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「私、なにしてる？」 (Watashi, Nani Shiteru?)
“What am I doing?”
In this episode of Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka?, we move the needle a little bit closer towards the end game with both Kumoko and Shun taking strides in their respective timelines in getting near their goals. But while Shun is merely trying to make it to the elf village, Kumoko is already redefining what it means to take on a spider monster.
The one very impressive thing about this episode is exactly what it means for Kumoko’s status as a fearsome foe. From Shun’s perspective, he is lectured by Basgath about what he shouldn’t be doing around spider monsters. The future impact that Kumoko’s journey has had on Shun’s world stretches out to how the labyrinth’s spiders interact with travelers like Shun. Some like Nightmare’s Vestiges are presented as a spider army that surrounds the party, goading Shun with hints that the reincarnations will all be set to die soon enough. They were also able to get Shun to acknowledge a repressed memory of the student “Spooky” approaching him to grab his face, adding more of a mysterious link between the spiders of this universe and their past lives.
Even though it was funny to see Kumoko drifting off in the ocean as a floating disembodied head, it also gives Kumoko time to hash out why she needs to tread carefully around the Demon Lord. For instance, her ability to destroy a soul altogether frightens Kumoko to the point where she would need to save her bacon since her invincibility skill has no chance in that circumstance. There are ramifications though when her body brain ended up making contact with the Demon Lord that might either condemn Kumoko for having revealed she survived or bless Kumoko with full access to the Demon Lord’s facilities through her body brain.
Well, this episode potentially answers one of the questions I had from last episode. I had wondered how Ariel could know about Shun since Ariel is clearly not a reincarnation as an Ancient Divine Beast, and it’s because the parallel minds attack on Mother is extended to Ariel too given that Ariel is the progenitor of the taratects, so her mind is linked to all taratects, including Kumoko’s. I guess Kumoko can just send one of her Parallel Minds into Ariel after she has conquered the latter’s mind and take direct control of Ariel’s mind at times, and that would be how Ariel seemingly knew about Shun and remarked about how it’s been a long time since she and the Dragon Administrator had met and how she never would have thought they’d have this kind of arrangement, which was a callback to Kumoko and Kuro’s meeting in the labyrinth and whatever the true extent of their relationship is at that time.
it is quite obvious Ariel knows about reincarnation and Shun from Kumoko…
at some point I bet Ariel and Kumoko will start actually talking to each other instead of trying to kill /survive…
I also wonder what was up with that spider in the classroom where the reincarnated kids died in. This show is like Re:zero in that there are very few scenes that mean nothing, and I expect this to have some sort of significance in the story.
There is also a female that does the levelling up messages, and she appears to be unhappy about playing that role.
consider this, whoever it is seems to be trapped on unending service as call center of sorts….
I have to comment it somewhere: somehow I REALLY like Ariel’s character design – so much, that I find myself rewatching scenes with her just because of that…
Ariel is just demonically cute 🙂
So is Kumoko switching bodies – which is why her “own” (the white one) right now is “asleep”? (I have no clue and didn’t pay attention to details ;))
We also get confirmation that sending parallel minds into another creature to eat their soul is not a skill or even something that the system was designed to do. Kumoko is already going beyond the restraints of the system and doing what shouldn’t be possible.