Ultra Maniac ep.8-10

March 12, 2004 | 1 Comments

I'm glad to know that after spending a lot of times featuring filler episodes after filler episodes, this series has finally introduced the viewers to the actual plot and character development in these episodes. To begin with, we get to know Nina's reason for living in the human world as well as her intention in obtaining the lost magic orbs from her kingdom. We also starting to see possible romantic development emerging between her and at least two boys from the series.

Episode eight begins with Nina's grandfather in the magical kingdom being unhappy because Nina still hasn't developed her magical skills despite having spent at least a full month in the human world. His unhappiness was heard by three little kids, who IIRC, are either Nina's siblings or at the very least her young cousins. They too are afraid that if Nina doesn't develop her magical ability soon, Maya will be the one who'll find the magical orbs instead. Because of this, the brats...I mean those kids decided to go into the human world to help Nina. Instead of helping, however, the three kids ended up causing havoc in Nina's school. To begin with, they ended up traumatising Tamura sensei (Nina and Ayu's classroom teacher) who's already on the edge ever since he saw Maya coming out of his locker. Tamura ends up shell-shocked again when he saw three little kids flying on top of a stuffed horses out of his locker.

The kids then attempts to help Nina to find out the whereabouts of the orbs and decided to conjure a potion inside an abandoned classroom. In the middle of their potion experiment, however, one of the kids, accidentally spilled a magical color bomb called 'Fallen Thunder Jade' and in the proecess, ended up injuring Lulu, Maya's little Iguana pet. This resulted in Maya's wrath who swears revenge and about to hexed the three kids until all of a sudden, the potion that the kids have been brewing to find out the whereabouts of the orbs spilled onto a toy robot and turns it into a real robot who goes berserk on all of them. Thankfully, Nina and Ayu quickly arrives on the scene and somehow Nina manages to overcome her panic and produces a successful spell which stops all of the haywired spells. Nina's success in overcoming the minor obstacle never the less surprises Ayu, who's so used to Nina's failed magics, as well as pleases Nina's grandfather.

The ninth episode begins with Yuuta performing some kind of magic inside the room that belongs to Nina's grandfather, looking as if he's searching for something. He, however, looks unhappy upon finding out what he was looking for and decides to leave the room before Nina's grandfather finds him. Back in the human world, Nina and Ayu once again encounter Yuuta who's been playing tricks on Rio. At first they tolerate him but when he starts to squirt the fountain water onto three girls who are interested in him, they become angry at him. Guys, remember when I said that I find Tsujiai has a far more interesting personality? I really meant it. Yuuta probably look better than Tsujiai (if you can call an animated character 'attractive') but Tsujiai is a far nicer person who treats other people kindly even if he has no interest in them. And what I just mentioned beforehand was an example of Yuuta's less attractive qualities which I find really annoying. He sure is kind to people that he likes (ie. Nina, Ayu, etc) but he doesn't seem to be able to extend that kindness or at least consideration to other people.

Anyway, Yuuta becomes unhappy when Nina calls him cruel and that he should go back to the magic kingdom if all he does in the human world is playing tricks on humans. He ended up going to Maya's house and gives her an offer that she can't refuse. Meanwhile, Nina has been alerted by her grandfather that he knows the location of the Red magic orb: the Island Paradise (some kind of amusement center park). Nina then tells Ayu that the magic orbs once belong to his family but they were then lost and Nina wants to collect them so that she can be a powerful witch because she's not very good as a witch. Hearing this story, Ayu promises Nina that she'll help her friend to find all of the orbs. Nina seems to be touched to hear her friend's promise but also looks sad at the same time. Once they reached the amusement center, they realised that Yuuta and Maya is also there looking for the stone unsuccesfully. Yuuta instead drives Maya angry with his explanation that all of the magic orbs signify something. The red one is beauty, the white represents purity, the orange is for intelligence, pink is for power, blue for merciful heart, and unfortunately, Maya has none of these qualities. Ouch.

In the middle of their fight, however, Maya notices something glimmering in the sky and immediately realises that the glimmering object is the red orb. She immediately sets upon capturing it. At the same time, Nina and Ayu has arrived in the park. Nina immediately also recognises the orb even though as a human, Ayu can't see it. Ayu, however, is able to see the shape of a person trying to reach the orb and immediately recognises the shape as Maya's. She immediately urged Nina to make a grab for it before it's too late. Just as Maya is about to reach the orb, Nina uses a magical ribbon to grab the orb and pull it into her hands. The orb is then sealed into her computer. Ayu, meanwhile decides to confront Yuuta and asks him why he decides to help Maya instead of Nina, who he's supposedly love. Yuuta sadly explains that it's because if Nina won, she'll leave him forever. This explanations confuses Ayu who doesn't understand why Nina will leave Yuuta if she manages to obtain all of the magic orbs.

Anyway, episode ten continues from where episode nine left off with Maya still reeling from her failure in obtaining the red orbs. She becomes angry and decides to resort to vengeance by concocting a potion that creates an Voodoo doll. But this is not the usual voodoo doll that is used to inflict pain on the victim. This is a walking, talking Voodoo doll that she left in front of Nina's doorstep in the hope that the doll will succeed in scaring Nina off. However, the only person who ended up becoming terrorised by the doll is Ayu. Being the good friend that she is, Nina decides to get rid of the doll when she finds out that Ayu is afraid of it. However, her nature as a kind person makes her unable to throw it into the fireplace and instead ended up giving it to Tsujiai as a present since he claims to like strange-looking dolls.

Maya, who's unhappy to know about this latest development decides to take things one step further. She tells the doll to poison Nina or else it'll earn her own wrath. Afraid of Maya, the Voodoo doll decides to run away from Tsujiai's bag and goes back to Nina's house to poison Nina. However, after various of failed attempts, the dolls realised that she can't really poison Nina because Nina is kind to her. Unfortunately, she is the one who ended up falling into the soup that she had poisoned. Thankfully, the poison turned out to just be a flu virus and the doll is not dead but instead getting cold. Meanwhile, Nina ends up having to make excuses to Tsujiai about how the doll maybe on the run to find some adventure of her own. However, instead of becoming angry or appalled at Nina after hearing the strange excuses, Tsujiai ends up telling her that she's an interesting person.

Clearly, the creators have started to drop hints of relationship betwen Nina and Tsujiai which pleases me to no end because they are two of my favourite characters from the series. I also am glad to see Ayu starting to get some good character development. She seems to be a loyal friend who want to help her friend even though she may not really understood why her friend is trying to obtain those orbs. However, I start to dislike Maya based on the way she's been written thus far. Sure enough thus far her potions have caused more problems than real danger but her intentions have been quite malicious to begin with and she seems to be willing to resort to vengeance everytime she's upset at something. I suppose she'll make a good oppenent for Nina since I don't really find her that threatening but at the same time she's not a sympathetic character either.

© memento 2003