Shugo Chara Doki 54 - Power up!

Yaya is excited about Amu's most recent power up with Ran and hopes that the Humpty Lock will perform similar magic for her. Amu makes a new friend named Nanami whose parents own a flower shop. Nanami loves flowers as well and wants to use flowers to make people happy. Meanwhile at Easter, Lulu pays a visit to Gozen and says that she'll be able to bring out the Embryo using a magical glowing pendant. She approaches Nanami and uses the pendant to transform Nanami's egg of the heart into a "riddle egg." Nanami is put in a trance and wanders around a park making magical trance-inducing flowers grow everywhere. Yoru is caught in the flowers and decides to find Ikuto, but he runs into the guardians. He accidentally spills the fact that Easter has found a new way to find the Embryo, and the guardians hurry off. They find Nanami in her spell, and when Amu confronts her, the riddle egg grows and swallows Nanami. When it hatches, Nanami has done a chara nari and turned into some uh...flower girl (I heard her say "Kurara Dream" but I'm probably wrong). Amu powers up and purifies the riddle egg, and everyone is happy again. Ikuto realizes that the fight attracted the Embryo, but it disappears before he can do anything.

Finally. Something happens. I never thought I'd be so happy to see a monster of the week. So it looks like the riddle eggs are caused by the pendant, not Lulu's chara power. It's still unclear what her chara's ability is, but they don't seem to always get along. In general, Lulu is pretty much as annoying as I expected. A stuck-up oujo type who looks down on poor plain girls like Amu and Nanami. I don't like her, but I suppose I'm not meant to. I can barely tell that Amu's power up is any different from her normal transformation. It would have been nice if she got an entirely new outfit, or at least an upgraded edition. Oh well. Still no sign of the roller skates. Ikuto seemed genuinely worried about Amu, but he didn't really do anything to help her out. : / Also, Lulu seems to have zero interest in Ikuto and all. I personally would have loved to see Utau smash Lulu into the ground. Maybe we'll still get to see it. owo Well, at least the introduction of the riddle eggs is shaking things up a bit. It will be interesting to see why they exist.

--Ou-bento