It’s episode 12, the last Shana we’ll get for a little while. Sorry for the slow release on this one. I actually thought I had already done a writeup for it. In any case, Wilhelmina decides to have a little chat with Margery Daw. Meanwhile, the creator of the Midnight Lost Child decides to show up herself.

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The highlights of this episode:

• Yuji has apparently trained well over time and can now keep up with Shana in a swordfight during training. Meanwhile, Alastor puts Wilhelmina in charge of going over everything she found out about the Midnight Lost Child, and to see what link to the Silver there might be. Wilhelmina, meanwhile, concludes that they can’t keep such a thing a secret from Margery Daw for too much longer, and decides to tell her about it in the most cautious of ways, as well to ask for her help if Pheles shows up.
• At the school, the festival is about to start, and the parade members start getting dressed up and favorites for the school’s Grand Prix prize for best costume start to form, including Shana and Yoshida. We also find out that the winner of the prize gets to give a speech at the end of the festival as well.
• Wilhelmina attempts to approach Margery, and upon even whispering the word “Silver,” Margery goes into a rage. Meanwhile, something continually gets passed from person to person via touch.
• The parade starts at the school, to go to the train station and back to the school. On the way, the group spots Margery Daw on the parade route with Wilhelmina. Margery Daw demands to know what Wilhelmina knows, but Wilhelmina asks her to wait until tomorrow night, wanting Shana, Alastor, and Yuji to all be present when she tells her. Margery initially still insists, but after seeing everyone having fun in the parade, this appears to appease Margery and she agrees to wait until the next night.
• After a whole bunch of frivol festival stuff. Ike, Yoshida, and Yuji are manning a table with displays about the history of Misaki city when Ike gets pulled away again. Yoshida then tells Yuji that even though she loves Yuji, she’ll wait for Yuji to make his choice of who he wants to be with. Meanwhile, Shana decides that if she wins the Grand Prix, she’ll confess to Yuji as her speech.
• Just before the Grand Prix announcement, a girl from another class dressed as Alice, who is a finalist, runs towards the stage, and is handed something by another girl. The “something” being passed between people gets passed to her and a strong gust of wind blows. Fumina suddenly becomes alarmed at the gust of wind.
• Shana ends up winning the award for best girl costume and when it’s time for her speech, grabs the mic and turns towards and addresses Yuji. She is about to say that she loves him when the Alice girl taps Yuji and a tornado suddenly shows up over the stage blowing people around. Yuji is sucked into the tornado and inside he suddenly sees Pheles…

This episode once again had some frivolous festival and luv-luv stuff going on, but it once again looks like we’re going to get something promising going (though I’ve said that before). I’m guessing the thing people kept passing to each other was some sort of unrestricted method Pheles used to try to find the one in which the Midnight Lost Child was contained, but I guess we might find out for sure later.

Also, this is rather a big mess for the Flame Hazes to cover up. Will the existence of parallel worlds finally be exposed or what? At least to Ogata perhaps? Pheles appears to be a pretty powerful Denizen, powerful enough that Wilhelmina believes that they’ll need to go 3-on-1 against her. It’s also going to be pretty difficult to hide Silver’s existence from Margery in this situation as well, I’d imagine.

Finally, we get our first real evidence that Fumina may not be just a human, other than her appearance. There have been hints about the bracelets that she and her butler wear, but we have no idea what they may signify or anything. However, her reaction to the wind suggests that she may have some knowledge about the Crimson World after all.

No Shana until I believe the 10th as it, like CLANNAD, takes a holiday break.