Now, if one is identifying common tropes that Kobayashi likes to revisit, wouldn’t it be fair to say that Urataros is probably the closest Den-O has to one Kitaoka Shuichi? :D

Probably, and this would explain why I like Urataros so much. I mean they’re both full of it, they’re both smooth with the ladies (well, Kitaoka supposedly is, we don’t see it work in Ryuki because it’s always directed at Reiko), and they’re so much smoke and mirrors around their motivations that it’s very hard to tell just what there is underneath it all… except for the fact that one suspects they’re really not bad, underneath it all, just selfish, opportunistic and self-serving. But quite charming, really!

Especifically with Urataros, there’s the mystery of why exactly he’s doing what he’s doing, why he’s possessing Ryotaro knowing the limitations of possessing a singularity point (which at this point… haven’t exactly been explained). His very indirect answer is that with the limitations come certain benefits, which Hana interprets as security, and that’s probably true enough as far as it goes. Then he gives Momo, Naomi and Ryotaro the line about how he wandered through the sands of time for years (with the taste of sand in his mouth!), how he was all alone, etc etc. They all fall for it, but Hana identifies it as a lie (he can’t have been wondering for years, Imagin have no mouths with which to taste sand), except his first appearance is in the sand watching the Denliner, so… what then? Is there some kernel of truth to the lie?

The other intriguing thing is how Ryotaro chooses to let him stay because he claims to have figured out that Urataros lied in front of the little boy so that he’d confess he’d made a contract with the Imagin (because he’d see how little Hana thought of a liar), and, as Ryotaro puts it, lying is bad, but if Urataros lies to help a person, he can’t be a bad Imagin. Urataros doesn’t really say anything, but does think that he’s been saved by the fish he caught (meaning Ryotaro has fallen for his lies), and later does tell Ryotaro not to “triviliaze” his lies, that he lies for the sake of lying. Which would seem to explain it all, wouldn’t it? Again here I go back to Kitaoka, and wonder if maybe before it became about lying for the sake of lying itself, there wasn’t actually something he was hiding. Maybe he really was lonely, and hence is why his purpose is to charm (and bang) as many women as possible.

Or maybe I’m thinking about it too much. :D

The other really interesting moment in these two episodes had to do with Hana learning that the little boy was afraid of her, and how finding this out appears to hurt her, and she explains that it’s the only way she knows how to be.

Finally, Naomi was just awesome egging Momotaros and Urataros on to fight.