed than we’ve seen her yet in this entire show and stomps off. So we’ve gotta handwave a bit here, and I say that Ami’s dealing with her own personal shit off-screen right now. Something with her mother, perhaps, or maybe a sketch just arrived for her from her father and Ami saw that it had “To Elizabeth” written on it. Or maybe some assholes at school were especially mean to her today and Usagi and Mako weren’t around and Ami doesn’t want to tell them about it lest Mako get into a fight and risk expulsion. Whatever it is, Ami is just not in the mood to deal with yet another repeat of The Rei And Usagi Show. She doesn’t stop to check Grandpa’s health, she glosses over Rei’s concern, and she just fucks off for the rest of the episode. And Mako? She’s the new kid on the block. She only found out she was a Senshi five episodes ago (so three whole episodes of Senshidom from start to finish). She’s probably been around no more than a couple of weeks herself. This a new group of people, a new group of FRIENDS, and she’s not sure about the dynamics at all. But Ami’s been here since the beginning, and if Ami’s fucking off, then maybe that’s the best course of action. So bye then. The end result is Usagi actually hurting Rei’s situation, and then Ami and Mako leaving Rei to deal with it herself. I can’t stress enough how important this moment is to Rei’s character development. But when I make this next post, I’m sure gonna try.
