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Originally Posted by Kaoru Chujo
1. "delusion" -- Not actual delusion. Maybe a compulsive reaction to unpleasant reality? When discussions in the staff room turn bad for her, Rikka drifts off into chuunibyou fantasies that make her feel better but do not actually solve the problem. You could also call it childish -- middle-school age child -- because it does not match reality. In Dekomori's and Nibutani's cases, perhaps they were driven to it by the fact that (a) they were too smart to find school work challenging, and (b) their intelligence and pride made them objects of dislike for the other students. Dekomori had to go to a higher grade to find a friend; Rikka had to go to a lower one. The reason Rikka had no friends may show up soon in the anime. I guess her parents' divorce will be part of it.
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It seems less and less credible in my view to see Rikka as mentally ill, in any sort of clinical sense. I think she very much knows that her imaginary world and the real world are not identical, but she *chooses* the imaginary one, because it's just *better* than the real world, where she's terribly lonely and has to deal with things like seemingly pointless math exams. The real world isn't worth much in her view, and it's hard for me to blame her for staying in an imaginary realm where she has special powers, where she doesn't need to think about her loneliness, and where the day-to-day cares of the real world don't exist.
But, of course, the real world can't be held off forever, and this episode showed Yuuta helping Rikka bridge the gap, so to speak, between her real and imaginary worlds, in as painless a way as possible. In the end, Rikka *will* have to face up to reality, and it looks like Yuuta will have an important role to play in that process, while still letting Rikka be her imaginative self.