An excellent balancing act.
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode follow.
"One Today is Worth Two Tomorrows" picks up right where the first episode “April Showers Bring May Flowers” left off, and gives us some concrete details about our red-headed protagonist Hatori Chise’s past. Even with its pulls at my heartstrings, this episode was much easier to watch than the first. There’s a good mix of comedic relief in addition to fleshing out Chise’s traumatic past, so instead of having to swallow those knots whole, we’re getting to see them unfurl.
Once again we see a level of discomfort Chise has with Elias, but this time around, their interactions don’t seem so forced. They’re lighter, more playful, and endearing. From the goofy way he shows her his glamour to his conversation with Angelica in regards to her, we see Chise questioning his actions, and wondering if she should take him seriously. She’s no longer just going through the motions because this man legitimately owns her, she’s actually warming up to him. She actually takes a brief moment to tell him about her mother, but isn’t quite willing to divulge into it fully quite yet.
In a strange way, the same could be said about Elias. He’s got a track record for being forward, but he’s taking the time to let Chise get to know him. He surprises her with a glamour, letting her see him with a human’s face for the first time. He’s promptly rejected when he flirts with her, but he tried. Even if it’s for formality's sake, he intentionally introduces each of the important people he works with day to day. The most notable of them are Simon Cullum, a cheeky priest, and Angelica Burley, a boisterous mage.
Angelica is a special sort of character who, in ways, takes pity on Chise’s blissful ignorance. Like Elias, Angelica has an unsurprising amount of spunk, breaking the seriousness for just a moment. The way she teases and taunts Elias over how he came to take Chise into his care is a good chuckle--at least the money was clean, right?
It’s through Angelica that we see a new facet of Chise. The physical manifestation of her memories in crystalline form. This breathtaking, and haunting scene, pulls together two parts of our protagonist we’ve only seen snippets of before. Chise’s immense magical power, and her mother.
It’s important to note that in this world, magic and sorcery are two separate things. Magic is used by mages with the aid of the fae; sorcery is a kind of science used to manipulate the world. Be careful to watch how each character uses magic, particularly Elias and Angelica. Angelica uses her fae familiar, Hugo, to cast her magic. We’ve yet to see if Elias uses the fae to cast magic or not. It’s a subtle detail, but the difference has a lot to say about them, especially since we don’t really know how these two things are viewed in larger society yet.
From Silky, the fae housekeeper, to the axolotl-like creature that cuddles up next to her for the bulk of the episode, we see more and more of Chise’s important existence to the world in this episode. Chise naturally attracts fae because she’s a sleigh beggy, though we still don’t know exactly what this means. What we do know is that she attracts both the good and bad sorts of fae, and it’s hard to tell still what Elias’s intentions are regarding her abilities.
The Verdict
“One Today is Worth Two Tomorrows” is a much lighter follow-up to its hard-hitting premiere that still maintains the drama of the series, but didn’t shove it down my throat. It approaches it in a much more jovial way. We’re still seeing Chise and Elias’s deepest vulnerabilities, but unlike the first episode, this episode breaks it down into digestible pieces. This is a show that wears its heart brazenly on its sleeve and while it’s beginning to employ some typical shoujo tropes to balance the drama, it still stands out among the sea of overly darling stories.
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