Stardust Telepath Episode 11: Find Your Soul

Last time one found her truth. This time one seemingly abandoned her self.

We joined Umika watching her painful speech video again but this time she paid close attention to Matataki telling Haruno to keep recording because she believed in Umi-Kaichou. Deeply touched by this our heroine knew the time had come to act. She had a master plan.

Upon meeting with the team she quickly noticed Haruno with the legendary goggles. She said it was the spoils of her Matataki raid after the UmiYu powerup but confessed they had a lovers’ quarrel.

The first part of Umika’s plan was to meet up with Kei and learn from rocket pros. We’re properly introduced to her teammates, Michiru (purple) and Neon (funky). Michiru’s the tsundere kouhai and Neon the spunky senpai. They reminded me of a certain duo in Release the Spyce. Most of the visit featured our heroines, especially Umika learning valuable lessons on building and launching model rockets. The most important was to learn from her successes and failures and not give up after one loss. Kei revealed the obvious, which was she too stumbled many times before becoming a pro. Very few people “get it right” the first time. This felt like a repeat from last time but it was important to put into context so that Umika could learn and grow.

MORE IMPORTANT THAN THAT though was the fantastic discovery of Michiru and Neon both caring deeply for their beloved clumsy leader who despite having a big brain got lost a lot and quickly forgot the basic life necessities. Both were about to proudly proclaim themselves her loving protectors but stopped to give each other a “She’s mine, bitch!” glare. As one of my dear friends Chloe-chan said “Kei and the two girls in her team have gotta be in a threesome relationship. I believe.” My homies and home girls are the best.

Umika tried to say “simulations”. Most of you have no idea how much I am going to miss this show when it ends next episode. You have no idea how many times this anime saved me from succumbing to rage. With their minds and bodies ready to give their all to build a stronger rocket there was one more thing left to do before getting started.

Good grief. It was as though we saw a girl on autopilot. An empty husk that was once a tsundere full of grumpy energy. Poor girl needed saving, fast. The rematch was hard to watch as Matataki “gloated” to the girls without an ounce of energy to her words. She had “let’s get this over with” written from the moment Umika challenged her to a rematch in hopes of beating her for real and get her to take their words seriously. Matataki’s like “That again huh? Yeah yeah. Come on. I’m gonna whoop ya or whatever so we can end this already”.

To the surprise of two their rocket launched more than twice as far as Matataki’s. Actually they’re more baffled than shocked. As Matataki’s all “Wow. You beat me good. Guess that’s it then. Goodb-”

As all that was going on Haruno couldn’t stop looking at Matataki with great sadness. Her heart ached seeing what her beloved had become. After their “dominant” win she knew something was off and grabbed her rocket revealing it’s rigged to fail. After Haruno again scolded her (not pitied) for being a weenie Matataki cowered behind “I thought I only needed half my strength to beat you” but as her soulmate she could tell it’s an “usoda”. Matataki’s like “Come on girls. Get a clue. You’ve surpassed my capabilities. You don’t need me anymore”.

My OG-style narration cannot do the Matataki soul healing scene justice. Instead I will quote ArcaJ’s deduction of our tsundere’s emotional struggle.

“She puts EVERYTHING on herself, including everyone’s hopes and dreams. Since she’s usually the smartest one in the room, she only trusts herself with solving every problem. Mainly, because she’s deathly afraid of disappointing others. I don’t know what happened in her past, but I’m guessing performance based TRAUMA.”

She’s close about the cause but the summary of her struggle was spot on.

I’ve seen more annoying tsundere than Matataki and I called her out for the almost unforgivable sin of making Umika cry, twice. The ONLY reason I let it slide was because Umika needed it if she wanted to grow stronger, culminating in this powerful scene as she led the team in recovering Matataki’s lost soul. In fact, our heroine almost lost her own soul exerting so much energy. Bless you Umika. Matataki can at last use her grumpiness for justice without worrying about being betrayed or abandoned for taking things too seriously.

Of all the Fall 2023 anime I enjoyed I will miss this one most of all. The last episode pulling the classic “name of the show” hurt me because it most likely means we won’t get a 2nd season. The G-View next time is going to hurt me personally. I think most of you can guess my overall thoughts on this show before I even post it.