After their first big job together (which nets Mira a cool ¥6 million cash) DW slows down a little, giving us a largely slice-of-life episode that still nudges some plot points forward. It also happens to be a slice of the lie of an android who thinks she’s a human and really might as well be one, since she has the same need for a place to live, relax, and heal her body.
After being paid and praised, Mira’s excited about interacting with society and carving out her little corner of it. I like how we first see Kyouma having bad dreams, then refuse to accept Mira in his house – too much gloom in there for her, plus he doesn’t want to lose privacy. Mira is plenty elated by the purchase of her very own trailer.
However, that trailer doesn’t have a bathroom, so she has to use Kyouma’s. When he inevitably walks in on her, she doesn’t slap him, but just explains that for various reasons related to her unique specifications, she needs the damn toilet too sometimes, so they’ll just going to have to work out a system, whether it’s a door lock or simply knocking.
Kyouma, who hates all things Coil, seems to be (inadvertently or not) denying or at least limiting Mira’s humanity at every turn. He certainly has his reasons, but it’s not exactly nice that he doesn’t even bother saying goodbye before leaving, or help her transport her furnishings to her trailer (which she then has to carry herself, quite conspicuously!).
He also leaves Mira to her own devices (tehe) in dealing with the snoopy neighborhood kids. Mira figures it out, being firm but not too strict with the youngins’, the most inquisitive of which, a girl named Shiora, asks if Mira is Kyouma’s new wife, and whether they’re “doin’ it” (complete with the vulgar Japanese gesture for sex I first saw in Shimoneta). Kids!
When the kids get a little rough in playing with Kyouma’s stacked car wrecks, and disaster is imminent, Mira springs into action like a superhero, putting the kids’ lives above worries about being exposed. She also scares the shit out of the kids, who assumed she was human.
Man, I love the composition of first-person POV of Kyouma arriving at his place to see what chaos has been wrought in his absence. That clever camerawork is also used to reveal, in a way that’s both hilarious and heartbreaking, that Mira’s head popped off in the ruckus, and she’s been sheepishly sitting in her trailer all along, holding her head in her lap.
She’s worried that those kids will think she’s a monster, and also knowing she may have taken things a little far, since New Tesla could have easily discovered her, meaning the death of Kyouma, Mary, Koorogi, and probably others. Kyouma may see the beheaded Mira as proof she’s just a robot, but to do so would miss the fact that head aside, she’s acting like a human. The reality is, she’s much more than some robot.
As for where Kyouma was while Mira was getting into trouble: he gets some info on the “Numbers”, which are mini-coils that draw from deep within Dimension W for their power, and which have caused bizarre accidents like the art museum, which NTE is always quick to cover up.
The incident with the cars has Kyouma brought to the Police department for questioning, but he’s soon released and summoned to the roof of NTE 47, where the COO, Clair Skyheart, is waiting for him.
Kyouma assumes she bailed him out for some reason, but it’s just a matter of her granddaughter Shiora telling her what happened and putting a good word in for him. Claire also wanted to meet another “beast of Grendel”, having been told about him by another apparent former beast, Albert.
Shiora whispers to Kyouma that she and the other kids didn’t tell anyone about Mira’s secret, and hope she feels better. The kids later pay a visit to Mira, who is glad they don’t hate or fear her. Of course they don’t; unlike Kyouma, technology has only ever been a force of good. On the other side of the spectrum, I could have done without Kyouma kicking her butt and calling her junk…
This was a fun episode that explores how far Mira’s come, how far she has yet to go, and how much more Kyouma has to learn about the right way to treat her, in addition to learning a little more about the Numbers. The teaser at the end is more of a preview for the next episode, which suggests Kyouma and Mira’s next mission will take them to a remote island castle where Robo-Murder Most Foul is afoot. Talk about a change of scenery!
RABUJOI - An Anime Blog 
I think you’re over-focusing on how Kyouma treats Mira, from everything we’ve been shown, Kyouma’s mean to EVERYONE. Yes, he’s even a bit more aloof to her because she’s a coil-robot-thing, but we haven’t seen him be friendly to anyone, so it’s not that weird that he’s mean to her too.
LikeLike
True. Whether Mira was flesh-and-blood or not, he’d have a problem with his hard-won solitude being disrupted. But her status as the manifestation of everything he rejects certainly doesn’t make it easy for the two to form more of a bond, which I hope they do, eventually.
I don’t think he’s grasped how “real” a person Mira actually is. Then again, nor has anyone else (among the few people who know her). That’s the thing about one-off, ultra-sophisticated androids, and what’s so intriguing about Mira: we just don’t know where the tech ends and the humanity begins.
The show is doing a good job drawing a sharp contrast between the almost-human (emotionally, not physically) Mira and far less convincing robots like the curator’s bodyguards or Skyheart’s attendant, both either lauded as or assumed to be state-of-the-art.’
LikeLike
Yeah, I mean I’d assume they’ll bond in time (given there’s little to no source material, we’ll see how far that gets here).
I find Mira fascinating because while she’s clearly very human-like, she’s also one of the most robotic android girls in anime that I can remember. Usually when they do the robot girl that’s so human you can’t tell, you really CAN’T tell, and the fact that she’s a robot is more of a plot point than a real character trait. Mira is very obviously a robot. She has had her head popped off, you can hear gears whirring on occasion when she moves, she has to download information periodically to understand references. She’s a robot.
The fact that really does sit on the edge between man and machine I think makes her arguably more fascinating than some of the more classic robot girls who are really just human characters that they call robots in order to allow for drama.
LikeLike