#not to the extent where she would deserve Mifuyu’s psychological torture

[aislesalmon]

really digging Mifuyu’s anime portrayal so far - she feels much more like a cult’s head recruiter. much like the other villains (including Mitama), she feels like the character the game’s version was meant to be, without having their bad deeds and personality traits toned down to make them more “uwu cute waifu” appealing so people would spend money trying to roll them. she’s at once bolder and more cowardly than her game counterpart - bolder in her much more direct and aggressive her recruitment tactics are, and more cowardly in how she seems much more afraid to take responsibility for her actions and admit when she’s fucked up.

throughout the first season she blatantly toys with Yachiyo, taking obvious delight in drawing her friends into Magius. this Mifuyu is angry - she’s pissed Yachiyo left her when Mifuyu needed her the most, after 2 mutual friends of their died, when Mifuyu herself almost became a witch as a direct result of Yachiyo’s abandonment, only being saved by the doppel phenomenon. she’s been hurting for so long, and has successfully pinned all the blame on Yachiyo in her head, that hurting Yachiyo feels like justice for her own misery. why should Yachiyo get to thrive when she denied that to Mifuyu? why should Yachiyo have new friends when she abandoned her old ones? there’s no indication so far (and none in the game iirc, correct me if I’m wrong) that Mifuyu believed Yachiyo’s wish killed Kanae and Mel. in her eyes, Yachiyo left her (and Momoko, and Tsuruno) to die based on unfounded paranoia... and then made new friends despite that paranoia. when Mifuyu said to Yachiyo “it will happen again. you will-“ she wasn’t going to say “you will kill everyone again” like Yachiyo assumed, she was going to say “you will get scared and abandon all your friends again.” Mifuyu can’t wait to make Yachiyo feel the same suffering Yachiyo made her feel by taking her friends away from her, destroying this friendship group just like Yachiyo destroyed the last one. to her, it‘s all a game.

and then Iroha disappears.

we see a marked change in how Mifuyu approaches Yachiyo in s2e2. it’s impossible to tell how much of what she said was something she genuinely meant, but one thing is clear: Mifuyu is no longer cheerfully playing with Yachiyo’s emotions. she’s still trying to manipulate Yachiyo, but her distress is genuine - now, she’s trying to manipulate Yachiyo into feeling sympathetic towards her and seeing her side of things, repeatedly comparing herself to Iroha (I also strongly suspect she’s jealous of how Yachiyo is trying to find Iroha despite leaving Mifuyu, and how Yachiyo is mourning for Iroha but, again, left Mifuyu to die. despite this she doesn’t really call Yachiyo out on it, showing once more that she’s no longer trying to provoke Yachiyo). she spends the entire fight on the defensive, both physically and verbally, trying to justify and make excuses for her role in Iroha’s supposed death. while she still refuses to admit it, on a subconscious level, she knows she’s screwed up astronomically. this wasn’t something she wanted to do to Yachiyo. the game has ended. her line at the end, about Yachiyo being stronger than she is, was clearly sincere.

so, what’s in store for anime Mifuyu? will she be redeemed like game Mifuyu? I honestly have no idea. she‘s much less sympathetic in the anime, much more vicious and selfish, but there’s definitely more to her characterization than we’ve so far seen. she obviously genuinely cares for the Amane twins and she seems to believe in the Magius’ goal, and not just for her own sake. her double in the Seance Shrine Uwasa being much more complex than Ui’s could mean that, like in the game, Mifuyu had Nemu create the Uwasa specifically to entice Yachiyo and program a detailed Mifuyu clone in to keep her there until the Magius’ goal had been achieved. either way, as Arc 2 would never work in anime format, there’s little reason to have her survive the story. of they do kill her off I desperately hope they go with her game almost-death, but have her actually die - having Mifuyu come so close to being able to reunite with Yachiyo and go back to Mikazuki Villa only to sacrifice herself so the others could live, in her final moments hypnotizing herself into thinking she was at Mikazuki Villa both to make her happy enough to use all her magic at once and just to see it one last time, even if it wasn’t real, is unbelievably tragic.

and of course our caged bird deserves only the most emotional and impactful death scene.