You rated episode 10 of
How are Migi & Dali? Community score: 4.1
You rated episode 11 of
How are Migi & Dali? Community score: 4.1
© Nami Sano, Kadokawa/Be Birds
I’m so proud of Migi & Dali for completely embracing its kinks and still managing to surprise me.
Migi and Dali (as Hitori) are on the run after Reiko accused them of killing Micchan. They hide (and out) Akiyama and Maruta as the four boys try to imagine how to clear the twins’ good name. Their goal is to use Eiji as a hostage to extract Reiko’s confession on camera, thereby revealing the Ichijo family’s secret and getting themselves off the hook for murder. They decide to call on Karen, who is currently locked in her room, and gain access to the Ichijō household where Eiji is being “reformed” after his heroic actions at the Halloween Festival.
After a few cliffhangers (and a surprising romantic reveal featuring Maruta and Karen), it’s time for the series finale as Reiko finally fills in the hazy parts of Reiko’s past, Metry and the boys. It has been revealed that Reiko has a psychological obsession with perfection. That is evident in every aspect of her family and home life. This unreasonable expectation stems from her school days and her entire existence revolves around this concept. Her value is intrinsically tied to her perfection. In the midst of this, Reiko still has room for “imperfect” people like Metry. Although Metry was hired as a maid for the family, she appeared to have no qualifications. However, the two women have come so close that they have a relationship like sisters.
I talked about Reiko’s infertility and how it plays with a pretty old fantasy story about the relationship between women’s sanity and their fertility. Media such as television series, films such as The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, and even folk tales have been shown in this group. While it makes for a convenient shorthand when you need motivation for a female villain, it touches on a lot of stereotypes, from the root of “hysteria” to the role and value of women in society (parenting). However, Migi & Dali have succeeded in adding more depth in the way they interact with this story.
Reiko is shocked to discover she cannot easily get pregnant, but her world is turned upside down when she uses her relationship with Metry to force the woman to have sex with her husband. This is the part I find really wild. I suspected that Metry and Akira Ichijō had an affair that, once discovered, motivated Reiko to commit murder. I’m not sure if this was a relationship based on love, or given how dysfunctional the Ichijo family is, if Akira assaulted Metry. It never occurred to me that Reiko was trying to use Metry as a proxy without her husband finding out. Not just once either. And she watched.
Reiko does not fully process her infertility; There is a point in episode 10 where she distances herself from her place in the story by speaking in the third person and saying that “Reiko” was pregnant with Eiji. The scene where Reiko visits Metry after giving birth clarifies why this is so: she faked a pregnancy, possibly lasting more than 30 weeks, to present Eiji as her biological son. I suspected this a lot during the first five episodes of the show. To be honest, Migi, Dali and Eiji all look alike, especially in the eyes.
However, this is not enough for Dali, who still holds Eiji responsible for pushing their mother to death on Christmas Eve. The final question, why Metry was in his window in the first place, was finally answered. She plans to run away with all three of her sons and has never stopped thinking about Eiji since Reiko took him from her.
Dali’s denial was erroneous; There are still discrepancies between what Metry’s body looked like when she fell and when she was later found. We may not have the full picture yet, but it may be too late for Eiji. He grew up in a stuffy environment that demanded perfection. Both he and his sister were taken away by their parents. His father was at best a womanizer, disdainful of his wife’s abusive and strange behavior. He may be responsible for his biological mother’s death. His brothers disowned him. Eiji is now left with nothing and decides to put an end to the family’s growing list of crimes by stabbing his mother and burning down the house.
The only problem is that our twins, their new (terrible) father, Maruta, and Karen are all locked in the “nursery”. I’m sure five people can make it through a door, but we’ll have to wait until next week to know everyone’s fate. What a trip! We’re approaching the finale and it’s nothing like what I expected. What I thought was going to be a mystery-tinged comedy went full throttle to become one of the strangest popcorn-crunching plots I’ve seen since Malignant.
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Migi & Dali is now streaming on Crunchyroll.
Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more companies mentioned in this article are members of the Kadokawa Group.