No Guns Life – 19 – For the Sake of the Selfish

While Tetsuro talks with Mary about her dealings with Victor (she’s satisfied for the time being but still wants to launch her boob rockets at him) Juuzou chats with Edmund, whom we learn was Five’s Hands. When Edmund abandoned him so he could be turned back to normal, Five took it as a betrayal, especially since the military tried to eliminate him and all the other Gun Slave Units.

Juuzou tells Ed that Five then started a rebellion with other GSUs and their Hands, whom Juuzou eventually dealt with. As Tetsuro tells Mary that of the thirteen pairs of GSUs and Hands, only four remain, two of whom are in Wunder Bender and the other two of whom are Juuzou and Seven.

We get a brief look at Juuzou back when his Hands named him, using the Japanese number 13 as the basis. Back in the office, Tetsuro confronts Juuzou about his role in the elimination of the nine GSU deserters, and his realization Juuzou is a resolver to atone for that crime, something to which Juuzou takes exception.

Having learned about his own role in financing Spitzbergen, Tetsuro considers how he can ever similarly atone for the death and suffering his past actions have caused. Juuzou assures Tetsuro that what was done in the past isn’t as important as what he’ll choose to do now that he knows. Whatever his worth was to others back then, now he gets to decide his own. Juuzou clearly speaks from experience.

At Berühren HQ Pepper and Seven prepare to move out, they seem to have a keen sense that they’re about to cross paths with Juuzou again soon. That’s because after their chat, Tetsuro makes his choice and uses Harmony to take control of Juuzou and have him carry his body to Andy Wachowski.

Wachowski gives us his backstory too (the pointless loss of his brother Larry’s legs drove him to invent Extension tech), then tells both Tetsuro and Juuzou how things are going to go: Spitzbergen will ensure the safety of everyone Tetsuro holds dear. In exchange, Tetsuro will use Harmony to release Juuzou’s limiter so he can fight and defeat Seven.

The same device that fixed Tetsuro’s voice also locks Harmony, paralyzing his ability to change his target. Whether Tetsuro expected this, one can’t deny that depriving Berühren of a GSU will probably save lives. If Tetsuro Harmony’d Juuzou without his consent, it means Juuzou has once more become an unwitting tool for the selfish wishes of others. That means Tetsuro himself chose to become the tool who brought Wachowski the weapon he needs to achieve his goals.

While full of talky scenes and little action, like any good noir fiction this episode laid out everyone’s motivations and how past events and actions have shaped their lives so far and led them to where they stand now—with very little of it being black-and-white. Even a monster-face like Wachowski carries deep emotional scars of personal trauma. It’s not a great episode, but it is an important one, and with its deft use of light, shadow, and color it also looks like a million bucks.

No Guns Life – 18 – Birds of a Feather

Tetsuro returns to Juuzou’s agency with an upgraded voice, and is shocked and moved to hear Juuzou not only apologize for putting him in harm’s way, but to thank him for everything he’s done to help him. It must be tough hearing these gestures now, when Wachowski and Spitzbergen have directed him to unleash his true monstrous form via Harmony.

But while Tetsuro wrestles with his friendship to Juuzou and newly split loyalties, an absolute DAME enters the office, with a classic noir case: find my lost husband. The dame in question is Emma Kurtz, and her husband Edmund is an over-Extended like Juuzou. Edmund was actually in the same unit as her fiancee Theodore during the war, but when both were caught in a bomb-disposal mishap, only Edmund returned, and Emma married him.

Juuzou checks the official records, but finds out that like him Edmund is restricted, which means higher-ups don’t want him found. It’s lucky, then, that Mary happens to find him lying unconscious in the street, having pumped himself full of sedatives.  It becomes apparent that Edmund is looking for Juuzou, and looking to fight him, but has nothing but nice things to say about Mary, who helped revive him.

Instead, Edmund leads Juuzou out into the alley, gives some kids candy money to buzz off, and launches right into a fight, using an innovative baseball bat-like club that injects little needles into Juuzou’s arms and chest (at first I thought they were fired bullets).  He then uses his Tesla Coil-like custom arm extension to prepare a massive attack—only for one of the kids to come back early, forcing Edmund to shoot straight up into the air, missing everyone.

When Ed sees that Juuzou saved a kid over himself, he realizes he’s fighting the wrong guy; the partner from his unit he’s looking for is named Five, whom Juuzou himself already killed years ago. Then Emma arrives to call Ed back, confessing to him that she’s known all along he wasn’t really “Edmund” at all, but Theodore. Despite the new body he came home in, she could still sense her fiancee within.

As the couple reunites, Juuzou and Tetsuro are very much out of their element, as romance simply isn’t anything with which either of them know how to deal. Another noiry case-of-the-week with ample, effective comedy and a nice side-helping of romance? I’d call this another successful outing.

Koimonogatari – 04

Kaiki finds a note reading “Stay out of it” on the floor of his hotel room. He flushes it and calls Senjougahara, reporting on his encounter with Ononoki and Gaen’s warning. The conversation evolves to a discussion of whether anyone is aware of Senjougahara’s contact with him, then Senjougahara warns him about visiting Nadeko too much, lest he become “charmed” by her; he considers scaling back his visits. The next day he gives Nadeko an offering of ¥20,000, more string, and a bottle of Sake, which she accepts. When he leaves the shrine he encounters Hanekawa, who is back from overseas to exchange. They share a cab back to the city and meet in her hotel room to exchange information.

In case there was any doubt, this episode makes it abundantly, cymbol-crashingly clear: we’re dealing with noir here. He may not wear a hat or smoke a cig, but Kaiki is every bit the cynical, trench-coated, hardboiled private dick, while Senjougahara is the Damsel in Distress. The overarching mystery to be solved? How to keep her and Araragi alive. In this regard, Nadeko is the mob boss Senjougahara owes, big time, while Gaen represents the commissioner warning him to stop snooping around her town, while Ononoki being her beat cop liason. Finally we have Hanekawa: while she may not carry herself like a femme fatale, we know from her striped hair and troubled past that that’s kinda what she is.

What made this episode and the arc in general so enjoyable is that it pays homage to those historic, timeless archetypes while putting a decidedly Monogatari twist on them. Indeed, it’s twisting them into a cat’s cradle; something of a very precise pattern and structure; every movement fussed over. Kaiki’s call to Senjougahara is sumptuously decorated by the constantly changing colors on Kaiki’s phone, the undulating patterns on the floor and walls, and the dazzling city outside. Dotted with natural gas flares and sporting a giant LCD panel showing Senjougahara performing very familiar movements, things get very Los Angeles 2019…”Kaiki Deishu” even sounds kinda like an anagram of “Rick Deckard”. Will we get the abruptly happy ending the financiers pushed for here as well?

Rating: 8 (Great)

Stray Observations:

• Kaiki’s shower requires comfort with one’s own body, as it displays it for all to see, as rich people’s showers tend to do.
• Not sure we’ve mentioned this before, but we love Kaiki’s notebook is full of chibi diagrams. The art style is identical to the Bakemonogatari next episode previews, the Fire Sisters’ first appearance.
• Kaiki pulls a Catherine Tramell in Hanekawa’s room.
• We never did find out what was in Nadeko’s closet, while this week we don’t figure out exactly what Hanekawa has to say.
• A couple more references: Kaiki’s red sports car in the OP is very Magnum P.I., while Tokyo is lit much like Neo-Tokyo in Akira.
• Another nod to black-and-white of film noir: Tsubasa’s B&W hair.