Outside the veil, outside of immediate danger, an injured Nitta insists that Nobara heed Nanami’s words and stay put. But Nobara was never one to stay away from danger; of all the callings she could have pursued, she chose the life of a jujutsu sorcerer, likely the most dangerous job a mortal human could have.
And as long as her two friends Yuuji and Megumi are still in there fighting and she can still fight herself, she’s going back in, leading to her duel with Mahito’s double. As an anime-only viewer, I didn’t know she wouldn’t be coming back out.
Nobara fights with calm focus, her eyes always locked on her foe, and her nails are always probing for weaknesses and strategies for victory. All of her careful preparation and diligent execution pay culminate in the use of her special skill, Resonance, which not only wounds her Mahito, but the one about to kill Yuuji, who had messed up and was on the back foot.
Nobara allows herself a wry grin at the discovery that this is not Mahito, but only a double who can’t use his full repertoire of techniques. In this scenario, one could imagine Nobara doing pretty well in this battle, as a double of Mahito isn’t on the same “special” level as Mahito Prime.
Unfortunately, their battle is cut short just when she declares it to have just begun, as Mahito’s double skitters away. Nobara follows him underground, where he crosses paths with the real Mahito that Yuuji is chasing. Mahito’s double lines up his pursuer perfectly to be in the direct path of the Real McCoy. Yuuji and Nobara spot each other, but it’s too late. The real Mahito places his hand on her face, I knew it was all over for her.
Appropriately, Nobara’s life flashes before her, and thus our eyes. Specifically, we go back to when she was just a first grader in her tiny village. Told from the point of view of a bullied girl named Fumi, Nobara likes her blue backpack all the other kids hate, and beats up her bullies. Nobara and Fumi become fast friends, and soon Nobara introduces her to Saori, an older girl who is a newcomer to the village who serves them tea.
The more time the two younger girls spend with Saori, the more Fumi notices a change in the gender-creative Nobara, no doubt due to the older girl’s influence. In the parlance of former times, she gets a little more girly. But one day they arrive and Saori’s house is covered in graffiti and intentionally buried in snow. Saori’s family eventually leaves town. Fumi holds Nobara’s hand, and witnesses her crying for the first time. Not just crying, but bawling her eyes out.
Some years pass, and Nobara is the next to leave the village to attend high school in Tokyo. Nobara puts up a brave face that initially has Fumi worried she wouldn’t cry for her like she did for Saori. It isnt until Nobara turns around just as the train doors close that Fumi sees the tears welling up; tears followed by her own as her best friend is bourne away from her.
Back in the present, Saori is now an salarywoman working long nights by the glow of her computer. When a co-worker hands her some tea, she reminisces about the younger girls who used to visit her when she lived in a tiny village (her mom was apparently a spiritualist kook who was run out of town).
Just as Nobara was changed by spending time with her, Saori, an only child, regarded Nobara as her little sister, and as such acted in a more mature manner. She wonders what Nobara would think of her if she saw her now; if she’d be disappointed in what had become of her.
The present Nobara finds herself in a white void filled with chairs, most of which are empty. But Yuuji, Megumi, and Gojou are sitting on a couch being their usual selves, and high-school age Fumi is looking at her with the last expression she saw: on the verge of tears.
Both of them revert to kids, and Nobara apologizes for not being able to fulfill her promise for the two of them and Saori to reunite someday.
Nobara, who knows full well what it means to have been touched on her face by someone like Mahito, uses her final few moments to smile back at a petrified Yuuji and say “I’ve had a pretty good life.” And then that life ends.
Two things I’m comfortable saying I hate: when a non-male character dies simply to fuel the flames of motivation for a male character, and when a character who didn’t get their due finally receives a backstory right before being killed off.
I’ll also admit that, due to carelessness, I learned just before watching this episode today, and not before, that Nobara would die. And I should have hated everything about this episode, but I couldn’t. My cynicism melted as soon as I saw young Nobara’s brightly smiling, then sobbing face.
JJK was able to introduce Amanai Riko, get me to care about her, and make her demise resonate deeply, all in just the space of a couple of episodes. Meanwhile, we haven’t seen or learned nearly enough of Kugisaki Nobara for my taste in the past forty-two episodes, but I saw and learned enough both throughout those and here in “Right and Wrong, Part 2”, that her unfair, premature, heartrending, noble end hits that much harder.
