Avernus

I love Gwendal to a degree that is beginning to alarm even me. What I am currently finding even more alarming is how goddamned cute Gwendal/Yuuri is. Yuuri may not be my favourite character - I like him, just not as much as the others - but *damn* he brings out the cute in others. At some point I will get round to screen-capping the 'let's share body-heat' scene from (I think) ep 12, which is just Gwendal sitting with his arm around Yuuri next to a camp-fire, and Yuuri frankly *snuggling*. This is the scene where Yuuri notices Gwendal is eyeing the keyring which he won a couple of episodes back (a little plastic dolphin thingy) - one should remember Gwendal's deeply shameful liking of all things cute and kitsch - and gives it to him as a present. One of the cutest things *ever* is Gwendal playing with a little plastic dolphin.

In any case, this arc has been the Gwendal and Yuuri bonding arc, and so it's hardly surprising that Gwendal/Yuuri has ensued. So, in the efforts of explaining my Gwendal-squeeage to the world:

Gwendal has been trying to ask Yuuri why he doesn't do normal king things, like sit in his castle and make his subordinates do all the work and take up expensive hobbies. Yuuri has explained that he only really likes playing baseball, and in any case he doesn't think a king *ought* to spend all their time sitting at home wasting the tax-payers' money. Gwendal looks very cute.

I should probably add that for the whole of the aforementioned conversation they were sitting in a prison-wagon, having been arrested as illegal elopers. They end the conversation with Yuuri saying that since he can't be mature or regal he's just going to have to be his own sort of king - and he knows he won't make any stupid mistakes, because he's sure that Gwendal will be there to stop him. Gwendal smiles at him goofily.

They get to their trial, which is in a building studded with magestones - rocks that essentially act like kryptonite to mazoku, making them ill and sapping their power. Gwendal falls over. Yuuri catches him. There is cute.

The judge, still believing Yuuri and Gwendal have eloped, orders Yuuri never to see Gwendal again and to prove he hates him by injuring him (albeit only slightly). Yuuri refuses, angrily. They try to leave. Gwendal collapses again and is about to get beaten by ugly guards with big sticks, when Yuuri performs his human-shield function and takes the beating instead.

Gwendal sits in prison and broods over Yuuri's keyring. Everyone say 'awwwww'.

And then later in the episode we have the archetypal Hisoka-at-end-of-Kyoto-arc moment. Yuuri has gone Maoh schitz on a couple of guards and fully plans to actually kill them this time. Wolfram, Conrad and Gwendal are lurking on the sidelines, not at all sure how they're going to stop this when Yuuri is so totally out of control. Until, of course, Gwendal (still weakened by nasty kryptonite stuff) jumps right down into the Yuuri-centred maelstrom and starts telling it like it is. He talks Yuuri down in the traditional slightly-slashy way.

I still love Gwendal/Gunter in a comic and random way, and still feel fairly certain that Conrad/Yuuri is the way to go, but still...

Prize for best line this ep goes to a brief moment of spaz from Yuuri's mother in flashback: 'A mother always loves her child, even if her child doesn't have a pair of wings or has a weird job in a different dimension!'

And also, just because everyone should see this shot at least once: Gunter.

Um.