Akuma no Riddle – 05

This week’s riddle is “How do you get a bird out of its cage?” One thing Haru, Tokaku, and this week’s assassin Sagae Haruki share so far has been a sense of confinement due to circumstance. Haruki’s cage is poverty, and she has assassinated to put food on her large family’s table, and she’s promised they’ll be forever free from want if she kills Haru (even if she dies in the process).

Tokaku’s cage is her name. Even though she never saw her father and her mother died right after she was born, the Azuma family has shaped her course in life and assigned her expectations. Haru’s cage has been built from the bones of those who died so that she could live. Haruki neither gets off on killing like Otoya, nor is she unsuited for killing like Kouko; she’s good at it, but it’s a means to free her family from its cage.

Yet Haruki doesn’t seem altogether apathetic to Haru’s plight, nor Tokaku’s. She believes it to be a service and a kindness to free them too, but that suggest an inability to fathom that death is not the only way out of those cages. In Haru’s case, she considers it a solemn duty to always smile, be merry, and try to live as normal a life within that cage, honoring those who built it with their lives.

By the same token, death isn’t the only way out of Tokaku’s cage either. She may be stuck with her name, but by choosing to subvert Class Black’s system by swearing to protect rather than assassinate Haru, Tokaku seems determined to survive in her cage her own way, while building a tunnel from her cage to Haru’s, connecting the two. Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. I will stop using metaphors now.

Sidonia no Kishi – 04

Like Sidonia’s Kabizashi, I prefer to use “Holy Craps” sparingly; preferably no more than five per season, but in the case of this episode, I feel perfectly justified in exhausting one. Holy Crap, that was one awesome tour-de-force of an episode. My heart rate remains elevated some time after watching it. But worry not, Braverade is near a fresh-air-providing open window, and no harm will come to her.

Going into this episode, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to say the same of Sidonia. When your elite subjugation squad is annihilated and a Gauna manages to dodge the HMD, you know Sidonia is in for a rough ride, and so we get a “Gravity Alert”, in which those bulky safety harnesses prove so crucial to survival. Good thing Nagate put his on! I appreciated the hard sci-fi approach to everything Sidonia does.

For instance, a small moon-sized colony ship can go into evasive maneuvers without seriously messing up the structures inside. Kobayashi’s job is truly thankless and unenviable: she must either choose to destroy a big chunk of the ship, killing hundreds of people, or lose the whole ship. No wonder she wears a mask. Her’s is one of many choices that make the episode’s title “Choice” so fitting.

It was a single choice—a bad, emotionally-fueled one—that got Sidonia into this hole in the first place: Akai and Momose tried to save one another, when victory hinged on their ability to let each other go. As I assumed, the next four-man group to be sent out would include Nagate, along with Shizuka, Kunato, and En. Izana is notably excluded.

But this team isn’t supposed to fight the Gauna, it’s merely charged with retrieving one of the two Holy Craps Kabizashis still barely in their frames’ range; if they don’t hypermile, they could end up stranded in space. When Nagate spots the Kabizashi, Kunato is quick to run ahead and grab it, but that puts him in the firing zone of the Gauna, which fires its own Hyggs cannon, disabling all but Nagate’s frame.

From here on, the choices are Nagate’s, and he makes what could be called an emotional choice in going after the Gauna instead of towing his colleagues home. But he’s a clever chap, and his frame fits him like a glove, so he’s able to ice the Gauna, earning him instant ship-wide recognition and celebrity, along with more even ire from Kunato, no doubt.

But of course, all is not yet well—the emergencies never relent, right until the end, with Nagate making another clearly emotional choice: to search for Shizuka’s ejection pod, flying past the point of no return in the process. Following an episode in which such chivalry ended in disaster and after witnessing how sacrificing a few to save the many worked out, Nagate isn’t following Kobayashi’s lead: he won’t leave a (wo)man behind.

Ryuugajou Nanana no Maizoukin – 04

“You’re actually pretty evil, aren’t you?”

Rather than move on to the next treasure-of-the-week, Nanana sticks to the matter at hand—the fact that Juugo isn’t going to let Yuiga get away with his treachery. In the process, we get a lot more pieces to the puzzle that is Yama Juugo, beyond a blandish kid who decided to strike out on his own out of mere restlessness. Turns out he was exiled! We’re startin’ to like this kid.

When Juugo meets with Tensai at the agreed-upon spot, she notices Juugo is slightly taller, and exposes an impostor belonging to the e-lite thievin’ group Matsuri who claims to have kidnapped her new pardner. But in reality, Juugo is the son of Matsuri’s leader, and it’s once-presumptive heir. The show kept its cards close to its chest last week, but those weird cops were an early hint at what was to come.

I must say I was impressed with how elegantly the show managed to uncover all these new truths about Juugo, while keeping him true to the person we had known thus far. He’s still a tank of a feller, able to withstand all the Wizard Cane attacks Yuiga can throw at him until it runs out of juice. I was also surprised and delighted by Ibara and Yukihime’s mad fighting skills.

I was impressed by the first puzzle dungeon the adventure club faced, but I’m even more impressed at the show’s ability to change gears to something more complex and nuanced. The fact that essentially everything that transpired this week was all part of Juugo’s plan, even counting on Tensai to bring in the cavalry, and used his stature within Matsuri, but only so far.

But even better is the fact that Tensai figured it all out, which even impresses Juugo. Tensai and Yuiga’s crazy dreams irks him because he can’t feel the same way, nor does he have as defined a goal. He also seems to have trouble with people. His haughty dad who exiled him is quick to mock him on both counts. But with his growing respect for Tensai and the goal Nanana has assigned him, Juugo may be in the right place to find out what he’s meant to do.