NieR: Automata Ver 1.1a – 08 – Sea Breeze

When they return to the Resistance base, 2B and 9S ask Lily if she’s ever seen A2, whom Commander White has ordered them to pursue, investigate and ultimately eliminate. Since A2 saved her life, Lily lies and say she never heard of her, but I imagine 2B doesn’t believe her.

The YoRHa duo asks the quiet twin redheads Devola and Popola, who sugges they ask Jackass. However, Jackass is currently scouting in the Flooded City. That gives us yet another gorgeous, haunting establishing shot, along with some scenes of 2B and 9S dwarfed by their surroundings as they run and leap about the ruins.

When 9S starts thinking and asking questions about 2A, like why she’s still fighting MLs if she’s a deserter, 2B tells him curiosity could get them destroyed, so best not to think too much. Then 9S suggests they take a break, and he removes his boots, socks, and even visor to play in the water. 2B grudgingly follows him (though wisely doesn’t try to pull off those thigh-high boots). It’s nice to see their eyes for once.

Since Jackass’ signature is hidden for some reason, 2B and 9S split up to cover more ground. 2B is the one to find Jackass, who is absolutely rocking a bright red bikini as she fishes for mackerel, whose oil can prove fatal to androids (but she wants it for research). Like Lily, Jackass claims not to know 2A (though she may be telling the truth)

When 2B fails to contact 9S due to jamming, we switch to 9S’s POV. Turns out he split of from 2B so he could contact Operator 6O, upload some photos for her hobby, and also hack into the Bunker’s monitoring systems. He eavesdrops on Commander White having an uncomfortable chat with Command about sacrificing someone (the Resistance, 2B, and 9S, possibly both). Then Command notices a security breach and 9S is cut off.

But it isn’t command that jams his signal from 2B and Jackass, it’s 9S entering a weird room full of handmade drawings and paintings of him and 2B, including when they were wading in the water just moments ago. Unless previous versions of themselves did this same thing, someone here is not only watching them but is also a very fast painter. Very weird and intriguing.

9S catches glimpses of long silver locks, and so assumes it’s 2A, but the fact that Eve can’t sense his elder brother indicates that that long hair actually belongs to Adam, who is lures 9S down a dark, creepy hall before knocking him out. While this probably doesn’t bode well, I am glad the Adam/Eve and 2B/9S’s stories are finally connecting.

P.S. The post-ED puppet shows continue to make me LOL every week. It’s always nice to see that an otherwise quite serious show has a sense of humor. Also, we got a little bit of the Bunker theme again, which might be my favorite piece from Taro Yoko. It really does feel like you’re floating around a space station overlooking a ruined planet.

NieR: Automata Ver 1.1a – 07 – Missions Don’t Need Hairpins

“Emotions are prohibited”, and yet Operator 6O contacts 2B to tell her she’d look good with a lunar tear (a kind of lily) in her hair. Why would YoRHa androids care about aesthetics aside from their practical or tactical use? Maybe, I guess, because enough time has passed and these androids have lived and been regenerated enough that they do have emotions, and it’s a fool’s errand to deny or suppress them.

2B has shown time and time again that she not only has emotions, but is willing to let them guide her actions rather than her strict YoRHa programming and independent from Bunker directives. It’s why when Pascal reports that Little Sister is missing after looking for parts for her Big Sister, 2B agrees to a sidequest to find her. It’s not like they have anything else going on.

Pascal gives 2B and 9S a lift to the Forest Kingdom with his new flight attachments, and the androids learn that he can change out his body parts as needed. That leads to a talk about how much can be changed before Pascal is no longer Pascal. He believes that as long as the heart of someone, be they human, Machine Lifeform, or android, remains, they are still themselves.

Within the Forest Kingdom there’s a sprawling ruined castle of brick and stone, calling to mind not just Castle in the Sky but the classic video game Ico. The visuals and soundtrack combine for another another triumph of location establishment and atmosphere setting. But while the kingdom is supposed to be guarded by a fierce ML fighting force, nearly all are destroyed, and by someone who knew what they were doing.

Various record chips held by the castle’s defeated occupants contain not just a dispassionate record of events 256 and 128 years ago, but a history of their kingdom, from when their first king declared their kingdom, to when he died and was succeeded by a new “Little King”. There’s also a record of four hours ago, when the intruder is revealed to be a female android.

As they’re walking on a bridge high above a long drop,  the stone beneath 9S’ feet crumbles, but Pascal saves him. 9S is shocked by this since he’s been badmouthing Pascal and all MLs the whole time, and even afterwards he still can’t fully trust him. But they eventually find the Little Sister, who has fallen in love with one of the castle guards and wishes to be married.

With one sidequest complete, the sister’s new fiancé gives the androids another: save the Little King, who is under threat from the intruder. They reach the throne room and find the King—the Machine Lifeform version of a babe in riveted metal swaddling clothes—but they are too late to save it, as it is run clean through by the blade of the female android intruder.

The Pod identifies this android as the ex-soldier A2, currently classified a deserter and a fugitive (and I’m guessing she’s the “Number Two” from last week’s exploration of Lily’s past). After crossing blades and having hers shattered by 2B (the upgraded model must have an advantage), 9S asks A2 why she betrayed Command. A2 responds that Command was the ones doing the betraying.

Judging from what went down last week, I’m not skeptical in the least about A2’s assertion. She runs off before 2B and 9S can question her further, but I hope we get to see her again. I’m also eager to see what Adam does when he feels he and Eve have amassed enough knowledge…and clothing.

NieR: Automata Ver 1.1a – 05 – It Takes a Village

Lily sends 2B and 9S on a delivery mission that takes them through a derelict shopping center. The extreme wide shots that dwarf the two androids, the merging of nature and the man-made, and that terrific Okabe Keiichi score all conspire to set the mood exquisitely as always. After showing his cruel side when he extinguished the ML “family”, 9S seems back to his chipper self.

He dreams of a day when the fighting’s over, the mall can reopen, and they can spend the day shopping for T-shirts. 2B says she has all the clothing she needs, and that “emotions are prohibited”; ironic considering she’s clearly had her share of emotional reactions in the past four episodes. She’s someone wrestling with the contradiction between her programming and directives, and the things she’s been feeling.

If last week’s amusement park demonstrated that the MLs emulating humans without proper context results in a state indistinguishable from madness and psychopathy, this week’s ML village demonstrates that a more tempered and realistic form of humanity mimicry can be replicated by the androids’ enemy. Led by the green-eyed gentle giant Pascal, a large population of MLs live in harmony completely severed from the ML network.

In a scene that is half-Laputa, half-Ewok Village, all shapes and sizes of MLs have their specific functions in the village, but rather than working like a well-oiled machine, their movements and behaviors are thoroughly human. They also have familial connections such as big and little sister (with the big sister being smaller). 9S is simply astonished that Pascal is able to converse with them so eloquently.

2B and 9S are given freedom to explore the village, and when they find a ladder that plunges far below ground into the darkness, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Thankfully, there are no flayed androids, but there is a very strange large head that is neither android nor ML. When 9S hacks it, a number of strange images of fellow androids flash by before his connection is severed.

Pascal joins the two and notes that this giant head is the one who inspired him to stop fighting (something he’s apparently done for thousands of years), and is now an object of worship. 9S gathered enough data to identify it as a creation of humanity of yore, perhaps also as a weapon, but like Pascal it seems to have found a new reason for its (now sedentary) existence. The vivid palette of Pascal’s memories is a neat contrast to the subdued earthy tones of the village.

The more 9S observes this seemingly perfect society, the more he resents them as “selfish” for deciding to suddenly stop fighting a war both they and the androids were designed to fight. It’s clear that like 2B, there’s a part of 9S that wants the fighting to stop, and a part of him that believes its the only reason he exists. For her part, 2B asks her assistant bot to properly map this place so that she and 9S can return someday, to buy those T-shirts. The clouds part, and 9S’ mood brightens when she says this.

When the two return to the village to say their goodbyes, they see a group of ML “kids” bickering and getting violent over a music box one of them found, so like humans, the ML village isn’t without its problems.

What was the deal with the images 9S saw when he was hacking the head? Was the visual glitching he experienced—during which time the very environment around him and 2B changed—related to that hacking session? As an anime-only NieRer, I’ll have to wait to find out.

As for Adam and his brother Eve, the two highly evolved MLs are evolving steadly, going from wearing tighty-whities in the cold open to full-on pants and gauntlets in the parting shot. They don’t just look dangerous, they look just like YoRHa androids. Coincidence…or design?

NieR: Automata Ver 1.1a – 04 – The Play’s the Thing

After a three-week, Covid-induced hiatus, NieR: Automata returns, opening with the Machine Lifeforms doing weird-ass Machine Lifeform shit. To whit: they’re putting on a play. MLs play the roles of characters and act out the parts, MLs sit in the seats and watch and applaud…and a captive audience of flayed but still alive androids are strung up around the theater.

2B and 9S return to the resistance base and give their report (Jackass also made it back and provides much needed comic relief). With talk of MLs evolving to a state they feel something like emotions, Lily and Jackass wonder if there’s an opportunity to at least negotiate a ceasefire. But here’s where 9S’s programmed orthodoxy is laid bare: there will be no ceasefire or quarter given: the mission of all androids is to wipe out every last ML and reclaim Earth for mankind.

Perhaps due to the fact her memory file is longer than his or possibly because she’s been doing a little evolving of her own, 2B doesn’t fall into lockstep with this hardline view. Their next recon mission from Commander White (who tried and failed to get them YoRHa backup) takes them to an active and bustling amusement park full of non-hostile MLs.

They find the black box signals of the androids in the theater, and are ambushed by a giant mutated Machine Lifeform that has taken on a prima donna personality…and wears the still-living android bodies like jewelry. A vicious boss fight ensues, with 2B and 9S just barely able to keep up with its myriad attacks. They’re also enclosed within an energy field, so retreat is not an option.

2B covers 9S as he tries to hack the ML, but he ends up overwhelmed and controlled by the imagery within the boss ML’s brain, as if it’s hacking him. There, he finds that personality that constantly needs affirmation that they’re beautiful, which nearly leads to him being swallowed up by a giant mouth and into the spinning meat grinder within. He’s saved at the last second by 2B, who breaks protocol and uses her hacking ability, deemed a risky action for B models due to the possibility of corruption.

2B didn’t have any other options, and seemingly comes out of the situation none the worse for wear. She exposes the boss’ core and the Pod blasts it to smithereens. Not long thereafter, an ML “mother” with a bouquet of roses and her “daughter” arrive; the mom pleads with the androids not to harm them, as they only came to watch the play.

9S’ chilling reaction underscores his inflexibility when it comes to any kind of negotiation of compromise with the Machine Lifeforms: he walks up to the two MLs, crushing the roses under his boot, and destroys them both, then turns to 2B and tells her they can’t hesitate.

But something in the way 2B reacts tells me 9S may ultimately be on the wrong side of this issue. Eve was born from the rib of the destroyed Adam and is still out there, evolving. At what point does mimicry of human emotions and behavior simply become…human emotions and behavior? I think we’re approaching that point in real time.

Rakuen Tsuihou: Expelled from Paradise

Hannah Brave (Braverade): It’s been a while since we last got together and watched a movie as a trio, so when I came upon a solid-looking film written by Urobuchi Gen (Aldnoah.Zero, Fate/Zero, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Psycho-Pass, Gargantia) and directed by Mizushima Seiji (Fullmetal Alchemist, Gundam 00, Natsuiro Kiseki, UN-GO), I thought I’d corral the staff (everyone but the busy Oigakkosan) and kick back for some shared big-budget sci-fi entertainment. Here’s Zane to start us off.

Zane Kalish (sesameacrylic): Let’s see…BOOBS! Agh, let me start over. 98% of humanity has left earth (or, to my mind, expelled themselves) and abandoned their physical bodies to live in the Utopian cyber-society called DEVA.

Our heroine, Angela Balzac (not un-ironically named for the author of The Human Comedy, and voiced by the awesome Kugimiya Rie), comes from that all-digital world, and as an officer in System Security, is responsible for preserving the status quo.

That means going where she’s sent. So when an Earth-based hacker named “Frontier Setter” offers the citizens of DEVA the chance to travel the stars aboard the Genesis Ark, Angela transfers her consciousness into a artificially-created body and travels to Earth to deal with the threat.

Preston Yamazuka (MagicalChurlSukui): Once there, she meets her guide Dingo, a charming, Han Solo-esque rogue. Following close behind him is a huge swarm of giant sandworms, and he has her help slaughter them so he can sell the meat to locals. Then Dingo deactivates the network link on her mecha, rendering it a useless hulk that he sells for scrap.

At this point you may be saying “Wow, this guy’s a dick!”, but taking Angela off the network was actually a good idea considering she’s after a master hacker. And Angela gives as good as she gets, dick-wise

Hannah: Indeed. The opening act is all about the clash of cultures between Angela’s clean, gleaming, sterile Utopian DEVA and Dingo’s dusty, dirty, slimy, crude world. The Angela of this early part of the film is insuffrably arrogant and condescending, which makes sense considering where she’s from. She also refuses any kind of help or offers of food and rest, stating that time is of the essence and she wants to complete the mission by herself.

Zane: Those refusals, borne out of her independent spirit and her pride (she’s not going to rely on some primitive earth ape!) come back to bite Angela pretty hard, as she learns that living on earth, in a body, isn’t so easy. When she gets cornered by some unsavory sorts in a town alley, she can only fight them so long (and a kick-ass fight it is) before she runs out of gas.

Either due to a lack of food and rest or some kind of bug, Angela takes ill, and Dingo must nurse her back to health. This is the first time her armor starts to crack and I feel sympathy for her, but it won’t be the last. But it wasn’t just arrogance that led to her illness; it was ignorance, having never been in a physical body, she had no baseline for what was supposed to feel normal or abnormal.

Preston: Once Angela’s better, she and Dingo track down a supplier of a substance that can be used for rocket fuel, who lets them monitor a buy. Curiously, Frontier Setter sends only remote-controlled vintage robots, many of them custom-designed, on the deal.

Then the couple finds a lone robot that seems like more of a welcoming party than a sentry, and they learn the truth: “Frontier Setter” isn’t a human being, it’s the AI for the Genesis Ark project, which has been left on for more than a century, and is not only carrying out its original directive (remotely building the Ark up in orbit), but has gained sentience. Enter WALL-E comparisons (especially since DEVA is a lot like that film’s Axiom)!

Hannah: This encounter and revelation is the point at which the film becomes more than a sci-fi unlikely buddy flick and enters more philosophical ground, the likes of which Asimov and Dick often tread upon. Frontier Setter is an independent sentient artificial Intelligence in a world where most of humanity has adopted virtual collective existence out in orbit.

Zane: What’s fascinating about Setter is how Dingo has more in common with him, with regards to everything form what humanity is and should be, to rock music (Setter even writes his own based on what he’s heard), than Dingo has with Angela. Angela, and the place she’s from, is far more alien. Body of flesh, body of metal, doesn’t matter; they think the same.

Hannah: The encounter also marks the successful completion of Angela’s mission. When Setter arranges the necessary equipment to zap her back to DEVA (he lives to serve humans, after all), Angela prepares to leave, but not without offering her heartfelt thanks to Dingo for all he’s done for her.

She also offers him DEVA citizenship, and without putting on the hard sell, simply asks him why he prefers Earth. His powerful response is a veritable thesis on the human condition and questions like “Where are we going?”.

Preston: Angela considers physical bodies a kind of “flesh prison”, but Dingo thinks she’s swapped that prison for an even more insidious prison of the mind, in which society is always assessing and judging itself and doling out resources proportional to a person’s usefulness to society.

That’s ideal for Angela, but anathema for Dingo, and probably Setter to, were he to upload to DEVA. It’s a great exchange because neither party is totally wrong or right; humanity has always survived by compromising between extremes.

Zane: Angela was clearly on Earth too long, because upon making her report to her superiors, she is surprised to learn they don’t recognize the handshake promise of a “rogue AI” that could potentially destroy DEVA (even though he’d never ever do that), and consider Angela’s return to DEVA without “completing her mission” a serious blunder on her part. Then she refuses to return to Earth to destroy Frontier Setter, and the DEVA brass imprisons her into a frightening void that eventually takes the form of an eerie forest of loneliness.

Hannah: So Angela did catch a bug down on Earth: a bug in the form of a different way of thinking from the rigid dogma of DEVA, which believes all potential threats must be eliminated without review. And in her and particularly Dingo’s interaction with Setter, she’s come to think of the AI as just as much a person as any human, digitized or no.

Preston: That new-found respect and empathy for Setter and his desire to explore the galaxy has thoroughly transformed Angela from smug, superior, arrogant, advancement-obsessed automaton to a passionate, independent, thinking, feeling human being.

Setter proves he deserves the esteem when he comes to rescue her from her prison, resulting in an awesome journey through cyberspace that briefly transforms Setter into a pixelated hat with an “F” and Angela into a blocky SD figure.

Zane: Blocky Angela was awesome! But so is regular Angela, who once Setter takes her to the armory of a DEVA defense ship, licks her chops like a kid in a candy store and starts to devise a way to repel DEVA’s massive attack on Setter’s launch site.

Hannah: After so much time on God’s green earth, it was good to see the film move into space for some truly beautiful kinetic space battle scenes, in which Angela’s Setter-equipped and multiple support-ship-escorted mecha is a far better flyer and shooter than the virtual humans pursuing them.

Preston: One thing the show is definitely very light on for such an expansive setting is actual human characters with lines, so it’s startling to suddenly see other DEVA security officers screaming across the desert in their mechas, headed Setter’s way.

These girls are exactly like Angela was earlier in the film: absolutely loyal and firm in their belief what they’re doing and only what they’re doing is right and good. As in The Matrix, anyone still “plugged in” is a threat to anyone who isn’t; there’s a relentlessness to their outright refusal to negotiate or even speak to their targets before opening fire.

They still have their proverbial heads in the sand where now Angela has popped hers out and now sees with her own eyes. But it says something about these DEVA humans that it’s just as likely these girls would undergo the very same transformation as Angela if they had the same experiences she had.

Zane: The show wisely avoids adding a romantic angle to things, with Angela and Dingo having more of a platonic friendship of mutual respect/esteem and lots of mutual life-saving. This is good for two reasons.

First, there’s already a lot of stuff going on in this film, so we didn’t really need a love story as well. Second, in an effort to get a head start on her fellow officers, Angela stopped her physical clone body’s growth prematurely, leaving her with the appearance of a 16-year-old girl.

Hannah: When confronted with lots and lots of awesome sci-fi action, I’m usually quick to say I could watch this stuff all day, but even I got a little fatigued by the final siege, exciting and amazing a technical achievement as it is. I respected the sequence more than I loved it, simply because it contributes to the fact this film was nearly two hours long and didn’t really have to be.

Preston:  Though things like Angela’s fierce battle faces, jumping from ammo store to ammo store, and Dingo doing what he can with his dune buggy and hidden arsenals, were all very impressive and fun, I won’t deny I too felt some tighter editing was in order leading up to the big finish.

Zane: As for that big finish, I kinda assumed Setter would find some volunteers aboard DEVA to accompany him to the final frontier. Alas, there were zero takers. Dingo can’t go, ’cause he’s scared of heights. Even Angela declines.

Even though she’s been expelled from the “paradise” of DEVA to live a dirty physical world in a meat cage that requires daily sustenance and sleep, she already has plenty left to experience and explore on earth; she’s not ready to leave it.

Hannah: Setter laments that his century-long mission has failed, but his human friends disagree: to whomever he finds out there on his interstellar travels, Dingo and Angela are confident he’ll make a very good representative of mankind; certainly better than most DEVA inhabitants, and maybe even better than the two of them. He too is a child of humanity, with mechanical feet in both Angela’s world of rules and technology and Dingo’s world of dirt and guitar riffs.

Psycho-Pass – 09

What sets Psycho-Pass apart from just about everything else I’m watching at the moment is the uncanny deftness and elegance with which it expresses its ideas and themes. It also helps that while the bad guys are, by most conventional appraisals, evil sadistic bastards, and yet they’re anything but boring. This is a show that possesses the very charisma the show defines: It has the nature of a hero or prophet; an ability to make you feel good when you’re watching it, and the intelligence to talk about all sorts of things.

That three-part definition is offered by Ex-Professor Saiga, who once lectured both Kogami and Gino, and whose lectures were shut down when the hues of many of his students—all inspectors-in-training—started to get cloudy, turning them into latent criminals by Cybil’s standards. Kogami brings Akane (or rather, Akane allows Kogami to take her) to Saiga to meet him and learn from him, if only a little bit in a short time. After all, Kogami is the detective he is because he learned a lot from Saiga, so if you want to be a good detective, any exposure to him is a good thing.

That seems to be what Akane wants. Her household AI jests that she’s preparing as if she were going on a date, and it is a date, in a police-nerdy kinda way. At the same time, Saiga is someone she would never have known about were it not for Kogami. But the main point is, she is steadfast in her commitment to treating Kogami as an equal, despite his lower official status in society. So much so, that she has to suspend her senpai-kohai relationship to Gino when he goes to far in admonishing her for seeing Saiga.

Going back to Adam and Eve, knowledge is power, but comes at the cost of paradise. Cybil is mankind’s attempt to rebuild a Garden of Eden, which has its own cost; a life without stress is a life pointless and short, perhaps shorter than a Hobbesian world. To maintain Eden, those deemed unworthy are constantly cast out to live below the rest. “Unworthy”, in this case, are those who ask too many questions; amass too much knowledge; seek too much individuality.

The exquisite analogy Kogami presents to Akane on their autonomous car ride home: knowledge is a swamp you can’t see the bottom of, but cannot check unless you dive in. Even Kogami wasn’t allowed out of the swamp once he dove too deep. Worse, one person’s descent means their entire family is marked for death, as the powers that be are just waiting for science to prove criminality is hereditary. Gino, who lost a father and colleague, doesn’t want to lose Akane too, which is why he’s so harsh on her.

While events may ultimately determine Gino was being overprotective—Akane is constantly being described as having an uncommonly clear and resilient psyche—there’s also a very real possibility that she could end up going down the very same path as Kogami. What’s so awesome about Akane is that she may already be okay with that. Between protecting one’s own hue or solving crimes/protecting the people, she considers the latter far more important. But as she says, she is new, and has no idea what lurks in that swamp.

Take Senguji Toyohisa, a cyborg who is, aside from his brain and nervous system, entirely machine in composition. He’s a particularly arrogant cyborg as well, pitying all of humanity that are content living out their lives in their sacks of meat. Running parallel to the discussions Saiga, Akane and Kogami are Senguji’s own ideas. Where he isn’t wrong is that science is about bettering mankind, which is done through the development of technology. Once we learned how to live long lives, we set about ways to make those lives more efficient and pleasant.

He believes his “transition” to a timeless artificial body is just the next natural step in the human struggle to become immortal; to become the very god who expelled us from paradise. Like Akane’s decision to continue diving into the swamp, his choice had a cost—that of his body—but he subscribed to Plato’s thinking that the body was but a prison. With his new mechanical body he’s free to pursue his mind’s full potential, which seems to consist of hunting people down with a rifle. To each their own, huh?

Makishima is right there beside him, all charisma and validation; literally playing with the edge of a razor; composing his latest symphony; providing Senguji with his next prey: Kogami. For the first time, the good guys are the direct target of the bad guy, though I’m confident this is nothing but a test by Makishima. If Kogami can’t pass it, he wasn’t worth fussing over. As for how Akane fits into all this when Makishima becomes aware of her, well…We’ll see just how tough and resilient her psyche really is!

Mekakucity Actors – 09

The story of Mekakucity Actors is gradually moving forward as more pieces of the central mystery come into focus and fall into place, but it’s a circuitous route forward full of switchbacks, some of which go downhill into the past before coming back up. Along with Ene, we are Kano’s guide as he leads us down one, to the time when he, Seto and Kido became family when Ayano’s parents adopted them.

At first, this seems like a good thing: two well-off archaeologists bringing disadvantaged children into their home (another very stylish structure studded with vivid full-length stained glass windows). But then Ayaka dies in a landslide, and Ayano finds a journal of her investigations. The entries are brought to life in Ayano’s head with intricate, really gorgeous ink illustrations that have an Aubrey Beardsley thing going on.

When science and reason failed her, Ayaka began shed those constructs, and entertained the possibility—accompanied by compelling evidence—that the monster fairy tail she often read to Ayano (and snippets of which end each episode) are, in fact, real events. The monster was persuaded by a serpent under an apple tree (a la Genesis) into creating a new world (and eating a fruit from the tree of knowledge did indeed lead to a new world for Adam and Eve).

But while the fairy tale ends “happily ever after”, the real story predictably doesn’t. It would appear the serpent is trying to recreate Medusa in the real world by gathering children like Seto, Kano, and Kido together. Ene and Haruka were sacrifices to that end. And even more disconcerting, Ayano’s dad seems to have a Jekyll & Hyde condition, in which Hyde is the Serpent.

So…what to make of all this? We’re certainly very intrigued in this stylish synthesis of folk stories, mythology, and the modern scenario of uniquely-dressed kids with superpowers. Like the Monogatari Series, director Shinbo explores personalities who t and weaves soaring, timeless tales into the contemporary present with lots of panache. Mekakucity has yet to truly wow the way the best moments of Monogatari did, but it has three episodes left, and a strong finish can go a long way.

P.S. Rentaro’s “first gift” to Ayano is a Coelocanth, a “living fossil” of a fish thought to be extinct but turned out not to be….kind of like Ayano, right?

Guilty Crown – 21

UN launches a massive assault on GHQ, but Gai emerges and destroys the force with a single devastating attack. The Undertakers take advantage of the distraction to infiltrate the building, led by Shu using everyone’s voids as he goes. When they reach Central Command they are blocked by Yuu of Naath, who isolates Shu and duels him. Shu wins, but is a moment too late to save Inori, who Gai has had enclosed in crystal to be reborn as Mana, his Eve.

That was a mighty fine penultimate episode. It employed an enthralling “infiltrating the final dungeon” setpiece, complete with a nasty-ass boss in Yuu, who sacrifices minions for void weapons like we usually eat popcorn chicken – rapidly and without mercy. Finally, it just about finished explaining what the heck is going on. Yuu is a member of Naath (he says he is Naath), an organization that apparently chooses the next stage of evolution for humans. Inori is their Eve, it’s clear, but Adam was pretty much a stalemate between Shu and Gai until Yuu asks him a simple question: Will you press the reset button on the world?

Shu is, as Inori observes, “heartbreakingly human”, so much so that heals guys who aren’t even on his side. Eliminating the entire human population, including his friends and family, simply isn’t in his character. Killing Gai to save them all is, though, as he states in perhaps the most touching scene with Ayase yet – part goodbye, part acknowledgement of mutual affection. The stirring score really makes its presence felt and adds gravity to the proceedings. We’re feeling good about a coherent ending taking place, though we can’t speak to how derivative and/or contrived said ending will be.

Rating: 3.5