Punch Line

Episode 5

When Punch Line plays straight and serious, it can actually be pretty good. That's how it unfolds throughout most of this episode. In fact, even the occasional offbeat moments do not deter much from the overall tone, as they can be written off as mere quirkiness. The assumption of a mostly-serious approach does not detract from the series' habit of keeping things interesting by answering questions only to bring up new (and sometimes bizarre) new questions, either.

The episode opens where last episode left off: with spirit-Yuta hovering over Ito's dead, snow-covered body. As expected, it occurs to him that, as a spirit, he can travel back in time to stop this from happening, although the cat gives him an interesting warning: spirits can only pull off the time travel trick if they focus intensely enough on something that they want badly. If it is attempted haphazardly then the spirit can bounce off of the “space-time curve” and thus never be able to travel back to that time again. (Doubtless this will come up again later on.) Yuta, who is again shown to have been friendly enough with Ito in the past to even play video games with her in her apartment, succeeds, though, and manages to possess Rabura again – and this time he is successfully able to convey his warning to Mikatan, who stops Ito from acting on an email requesting that she meet the sender at a temple, the one where Yuta found her dead. In the wake of that we learn that Ito is not going to school because she was, indeed, being viciously bullied because she was seen being given a ride home by one of her teachers, whom the school's most popular girl liked. (As shallow and stupid as that may seem, bullying – especially by girls – does not require any more valid reason than that, and bullying getting out of hand even when started over something minor is, unfortunately, not that unusual, either.) Ito gave an all-too-common response by making up a video with a death list composed of the girls who were bullying her, but someone else – presumably the one responsible for killing the other two girls whose names are on the list and who called out Ito via email – has added her name to the list, too. Later on we learn that the so-called Turtle Man from episode 3, who has returned for a second stab at retrieving the bear, was the culprit. Yuta manages to call him back, but the girls' plans to deal with him go awry, and the costumed hero-boy winds up accidentally getting shot. One look at panties, though, and he manifests a power-up reaction suspiciously like Yuta's.

So the latter scene seems to be confirmation that whoever is occupying Yuta's body is the costumed guy, and Ito's situation gets explained more fully. Left completely unanswered here, though, is why Turtle Man would be involved in Ito's affairs beyond just trying to retrieve the bear – and further, why would he have returned in response to her email, with the bear in tow, if that was his primary goal? And what was up with the mysterious box taped to the satellite dish, which seemed to get temporarily forgotten after it was revealed? And why was there a seeming second container of cinnamon in Mikatan's cupboard, and what happened to it? That does not seem like an idle detail.

Some kind of additional weird logic is going on here, or else there is simply a lot more to this situation than what has been revealed yet. Given the style of the storytelling so far, I am definitely leaning towards the latter. This is looking more and more like a series that will gradually reward those who are patient with it and willing to go along with its seemingly-haphazard-but-actually-carefully-planned flow. It has given me no reason yet to distrust that its creators actually know what they are doing, so this looks like an entertaining ride. Those concerned about fan service also appear to not need to worry much, either, as only one brief panty flash happens in the whole episode, and that one was necessary for one of the big clues.

Overall, it was a pretty good episode for a series that seems to be exactly on its track.

Rating: B+

Punch Line is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.