10 Second Anime - Musaigen no Phantom World - Episode 10

A Phantom Witch grants Ruru's wish to be a human-sized girl to fulfill her dreams at the Summer Festival.

Episode 10 - "Little Ruru's Big Dream"

Hmm.

The season's almost over without any development of an ending arc. We got half a second of that device Ruru found at the abandoned warehouse, but it wasn't involved at all in her own very special episode.

The one question to be decided this week was whether we had Girl of the Week or Phantom of the Week. Since Ruru is both a harem member and a phantom, it can be argued that it was both. Also, we could say that the Phantom Witch was the phantom of the week. However, the Phantom of the Week needs to be defeated somehow, whereas the Girl of the Week must be made to confront an aspect of her personality. With that in mind, it was definitely Ruru as the Girl of the Week.

Heh.

In the end, we found out that Ruru's real big wish was to finish that bottle of Ramune all by herself and she did it without being a big girl.

Little Ruru.

I liked these little scenes establishing how small Ruru is and how she sees things from her vantage point. I never knew the hazards of having a tomcat shove his balls in your little fairy face! Also, no Fanta product placement, but at least we got something close to the title out of the logo.

She has such a big pout for a little face.

You know what? She is tough! She got totally stepped on by Haruhiko. Feeling the vibrations of a giant stomping around was a fun thing to add to the scene too.

Phantom Witch.

Early on in the season, I wondered if these phantoms were actually real or if they were just "seen" by the people affected by the neural errors virus. It's long since been confirmed that they're real and that they have full, rich interactions with each other outside the perception of people.

I would have liked to have a name to go with this cute Phantom Witch. You know, for REASONS.

Big Girl "Natsuno."

She said her name was Natsuno Ramune, which can mean "Summer Lemonade Drink." See? Her big dream was all about the Ramune.

I liked how her socks matched her original hair color and incorporated her big braid in the design.

She may have been a big girl, but she was still Ruru. Getting bored and wanting to leave class is something a little phantom could do whenever she wanted. Along with flying out a window...

The Transfer Student.

Ruru got to experience the conventional new girl shoujo manga plot. They always have to be recruited by the sports clubs because it's a way for the horny bast... the artist to put the attractive young lady in different outfits and view her body from voyeuristic, er, interesting angles.

Skeptical Harem Dynamics.

The harem is always on the defensive when a new competitor upsets the tenuous balance of points and making sure no one has "gotten ahead." The joke on this convention was that the girls, especially the phantom-sensitive Koito, all fell for the totally clichéd and contrived transfer student sob story.

The jokes worked here because they relied on character details, like Koito's sweet, sweet coffee. The shoujo manga shock eyes gave that reaction extra oomph! Or how the usually cool Mai warmed immediately to the new girl. Perhaps that Phantom Witch's powers added some strength to the story in hitting the right buttons for teenage girls.

Yukata Harem Assemble.

If a Summer festival with fireworks is involved, the girls need to wear traditional dress. Never mind they borrowed them from the drama club. I'm sure someone there wanted to be extra helpful.

Notice that Ms. Himeno is included in the harem too. I guess this means the harem is fully assembled and we can actually have a multiple episode story now... Hope, hope, hope...

Random Drama.

You've got to have some kind of event to force the drama, and I think tying together this meddlesome Phantom Witch with a firework phantom with an inferiority complex was a nice way to get Ruru the Girl of the Week to decide she was better off as she was and to show how much Haruhiko actually cares about her.

The ultimate death flag was thrown, but the joke on that was there was actually no reason for Ruru to be caught up in the firework blast. First, we know she's tough (feet splatting must be a regular occurrence) and second, she can fly. Duh.

It was another fun episode with no consequences, except for some character development. Usually KyoAni rewards those details by making them important in the concluding story arc. I'm still waiting to see if that holds true for this show, or whether it was all really a fluffy show from beginning to end.