10 Second Anime - Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai! Ren - Episode 3

Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai! Ren - Episode 3

The girl from the Dark Flame Master's past makes her entrance! Does an old flame become a rival? And Mahou Shoujou Yuuta? He better keep that Dark Flame Dragon sealed up...

Revealed: Satone Shichimiya, the new girl living upstairs, is the former 8th-grader syndrome partner of Yuuta. In fact, she was the source of his own syndrome, and they had many adventures together. But then he moved away.

Rikka spies her first, which brings on a renewed spark of chuunibyou symptoms, and she tries to get Yuuta to play along with her new mission: to unleash the Dark Flame Dragon, the ultimate source of the Dark Flame Master's powers. In reality, seeing this other girl makes her want to spend more time with Yuuta, and this is how it manifests. They make a bet first though: if Rikka gets a higher score on their next test, he'll wear this marked up T-shirt; if Yuuta wins, the Dark Flame Dragon stays sealed forever. Well, Rikka beat him, and she upped the stakes: using a magical girl outfit to unseal the Dragon power during the transformation scene. Rikka used her keen wicked eye to take Yuuta's measurements:

A man knows when he's licked, and Yuuta puts the outfit on, and gets discovered by Shinka. Blackmail pictures, er, mementos must be taken, but Yuuta is quicker on the draw. "Perfect parabola!" he says as he admires his handiwork of throwing a cellphone out the window. Isshiki tries to take some pictures too, but Yuuta must have really gotten a mahou shoujou power-up because he takes him out in one shot. Well, Shinka's power move might be the thing that finishes him off.

Then, the enemy reveals herself, by issuing a challenge over the PA system. Calling herself Sophia Ring SP Saturn VII, this new girl declares herself a magical devil girl hunting fallen angels. Okaaay. Anyway, big chuunibyou fight scene, and Yuuta shows up spoiling it all. Sophia recognizes him, and calls him "Yuusha," or Hero. It's his old friend from middle school, Satone Shichimiya. After being scolded by their club supervisor, Yuuta escorts Shichimiya home, only to discover she's moved into the apartment above his, where Rikka and her sister used to live.

Over dinner, it's clear that Yuuta is going to discourage her 8th-grader syndrome the same way he discourages Rikka. She also wants to support Rikka in her mission to unseal the Dark Flame Dragon. Perhaps she feels a kinship in this mission as a way to get closer to Yuuta because she used to have those same kinds of feelings for him. However, Shichimiya is still going to attack Rikka because she's a fallen angel after all. This is this, and that is that, as the Japanese say.

In a shocking display of familiarity, she rubs noses with Yuuta as she says her goodbyes. Later, Yuuta reassures Rikka that kind of stuff won't happen again. These quiet moments when Rikka talks like a normal girl is solid gold for this show. Will it be used as some extra spice for the show, or will it be something to build on where she can have fun with her imagination without her flights of fancy getting out of hand? In the last season, she was awfully depressed and unemotional when she resorted to act like a normal person, but here we're getting happier emotions, within the context of a growing romance. Seemingly, the apparent agent of drama, Shichimiya, has been defanged, but it's only the third episode, and we haven't been given any other hints of what might be driving the change in Rikka for the larger story arc. As the show said at the end, To Be Continued.