Dimension W – 02

Before her first job as a collector under Kyouma, we learn the rest of the conversation cut off last week. Mira shows Mary footage of the murder of Shido’s daughter and mother, not long after she was first activated. This is information that could get everyone killed, so Mary elects to keep Mira under Kyouma’s supervision, partly because he’s competent, and partly because he’s the one who brought Mira to them, along with all her dangerous baggage.

Mira is determined to become a good collector, which will in turn help her achieve her father’s dying directive: follow the illegal coils. Kyouma wants the coils, Mira wants info about where they came from and who built them. It’s a mutually beneficial partnership. But you can tell Kyouma doesn’t like suddenly having to deal with a partner, especially one who embodies the very technology he rejects.

Their first target as a pair is to extract the illegal coils being used by the flamboyant celebrity criminal Loser, who is staging a very flamboyant public robbery of an art museum for his legions of giddy fans. This crime-as-entertainment is another interesting detail of this futuristic society.

Kyouma tells Mira to find the jamming devices hacking the communications grid around the museum, and it should lead her to the coils, while he goes after Loser himself. Kyouma goes off on his own, while also putting trust that his new partner will get her part of the job done.

Loser’s son and partner in crime is in constant contact, and does some research on Kyouma in the middle of the chase. Loser shows just how useful illegal coils can be when put to good use, learning about his enemy as he flees from him.

Among that which Loser learns explains how Kyouma can keep up with him despite lacking any coils of any kind. Our boy was once a member of Grendel, a kind of elite anti-coil assault squad. Kyouma is now using his skills and training from his dark past to pay the bills.

Then Loser tells him a bit abot him self, showing him his horribly burned, disfigured face, mentions his lost legs and wife, and blames New Tesla for all of it. He’s on a quest for revenge, and Kyouma would do well to stay out of it.

But Kyouma will do no such thing. He’s on the job, and he’s not leaving without the illegal coils he came for. The museum curator inadvertently helps him lose the police, locking the place down to prevent them from discovering he himself uses illegal coils to power his sexy twin bodyguards.

What the curator doesn’t know is that within his most cherished work of art lies one of the “numbers”, special classified coils that are Loser’s true goal with the heists. He busies himself extracting the coil while Kyouma very easily dispatches the bodyguards.

Meanwhile, after racing to the highest point she can, Mira finds the devices she was looking for. They were disguised as pigeons flying amongst live ones, but her extra-human vision discerned differences in their patterns. After collecting the illegal coil-equipped robotic birds, she makes her presence known to their controller, Loser’s son, who can’t believe she’s human. But considering her sentience, I believe he’s mistaken. Though she is more than a human, she’s definitely a human.

When the police start banging on the door to the chamber, the curator tries to fiddle with one of the illegal coils and sets it off, and we see for the first time just how terrifyingly awful a “dimensional collapse” can be, and how dangerous illegal coils are in the wrong hands. The curator is caught in the rift, which then hardens into a horrifying mass of duplicated robogirls mixed with pieces of the curator, who is still alive and conscious for it all. Yikes!

Illegal illegal coils are no joke. And while Mira doesn’t get any info from Loser, who is determined to get his revenge and so won’t recklessly reveal his sources, she did show that she’s collector material, and can work in concert with Kyouma even without supervision. This was another thrilling, stylish romp. Two eps in, Dimension W is looking…very good.