Kaze no Stigma Episode 14 – Ayano’s Further Misfortune

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Summary

A girl suddenly comes to Japan all the way from America for a duel to take back a “title” to its rightful owner…

We see Ayano in class, unusually absent-minded and all dazed out (her vivid imagination is at work). Seeing her like this is enough for Yukari and Nanase to know that she’s having a date with Kazuma, since it’s the event she most eagerly awaits (and of course Ayano denies this to be true). Ayano explains that it’s not a date but merely a way of having Kazuma pay back for all the rewards that he doesn’t deserve (since she is the one who does the job almost all the time). Kazuma’s gonna treat her to the finest of finest restaurants, which makes Yukari and Nanase all the more see it as an “adult date”, considering the ‘setting’ and the ‘mood’ that will be stirred up in such a place. They congratulate Ayano for finally taking the “step to womanhood”, believing that this will certainly lead to some ‘development’.

The night of the “date” comes, and both Ayano and Kazuma are dressed in their never-before-seen clothing. Ayano is certainly taken by the way Kazuma looks, but covers it up and reminds Kazuma about treating her to ten times more than usual with this dinner. The elegant attire (or the different mood overall) must have such an effect on Kazuma that he unusually acts all gentleman-like towards Ayano as he agrees to what she said without any complaints (and calls her ‘ojousama’ (m’lady)) and escorts her to the restaurant.

Soushu didn’t scheme their date like the past few times, and was glad that they once again had this chance for making their relationship progress. Ren who saw Ayano dressed up in her gown earlier believes that her relationship with Kazuma has been progressing as of late, and hopes that it’ll go well. Soushu stresses that they HAVE to get along well together since Kazuma is valuable for the future of the Kannagi clan. “They shouldn’t commit any mistakes this time”, exclaims Soushu, making Ren puzzled with what he said.

Inside the restaurant, Kazuma senses the presence of a ghoul. Ayano can’t believe that Kazuma actually has such a formal clothing in his wardrobe, and becomes even more surprised to find out that he made it by himself, when he had a job which involved sneaking inside the royal palace. Ayano remarks how Kazuma wreaks havoc all around the world (destroys edifices everywhere he go), to which he sarcastically replies, “Hmm… I wonder why it’s like that? To think that I’m such a harmless man.” Kazuma’s order of Chateau Margaux wine arrives but Ayano could simply stare at him (and obviously wants to try some of it as well), since she’s still underage.

Their dinner gets interrupted by a bunch of muggers who takes away the possessions of everyone inside. Not moved even one bit, Kazuma even warns one of the gang members not to disturb his oujousama’s meal or he’ll incur her wrath. The muggers however gets toasted by a salamander-like “elemental beast” capable of amassing the power of several spirits (flame in this case). The owner of Azazel appears and introduces herself as Catherine McDonald, from the well-known family of flame wielders in the United States (and Ayano sarcastically replies that she doesn’t know her “well known” family).

Catherine challenges Ayano to a duel for the title of being the strongest clan of flame wielders, putting Enraiha at stake for the victor. “I might not be the strongest Kannagi, but I certainly won’t hand over our clan’s pride of being the strongest flame wielder to some inferior clan,” declares Ayano. The battle finally starts as Catherine is determined to show who’s the inferior one. Kazuma goes on standby while the two girls have their catfight, and mumbles about being the referee of the fight (once it goes out of control).

Catherine summons her Metatron, materialized from thousands of elemental beasts “packed” into this form. Possessing monster-like speed and strength, and the capability to regenerate, Metatron turns out to be quite a tough opponent for Ayano. She’s left with no choice but to think of a strategy all by herself with Kazuma nowhere to be found.

Soushu gets a phone call from Kirika informing him about an ongoing duel between Ayano and another flame wielder. But more than this fight, what she’s concerned about is the lingering evil spirit within the building which causes people to become ill-tempered and violent. Kazuma went out to confront that spirit who dragged the muggers into the restaurant earlier saying, “Be thankful that our hime-sama wasn’t able to notice you”. But it turns out that there’s nothing for the ghoul to be thankful for because Ayano still manages to extinguish (or rather, purify) it in the midst of her battle with Metatron. Ayano saw it as a hindrance to her fight and doesn’t even take notice of Kazuma who was right then and there.

Ayano’s fight continues and is desperately finding a means to go about defeating her opponent. Kazuma tells her that there’s something wrong with what she’s ‘seeing’ and what she should be ‘attacking’ (and it was only then that Ayano finally takes notice of Kazuma’s presence). Ayano thinks about his words and finally realizes what she did earlier to the ghoul. She uses her flames to purify Metatron (because of the same characteristics it has with an evil spirit), which ends up exploding as all the flame spirits contained in it breaks lose. Kazuma manages to save Ayano in time while and Catherine runs away with Metatron, who declares that she’ll come back and defeat Ayano.

Kazuma restrains Ayano’s anger as he makes her focus on the other problem they have, with the building in the brink of collapsing. Kazuma tells Ayano to burn up the damaged part of the building (the rooftop) to prevent it from entirely caving in, assuring her that he’ll be there to support her. With all that taken care of, Ayano and Kazuma was finally able to relax and take a walk. Ayano complains about the ruined dinner, and ends up having a ramen for dinner because of her obvious (and roaring) hunger. Amidst the catfight earlier, Kazuma actually manages to slip in the wine from the restaurant and takes out the bottle as he offers the shop owner a drink. Some wine gets poured onto Ayano’s face as he places it in a glass, and Kazuma licks it off, not wanting it to be laid to waste. Ayano is taken aback by Kazuma’s action and accuses him of sexual harassment, but he simply ignores her and delights in his food and wine.

Soushu gets informed about the outcome of what happened in the building where Ayano and Kazuma were supposed to have their dinner, and Ren thinks that Soushu must be mad at the way things turned out.

Thoughts

Seeing Ayano and Kazuma in different outfits is always a pleasant welcome, and it seems that the change of outfit brought about some changes in the mood between these two as well. Kazuma has been one gentleman in this episode that his sweetness became more apparent than his usual sarcastic self. Ayano certainly looks good in her gown, and I believe that’s one of the factors contributing to Kazuma’s lack of sarcasm :p That night was precious, so Kazuma himself doesn’t want to ruin that (this is just my hunch, since not much about Kazuma’s thoughts was shown in the novel as well :p)

It’s always such an entertainment seeing Ayano get teased by Yukari and Nanase, especially when she tries to hide something so obvious :p It’s been mentioned before that Ayano is looked up to by her classmates, because she excels both in academics and athletics (hence the number of “fans” she also has). That all the more makes you see the drastic change from her cool self to a clumsy lady-in-love that time in class. It’s sooo obvious that Ayano was looking forward to the “date” because she even dressed herself in such an elegant and sexy gown just for this special occasion. Else if she only wanted to splurge Kazuma’s money then she shouldn’t have done things to such an extent (and of course all of us know this by now :p) It’s good that GONZO decided to show these short stories and make us see different sides of Ayano’s character, and allow us to see her cute side :3

Though, Ayano’s skills still seem to be lacking that she still can’t think up strategies all by herself. Without Kazuma, she would’ve probably wasted all her energy attacking Metatron without having realized that she should purify it instead. On the other hand, it was surprising to see how Ayano was suddenly able to use her flames of purification at this time when she wasn’t able to do so in her previous [more critical] fights. I guess it’s because the situation called for it or something… it just naturally came out without much effort o___o

Catherine who is introduced to us in this episode is a nice addition to spicing up Ayano and Kazuma’s relationship, and it seems that this American girl is going to make more appearance in the later episodes (at least until episode 16) :p It’s not given much emphasis in this episode but we’ve seen a glimpse of how cold she is (like evil Kazuma in the novel? ) when she didn’t care about burning all the people in the restaurant only to confront Ayano… x___x

Soushu on the other hand has spoken about how he sees Kazuma as a valuable ‘asset’ to the Kannagi, hence he doesn’t want him to leave again. And the only way to be assured that he will leave the Kannagis is to have him… marry off Ayano

(Despite how ‘yummy’ this episode turned out to be, it turned out to be not as good for someone who has already read this story in the novel… because of even JUICIER parts removed yet again… sigh…!! Deep Frying is on the way… >3 )