Tokyo 24th Ward – 05 – Dark Mode

Last week we learn that among the two paths Kunai believes lie before him—art or crime—Kunai has chosen the latter. This week we learn why, starting over a decade ago when he and Ran were just kids. Ran, inspired by fellow Shantytown native Zeroth, quickly asserted his artistic talent. Kunai knew he couldn’t keep up in the realm of graffiti, so he became a hacker.

But he soon learned, to his unending despair, that despite both his best friend Ran and his eventual business partner Tarki calling his hacking ability “art”, his work could be corrupted into something awful. To whit: Drug D isn’t a physical drug at all, but the result of his theraputic music app being modified so that its users go nuts, resulting in the huge rise in Shantytown crime.

Kunai may have been shortsighted when he sold the IP of his app to the suspicious-looking businessman, but Tarki offered him everything he wanted: financial freedom and comfort for his grandmother suffering from dementia. He always admired Ran’s art’s ability to change the world, but Kunai knew that change wouldn’t come quickly enough to save Shantytown from Tarki and the developers. So he made a bomb.

Ran eventually tracks down Kunai’s hiding spot on a train car Zeroth tagged on the outside, preserved like a museum piece. It happens to be the same car where Kunai first launched a “bomb”, hacking all the video advertisement screens with DoRed tags. Ran wants to stop Kunai, but it’s too late; all of his words sound like lip service to Kunai. Ran would have been too late to stop Kunai from detonating the bomb that destoryed the cruise ship…but Kouki found the train car too, and a SARG sniper takes Kunai out before he can hit the “detonate” button.

Shuuta, who didn’t really play much of an active role in the operation (beyond almost getting shot up by Tarki and Win’s goons), learns that the terrorist was killed and the people aboard the ship saved. Yet he still feels uneasy, and he should: most of the people on that ship are bad people.

Absent any contact from Ran or Kouki, he instead hangs out with Kozue, who has posted her photos of Ran’s tags and written about her father as a means of processing her grief in a healthy way. As for the rift that the death of Kunai is sure to cause for the R and G of RGB, it will likely be up to Shuuta to bridge his old friends’ differences.

As for Shuutas father, he seems ready to put the KANAE System into “full operation”, thus creating some kind of “revolution” in the 24th Ward. Will Kouki go along with this, or will RGB be the check against his pops’ unbridled corporate and political power? And what of Carneades, who makes no appearance this week?

ID: INVADED – 10 – Things Fall Apart

Narihisago makes it his mission to excise each and every one of Kiki’s tormentors from her dreams by apprehending and inducing the death of all of the serial killers in the waking world. This is a process that takes over a year, and in that time he forgets this isn’t the waking world. Doing police work, catching criminals, spending time with his family; he starts to feel like the past events when he was Sakaido in the Mizuhanome were all one long elaborate dream.

But no matter how much progress he makes, Kiki doesn’t recover. In fact, she only grows more frail, and in her final meeting with Narihisago, she tells him catching Walker won’t save her; there is no saving her. The killing in her head won’t stop.

Kiki has two options: slowly lose herself, dissolve, and warp the world with the violence and corruption within her dreams…or have Narihisago end her suffering now, while she’s still recognizably human. Even though she frames it as a necessary act to save the world, Narihisago refuses.

A month or so passes, and one day Kiki vanishes, leaving a pile of unconscious nurses in her wake who later recall sharing the same dream. It would appear Kiki’s prediction about “dissolving” came to pass. That means it’s only a matter of time before the world falls apart.

While about to deal with the Perforator, whom he’d “forgotten”, Narihisago encounters Hondoumachi. By her count she’s only been in the well-within-a-well for twenty minutes, which means even though it’s felt like more than a year to Narihisago, in reality he’s been in the well for less than twenty minutes. Talk about time distortion in dreams.

Narihisago doesn’t want to pick up what Hondoumachi is putting down, and considering how long this has been his reality, who can blame him? Still, when the meeting of the two detectives is followed by the world starting to come apart at the seams, he can no longer deny that none of this is real.

He calls his family, first to ask them to get away, but eventually, to say goodbye in his own way. Suddenly, and heartbreakingly, his memories from the real world rush back into his head in sequence, from the day he married Ayako, chronicling the birth and growth of Muku, and ending with Muku’s death at the hands of Challenger and Ayako committing suicide.

These images, the initial ones being the photos on the wall of his cell, all speak for themselves, so the very loud and melodramatic song felt like overkill. Perhaps it was more the fact the lyrics were in English—and very obvious and bad—than the music itself. It was still a moving scene. It could have been better with more restraint.

With the time in this dream world dwindling rapidly, Narihisago suggests he and Hondoumachi do as much investigating as they can, but his time is up, as Anaido extracts him from the well after ten minutes. He then tells Sakaido that he identified the body in the quicksand. It’s…Narihisago Akihito, someone Sakaido doesn’t know due to the protective amnesia of the Mizuhanome…but due to the condition of his brain, the amnesia function doesn’t work on Anaido/Fukuda.

The Wellsiders didn’t know that, which means Fukuda is up to something, likely under the direction of Walker. When Fukuda shows Sakaido the photo of Narihisago and his family (which he took from the corpse), things…take a turn. This desert isn’t Momoki’s id well at all, but the “end stage” of Narihisago’s. Remembering himself in his own well produces a “well storm”, depicted as a literally wind storm, as a fail-safe to protect the conscious from the unconscious…and Walker’s form appears in that wind.

ID:Invaded is starting to get very tricky with its Inception-style premise, but with the Big Bad finally making a decisive move that would seem to have Narihisago in check, it sure seems like more answers are forthcoming. Somehow, this all manages to hold together. Here’s hoping Narihisago can similarly keep it together, or if he can’t, if Hondoumachi can save the day.

ID: INVADED – 09 – You Can Not (Not) Redo

When Sakaido wakes up in what he assumed would be Asukai Kiki’s Id Well, Kaeru’s dead body is nowhere to be found. Instead, he’s flanked by his very much alive wife and daughter. He remembers he isn’t the Brilliant Detective Sakaido at all, but Narihisago Akihito.

He hugs his family, who react as if he’s acting weird. But as far as Akihito is concerned, if being able to go back in time, fix what broke, and protect those who mattered most to him is “losing it”, then he doesn’t want to have it.

Without dwelling too much about what this reality is, Aki starts by paying a visit to the Challenger. Since this is before Muku was murdered, no one in this world has caught on to his depravities, except Aki, who comes in with outside knowledge from this reality’s version of the future.

Instead of rushing into Challenger’s house in a revenging rage, gun blazing, he challenges the Challenger to a “fair and square” fight, for which the killer is obviously more than game. Aki gets the absolute shit kicked out of him, but he manages to get the upper hand just as Momoki, the only backup he requested, arrives.

With the Challenger in custody, Aki directs Momoki to check out the basement, where a still-living victim sat bleeding in the “arena”. The woman turns out to be Asukai Kiki, and when Aki visits her hospital room, he’s perplexed by the fact she looks just like Kaeru. Kiki tells him how her thoughts have a way of broadcasting themselves to people around her.

Turns out Aki is in Kiki’s dream, because not only is there no sign of her injuries in the waking world (or whatever it is), but in this dream world of hers, serial killers like the Challenger come every night to kill her, with each night designated for a certain killer.

Aki soon wakes in his own bed with his worried wife and daughter by his side, while Momoki informs him the incident with the Challenger is being considered self-defense (a welcome change from the premeditated murder charge of his first “go-round”). He meets with Kiki—for real, this time—but can’t get her, an inhabitant of this “reality”, to explain what the reality is.

What she can tell him is that the person who has been letting one killer after another into her unconscious dreams every night matches the description of one John Walker: top hat, tails, and cane. This not-quite-Id Well-within-an-Id Well scenario created as many questions as it answered, and Hondomachi is still AWOL, but I am nevertheless deeply intrigued.

ID: INVADED – 08 – The Lone and Level Sands Stretch Far Away

With Hondomachi diving into a well within a well, Assistant Director Togo leads rescue efforts, which consist of sending both Narihisago and Fukuda into Momoki’s id well. No one knows how this will go, but it turns out working out pretty well…for whomever set this elaborate, elaborate trap.

Sakaido and Anaido wake up in a massive, desolate desert with no food or water and an unmoving sun. The two Brilliant Detectives briefly clash on how to proceed, but their disagreements are more a matter of speed than content.

As Sakaido inspects Kaeru’s corpse a bit longer, Anaido follows footsteps of someone who “stole their watches”, which would explain the watch-like marks on their wrists. Sakaido eventually catches up, and the two trudge through the desert until they find something…anything.

It’s notable that with no memories of the real world but the Brilliant Detective programming that came with them, these two get along famously, with Akaido even calling Sakaido “brother.”

The two eventually find a second corpse—that of the “watch thief”—partially submerged in quicksand. They also find a second cockpit, like the one in Narihisago’s id well, which is also programmed for the id well of Asukai Kiki. Sakaido volunteers to dive in, while Anaido stands by to extract him in ten minutes.

In the real world, Momoki is being interrogated by police, but he just doesn’t seem like John Walker so much as the victim of a frame job. When he hears two detectives were sent into his id well, he demands they extract them at once. If Hondomachi is already in a trap of Walker’s making, Narihisago will join her soon.

ID: INVADED – 07 – Easy as Pi

Hondomachi’s first mission in an Id Well is no murder-of-the-week, but could be the key to everything. The Id Well in question is Narihisago Akihito’s, taken from still-strong cognition particles found at the sight where he emptied a clip into Katsuyama Denshin, the man who killed his daughter Muku.

Here, Hondomachi is not Hondomachi, but the Brilliant Detective Hijiriido Miyo, sporting a stylish twist on the classic detective coat. Following the same pattern as Sakaido, the sight of Kaeru’s body triggers the memory of who she is and what she’s here to do.

While Miyo is handcuffed to Kaeru, the fact Kaeru was killed by lightning means they were cuffed together by a third party after Kaeru died. When Miyo spots a dead Narihisago, she determines he did it to keep her safe: lightning never strikes anywhere twice here, because it’s not real lightning, flashing every nine seconds without fail.

All the other people in the well are family and people connected ti Narihisago, but Miyo manages to get them all onto safe spots to stop the killings. When Narihisago’s wife and daughter Muku wonder what’s to be done about people elsewhere getting killed, the single-minded Miyo suggests they do something about it; she’s here to solve a mystery.

Moving in nine-second spurts, Miyo eventually makes it to an operational cockpit that leads to the id well of the Challenger’s last victim, Asukai Kiki. Diving into an Id Well within an Id Well is some Inception stuff we haven’t seen from this show yet, but Miyo wastes no time taking a seat in the cockpit to see where the rabbit hole goes.

Wellside, they’re unable to extract Hondomachi, then investigators burst in led by the Chief, and Director Momoki is placed under arrest for the charge of inducing all of the 44 murders committed by the serial killers investigated. In other words, they suspect him to be the John Walker; the mole within the unit.

As Momoki is taken away, and with Tougou now in charge, Habutae cracks the number pattern of the lightning: the sequence they’ve witnessed appears in pi around the ten millionth digit. Extrapolating from there, and taking into account a strike every 9.03 seconds, he calculates that the first strike hit the number “3” 1,084 days ago, the day Muku was murdered.

The Id Well within and Id Well, as well as Miyo’s freedom to expore it without interference from Wellside, comprise exciting uncharted territory, and it’s anyone’s guess which crazy twists and turns the mystery goes from here. As for Momoki as John Walker, despite the mounting evidence, I’m not 100% convinced it’s not an elaborate frame job by the real Walker.

Narihisago seems to be, however, at least with regards to having access to Momoki’s well. He believes he’ll find answers there one way or another. Will acting director Tougou indulge his desire to solve the case? I imagine so; as he’s said himself, there’s not much else he’s still alive for.

ID: INVADED – 06 – Eternal Rail

What had been a calm encounter with Inami Nahoshi takes a turn when Hondomachi outs her as the Gravedigger mastermind. Nahoshi is calm because her accomplice Kazuta is in the house with all the kitchen knives.

A dust-up ensures, with Matsuoka receiving a flesh wound to the shoulder and Hondomachi stabbing Kazuta to death, much to Nahoshi’s uncharacteristic dismay. These two detectives are just powerful electromagnets for trouble.

Demonstrating that the detectives at the Wellside are always working, five of them spend their time a police officer’s funeral discussing the Walker case. Why does he keep showing up in the id wells of serial killers, and in the same whimsical form? The name of the inventor of the Mizuhanome, Shirakoma Nishio, comes up, which is sure to be important later on.

While this case are already complicated enough, one of them brings up the possibility one of them is a mole working from within. Considering we only have cursory familiarity with these five detectives, the eventual reveal of one of them as Walker wouldn’t be that narratively satisfying, at least not yet.

Using the cognition particles from Kazuta’s urge to kill (which manifested in a dying kiss to Hondomachi), Narihisago is injected from the flying house to a train. On it, Kaeru is (obviously) dead via stabbing. When he follows the very obvious bloody footprints, he discovers the train is a closed loop, ending right back where it begins.

The Wellsiders determine this is the very train Nahoshi’s mother jumped in front of…while Nahoshi was on it. A high school-aged Nahoshi is here to, with a younger Kazuta sitting on the opposite side of the aisle. There was once a time when Nahoshi abhored seeing dead things or people; her mother’s suicide flipped that sensibility.

IRL, Nahoshi reveals all the locations of the barrels containing her victims, but on the id train she didn’t kill Kaeru; Kaeru killed herself. When Narihisago comes to this conclusion, he weeps in her lap. He grows weary of coming upon her corpse over and over again. He wants to save her, but like the train, he’s going in circles. One wonders how long he can keep up the Brilliant Detective act with his sanity intact (such as it is already).

That brings us to Hondomachi, the other protagonist. Matsuoka recommends her to be a second Brilliant Detective utilizing the Mizuhanome. Hondomachi is flattered, but Matsuoka considers it a practical decision, in part to protect him and their colleagues. Hondomachi has killed more than once—by attempting to kill herself and then killing Kazuta. Matsuoka laments he couldn’t keep her out of this business, but she’s too suited for it, and there’s no turning back.

The Wellsiders make a connection between the surveillance devices found in the Perforator’s house match those used in the case involving the “Challenger”, AKA Katsuyama Denshin, the man who killed Narihisago’s daughter. With every subsequent case, ID:INVADED adds another piece to the larger puzzle of John Walker and the root of Narihisago’s fall, just as his possible successor begins her ascent.

ID: INVADED – 05 – Kiss or Kill

Hondomachi may not be a superhero who got her deductive powers from a hole drilled in her head, but that bizarre injury offered her unique perspective into someone like Kazuta Haruka, whom she meets in the street and who kisses her before fleeing.

For her, everything suddenly points to Haruka, a former victim of the Perforator, being the Gravedigger. Their equipment hasn’t been able to detect his killing intent because when he has a sudden urge to kill he reacts with a gesture of love instead—a kiss—and would therefore kill those whom he loves.

Sure enough, cognition particles are found an an Id Well is opened, into which Sakaido is injected. He enters the well in the middle of the sky falling at great speed, but manages to land on a floating island containing a house later identified as belonging to Kazuta.

Once Sakaido’s memory is activated by the sight of a murdere Kaeru, he looks under her carefully-spread pool of blood to find a girl hiding who has shifting features and voices—a composite of the Gravedigger’s victims.

Sakaido also finds shards of a photo also found when Kazuta was a victim, and Hondomachi and Matsuoka are dispatched to meet with those in the picture one by one while Nishimura and a SWAT team head to the site of Kazuta’s house, now a soy sauce brewery.

The composite girl said her boyfriend went out of the house to fight the “monster”, and when Sakaido heads out he quickly learns that monster is John Walker, who kills the “boyfriend”, dodges Sakaido’s attacks, and flies off with that trademark tip of his hat.

As Hondomachi diligently interviews the “cutest” of the people in the photo, Inami Nahoshi, Nishimura and his team discover vats that could contain victims, but are blown up in the brewery—it was all a trap. Meanwhile Hondomachi is unafraid to pry as far as she can with questions relating to Inami’s love life. Inami also seems all too happy to clean her head wound when it suddenly starts bleeding.

By the time Matsuoka gets word of the trap, Hondomachi has Inami cornered, revealing her to be a sadist using Kazuta’s scrambled romantic and murderous urges to her advantage by having him commit the murders for her. Hondomachi moves to arrest Inami and demands to know where Kazuta is; meanwhile, he’s lurking nearby with a knife.

It’s interesting to see how both Hondomachi and Sakaido have been elevated in their deductive ability by their respective marks (the former, her head wound; the latter, his crime) In the Id Well, Sakaido is the Brilliant Detective, as well as a Mission Impossible-style action hero.  But in the real world, the ace detective is without doubt the recently wounded but no-less-relentless Hondomachi.

ID: INVADED – 04 – Hiding a Leaf in the Forest

We begin with one of the worst things that can be done to a person: high schooler Kikuchi Keiko has been buried alive. She is the seventh such victim of the “Graverobber”, and is aware of the past victims because like her, they were all livesteamed on the internet to a morbidly fascinated audience. Once again, the police are fighting against a ticking clock to prevent a seventh death.

Worse still, their most reliable “pilot” drove another criminal to suicide simply by talking to him about the furthest reaches of their psyche, which of course he saw when in their Id Wells. He’s in solitary while they try to use the Perforater as a substitute pilot, but his survival rate is too low to make any progress. It has to be Narihisago. He’s the best they’ve got.

And yet, even the Brilliant Detective Sakaido finds that the Id Well they were able to create from the perp’s cognition particles has a high level of difficulty. He’s trapped in a massive, undulating apartment block that is currently on fire and full of burnt corpses.

The stange thing is, he finds a burnt-to-death Kaeru above the flames, suggesting they weren’t the flames that killed her. He spots a ten-year-old Keiko on the other side of a huge gap between blocks, and wants to rescue her, but solving Kaeru’s murder must come first if they’re to find the real life Keiko.

As Narihisago is killed and re-injected again and again into the Well, he gets more exhausted and makes mistakes. Momoki decides to give him a break, but neither he nor his colleagues are interested in taking a break themselves, even if it means staying up two straight days. There’s a girl buried somewhere who is slowly running out of air. Rest can come once they find her.

This episode has an air of urgency and desperation that surpasses the previous episodes (with the possible exception of the one in which Hondomachi was kidnapped). And even though Narihisago is a murderer who has driven five other inmates to suicide while in captivity, the officers still end up rooting for him to survive and “win” in the Id Well, because if he wins, they win.

Sakaido finally makes it to the other side and climbs up to the unburnt apartment where the young Keiko is waiting. She even says something that helps Sakaido crack the case wide open. Kaeru wasn’t killed, i.e. Keiko wasn’t buried by the Graverobber at all, but by a copycat.

Young Keiko even points out by name the “failure” of a man responsible, and the police move quickly to locate and apprehend him (it comes down to the pattern of the rug under Kaeru’s corpse matching the one in the suspect’s lair, under which Keiko is sealed in an airtight barrel.

Alas, the livestream was never live to begin with, but a recording that gave the police a false sense that they still had time. In reality, Keiko has been dead of asphyxiation for nearly a week. After working so hard to find her, it’s a gut punch for all involved, including Sakaido once he hears the bad news from Momoki.

Pulling the rug out from beneath our feet, we the audience are similarly frustrated and that much more angered at the creature of a man that is the copycat Graverobber, not to mention the still-at-large Graverobber himself. The case wasn’t solved in this episode, but it did make the case for why, having spent time in their psyches, a once-righteous detective like Narihisago could develop sudden impulse to kill the suspects he helps capture.

Because of this, he’s not even sure he can call himself a person anymore, but Momoki assures him he is. And when Momoki asks if Narihisago still considers him a friend (they were once partners on the force), Narihisago tells him that friendship one of the only things he has left tethering him to reason.

Being dumped into the minds of depraved criminals is enough to drive anyone from reason, but somehow Narihisago has endured. He’ll have to continue to endure as the cops try to find leads to the real Graverobber’s whereabouts. The newly recovered Hondomachi may have found the first such clue in Kazuta Haruka, a missing person and one of the Perforator’s victims.

ID: INVADED – 03 – A Gawker Just Enjoys the Scene

I don’t believe we’ve been told who precisly Sakaido killed or how to land him in prison, but regardless of his crime it’s awfully hard not to sympathize with the guy. For one thing, he’s always dreaming of his wife and daughter, the good times always turning to bad before he wakes up. They weren’t just murdered, they also suffered terribly.

The pain and regret of not being there to protect them probably broke a sizable chunk of the Sakaido That Was. His investigative work within the Mizuhanome, psychologically invasive as it is, would seem to be not just a welcome respite, but a necessity for keeping what’s left of him intact and carrying on.

The things he did to end up with such a job are also the reason Matsuoka discourages Hondomachi from considering a similar line of work in no uncertain terms. When visiting her in the hospital. She’s missing frontal lobe matter but is already bouncing off the walls, desperate to get back to work, and romanticizes “The Great Detective” a pilot like Sakaido plays within Id Wells. But Matsuoka warns her: it’s a sacrifice tantamount to suicide.

As I said, one Sakaido went into this line of work, and another came out. Hondomachi doesn’t feel she’s loved or even valued by her family, while Sakaido’s family was murdered. Both detectives seek solace and purpose through work, creating their own value. Hell, Hondomachi could be a mirror to Sakaido’s past, when his work kept him away from the family he loved until one day they were gone.

This week’s Id Well is nothing like the previous two, demonstrating that we’re in for a new trippy psychological ride every week or so. This time he and roughly 70-80 random people standing on a giant turret surrounded by infinite waterfalls on all sides…very Myst Uru. This is the Id Well of “The Pyrotechnician”, who is responsible for very public, very meticulous bombings.

Kaeru is there too, already dead, while the others start falling one-by-one to rounds fired by a sniper hiding in the waterfalls. Like the stylized “Brilliant Detective” role Sakaido plays, Kaeru is a stylized version of his daughter, helping him remember himself, grounding him in whatever crazy dreamworld in which he ends up.

Sakaido is good, but not so good he doesn’t get killed a couple of times, requiring his handlers to quickly extract and re-inject him, resetting the scenario but allowing him to learn from the previous dives. But trial and error is only the start of his investigation. He eventually determines that there is only one sniper, but the turret on which his victims stand is turning, allowing the sniper to make quick successions of kills.

Sakaido eventually successfully hides from the shooter until there is only one man remaining other than himself—and it’s always the same man. He also happens to have a handsome but somehow artificial-looking face, which means the Pyrotechnician altered his face with plastic surgery. That is enough for the cops to track him down and for Mitsuoka to apprehend him.

In what seems like going a bit too far with the ironic punishment, the people Sakaido helps to apprehend end up his prison mates, occupying adjacent cells and enabling them to have a dialogue. The Pyro explains that his acts, which netted photos like the ones he took of people gawking and holding up their phones at the destruction and carnage, “exposed the emptiness of humanity” by showing that neither life or death matter.

Sakaido turns it around on Pyro. Just as he was in the Id Well, and in the bombing four years ago when he was a war photographer, Pyro always desired to be the Last Man Standing. He was the ultimate gawker, producing scenes of hell and watching the masses take it in, knowing humans can’t resist.

Then Sakaido tells Pyro his days are over, and that he’ll never see hell again, except in his memories, always a pale shadow of reality. The Pyro can’t really dispute anything Sakaido is saying, because the guy was in his unconscious, where truths are plain to see.

It’s enough to drive Pyro to suicide in the middle of the night. I’m not sure if Sakaido intended that, but he’s doubtless a man who abhors killers, and was none too happy about Pyro mentioning his daughter. ID:INVADED is proving to be a dense, nervy, and captivating depiction of crime-fighting from within the minds of the criminal.

ID: INVADED – 01/02 (First Impressions) – Some Assembly Required

When we meet the self-described “brilliant detective” Sakaido, he’s literally gone to pieces, as has the entire world around him. He soon calms down from the initial horror of such a status and puts himself back together, save a few gaps in his arm. He learns those are a boon, which allow him to fit the various pieces of his environment back together.

We’re in the same boat as Sakaido: a pile of pieces are spread out before us instead of a “whole” world. But it’s not really a world; it’s the unconscious of a serial killer Sakaido is investigating, and all of his victims (plus one little girl) dwell within that unconscious.

As we pull out to the real world, we see a team cops hard at work on the outside of the “Id Well” created by the Mizuhanome system led by Momoki, while Sakaido works within it. There are clues within the well for those clever enough to see them, and Sakaido is the man for the job. We also learn that only someone who has killed can enter such wells.

Once Sakaido finds enough clues as to the murderer’s whereabouts (literally piecing the world back together), field analysts Matsuoka and Hondomachi (a grizzled veteran and green rookie, respectively) head out to track him down. But their quarry, known as the “Perforator” due to his M.O. of drilling holes in his victims’ heads, uses his latest victim as a decoy to misdirect Matsuoka, then kidnaps Hondomachi.

When the Perforator threatens to drill a hole in her head, a defiant Hondomachi realizes the only way she’ll be located by her colleagues is to drill the hole herself, so she drives her head into the spinning bit, creating an Id Well of her own into which Sakaido is quickly transferred. It’s a reckless risk, to be sure, but it shows us that Hondomachi is willing to take those risks for the sake of Justice.

Unlike the puzzle world of the killer, Hondomachi’s well is a wasteland filled with mammoth drills, one of which kills Sakaido (or rather his avatar within the well) within 69 seconds. But that’s enough for HQ to determine Hondomachi’s whereabouts, and Matsuoka manages to rescue her and arrest the Perferator, who is so impressed by Hondomachi’s initiative he surrenders willingly.

But the Perferator is only a symptom. The disease this weird futuristic police force is pursuing is known as “John Walker”, who resembles the guy on the whisky bottle. His avatar appeared in the Perforator’s Id Well, and is believed to be the one turning people into serial killers.

Sakaido is extracted from the Id Well and escorted back to his spartan prison cell, decorated only by dozens of photos of his wife and daughter Muku—a very effective way to wordlessly humanize him. Every Id Well he’s dove into has featured a murdered girl in Kaeru, who may not look like Muku but still reminds him of her, and why he’s in this strange business in the first place (I’m sure we’ll learn the details of that later).

While there’s a bit of a learning curve with all of the jargon, and there are more than a few similarities to PSYCHO-PASS, the third season of which I didn’t bother with, ID:INVADED nevertheless scratches a future crime unit itch I wasn’t aware of until now.

Sarazanmai – 02 – Let Slip the Cats of War

As a reward for defeating their first kappa zombie, Keppi bestows upon the boys a silver “Dish of Hope” they can use to wish for anything. Enta snatches it and accidentally wishes for a hatchback-sized cucumber roll, shattering the dish and leaving the three with no reward (unless they’re going to eat that roll…which is on the ground).

Kazuki is eager to earn another dish that he can use not to fulfill his own wish, but that of his little brother Haruka. We learn that he is the “Harukappa” to whom Kazuki is sending selfies of himself-as-Azuma Sara. Kazuki’s only wish is that Haruka is happy, and a dish can only help that cause.

Meanwhile, Kuji Toi is up to more criminal mischief on behalf of his older brother, while Enta receives a Kappazon package meant for Toi—containing a handgun of all things—strengthening Enta’s belief he’s Bad News

When Nyantaro, the fat, awesome neighborhood cat Haruka adores, sneaks into Toi’s weed-growing lab and steels a shipment hidden in cat treats, another ludicrous chase ensues. Kazuki (dressed as Sara again) stops Toi when he threatens Nyantaro with his metal ruler, and refuses to get out of his way or stop following him.

The chase leads them to a couples-only theme park, an employee of which dresses the two up in bee costumes and insists they hold hands the entire time they’re in the park. Kazuki and Toi hold hands and chase Nyantaro on ride after ride, but can’t manage to close the distance, since we’re talking about a neighborhood cat here: if he doesn’t want to be caught, it’s not happening.

We learn a little more about the two bishounen cops from the end of last week, who appear to do an elaborate song and dance of their own to extract desire and create a new cat-based kappa zombie boss.

It’s apparent these two and Keppi’s three young helpers are working at cross purposes, but the cops’ specific motivations, beyond their commitment to “wring out the desire”, remain mysterious.

Not soon after their “performance”, thousands of cats start to float up into the sky, including Nyantaro, and Enta and Keppi (disguised as his date) meet up with Kazuki and Toi to discuss the situation. Enta warns Kazuki to stay away from the kid he’s currently holding hands with, but in order to get his little brother’s favorite cat back, he needs Toi’s help.

Events from there follow a pattern now familiar after the first go-around last week (in what I like to call the Ikuhara Formula): Keppi turns the three lads into kappa, they attack the zombie boss (this time a giant cat), and when they determine its secret (he kidnapped cats and shaved them to give himself a coat of fur so his girlfriend would take him back! Of COURSE!!), they  break through and extract its shirikodama.

Once that’s done, the guys go through the titular sarazanmai, during which it’s revealed that Nyantaro was owned by another family before Kazuki stole it so Haruka could have a cat (even if it was only a neighborhood cat). He defends what he did because he did it for his brother’s sake; his happiness trumping all other considerations.

With the second boss defeated, the lads receive another silver dish of hope, and Kazuki and Toi immediately argue over it, with Toi even brandishing his gun. Since both have brothers they want to make happy, and Keppi informs them they’ll need five to grant a real wish, Toi cedes the dish to Kazuki, but he’s getting the next one.

That night, Kazuki finally completes his mission to take a Sara selfie with a cat (specifically the rescued Nyantaro), to Haruka’s delight. Exhausted from the day of activity, he passes out right there in the park, where he’s approached by none other than Enta…who promptly kisses him! Looks like he’s got a secret too—one that re-contextualizes why he was so concerned with Kazuki hanging around Toi.

The two cops also now realize somebody is out there working against them. It’s likely only a matter of time before the two opposing groups clash. In the meantime, on with the hope-dish collecting!

After two episodes, I now have a better grasp of the beats and rhythms of a show that definitely dances to the beat of its own drum. With less head-scratching to do I could concentrate better on all the little details that contribute to making Sarazanmai such a fun and exciting little show that’s unafraid to challenge contemporary “norms”of gender and sexuality.

ēlDLIVE – 01 (First Impressions)

Kokonose Chuuta is a high schooler who avoids contact with others and is always talking to a voice no one else hears. One day he’s scooped up by ēlDLIVE, a space police force, who immediately put him to work apprehending an alien criminal, who turns out to be his buxom teacher.

The voice belongs to an alien who lives within him, and with its help Chuuta successfully arrests the alien and is formally accepted into ēlDLIVE. Among the bureau’s members is his classmate and crush Sonokata Misuzu.

Isn’t it always the way: you try to keep your head down and lead a quiet life helping your auntie at her muffin shop, only to be recruited by a bizarre space police unit? ēlDLIVE presents that rather outlandish scenario, and does it with a brisk pace, confidence, and humor.

Not only that, the person who had been the least human-looking character – Chuuta’s teacher – turns out to be an alien perp in disguise. His crush is pretty generically hostile to him, but at least she’s voiced by Hayami Saori.

ēlDLIVE is fine harmless fun, but there’s not much to it beyond its vivid candy coating, and while it tries to go out there with kooky alien designs, the weird alien that harmlessly pops out of Chuuta’s chest just…doesn’t look that cool. Nor does Chuuta himself, who I guess is supposed to be an innocent weenie.

Still, both the premise and the execution smacks of a show with limited appeal for actual adults – this has Saturday morning kid’s cartoon all over it, unlike something darker like Parasyte. I don’t foresee ēlDLIVE lasting long on my Winter watchlist, but it is inoffensive and decent for what it is.

Kotoura-san – 10

Moritani is arrested under suspicion of being the perpetrator of the random attacks. The rest of the ESP Society visit her at the police station, and Kotoura gets through to the investigators, but they won’t accept her help. Yuriko and Kotoura decide to try to catch the criminal on their own to free Moritani. Muroto stands by Yuriko, but Manabe is staunchly against it. He and Kotoura get in a fight and he storms off, and another attack occurs that exonerates Moritani, who is released. Still wanting to redeem her mother, Yuriko decides to use herself as bait to lure the criminal, and succeeds…

As normal as Kotoura has been acting lately, she still believes she is somehow a bad person who doesn’t deserve the friends and love she’s gained thus far. This has been ingrained in her both by her parents and by everyone she’s accidentally hurt with her ability. It’s every bit as much about her inability to discern which thoughts to outwardly respond to and which not to that has gotten her into trouble so many times. And indeed, she is unable to have a conventional relationship with a boy simply because she cannot help but read his dirty, adolescent mind. It’s usually played for laughs, but its also somewhat tragic.

Because she feels she doesn’t deserve friends, she decides to do whatever she can to help Moritani, even if she gets hurt in the process. Manabe is reliably protective of her, and with damn good reason: Kotoura’s gift of telepathy is rivaled only to her gift for self-destruction. Just because she can help doesn’t mean she needs to; that’s what police are for. But Kotoura’s guilt for having what she believes she doesn’t deserve, combined with her knowledge of Yuriko’s mother issues (we learn she was present when she hung herself…rough), compels Kotoura to act, regardless of the danger she puts herself in.

Manabe, to his credit, does not bend; he wants no part of Yuriko’s vigilante plan, and…he isn’t. He disappears for the rest of the episode and he and Kotoura don’t speak. Not long after their first date, it’s their first fight…which isn’t resolved by episode’s end. In fact, nothing is; we unfortunately get another cliffhanger with Yuriko about to be truncheoned in the head by the attacker. Though we’re pretty sure this series isn’t going to kill one of the main characters, and we’re almost positive Manabe won’t go back on his promise to stay by Kotoura’s side. For one thing, her gramps would put out a hit on him…

Rating: 9 (Superior)

P.S. Sorry for  the long review, but this episode was packed. We had to mention the Yuriko/Daichi relationship, how he always stays by her side (out of pity, obligation, loyalty, love, or a combination of these, we don’t know) no matter what, and a really nice close up of his hand taking hers, and her trembling stopping. These two clearly mean a lot to each other, even if they’re not remotely romantic.

P.S.S. We enjoyed Kotoura’s scenes with the old detective (though his secret thoughts were awfully stereotypical homicide detective) and Tsukino (who is a bit of a blunt airhead), and how she’s saddened by the fact Tsukino has no friends.