The Apothecary Diaries – 11 – Just a Little Longer

Maomao meets with Fengming and details her deductions. The “deep clean” of Ah-Duo’s pavilion was only an excuse. The reality is, Ah-Duo is leaving the Rear Palace, because after she gave birth to her son, she was no longer able to bear children afterwards. When Fengming says it’s none of Maomao’s business, Maomao says it is, because her father was the attending doctor.

As for Ah-Duo’s son, Fengming fed him honey, not knowing that it could be fatal to infants. Fengming only learned that she caused the death of Ah-Duo’s only child when Ah-Duo befriended Lishu, who herself nearly died as an infant after eating honey. Not wanting Ah-Duo to put two and two together, Fengming saw to it Lishu was kept away from her lady’s pavilion, only for her to return when the new Emperor came into power.

Maomao deduced that to protect Ah-Duo, who could not bear children, Fengming poisoned Lishu’s soup. Once Maomao delcares this and Fengming does not dispute it, there isn’t really much else to say. But then Fengming breaks down, demonstrating to Maomao that she kept Ah-Duo closer to her heart than Maomao could ever imagine keeping anyone. She knows Fengming is doomed, but still wants to do all she can, so she merges her two motives into one: protecting her lady, Ah-Duo.

Maomao doesn’t end up telling Jinshi anything; Fengming turns herself in, and Maomao simply tells him her motive was to protect Ah-Duo’s status as a concubine of the Rear Palace. The thing is, the decision for Ah-Duo to depart as concubine was made by the emperor long before Fengming’s actions came to light.

Maomao, ever the poison junkie, tastes the nectar of an azalea, and Jinshi follows her lead, until she tells him it’s (non-lethal) poison. Fengming is then executed, and one night when Maomao can’t sleep she climbs the wall to view the stars, and is soon joined by Ah-Duo, who offers to share her booze.

Ah-Duo confides in Maomao that after her son “left her”, she returned to being the emperor’s friend, not his concubine. She actually never quite felt right in the position of concubine, and was eager to pass it on to someone more suitable, only to cling to it for years. Before parting with Maomao, Ah-Duo pours out some of her booze into the moat where the servant took her life, noting just as Maomao did that it must have been cold and painful.

Later, when Maomao climbs down the wall, she is startled by Jinshi and falls, but he catches her. Rather than let her go at once, he embraces her tightly, claiming it’s too cold. Maomao notices he’s drunk and he reports that “someone” (Ah-Duo) drank him under the table and ran off. When he starts to weep, Maomao lets him continue to hug her.

The next morning, Ah-Duo departs the Rear Palace in a ceremony full of pomp. She hands the crown of the Pure Concubine to Jinshi, and Maomao realizes there’s a very good reason the two resemble one another so closely: there’s a good chance Jinshi is her son. Maomao thinks to when Ah-Duo said her son “left” her, rather than saying he died, and considers whether her infant child and the Empress Dowager’s were swapped.

That would mean that it was the Dowager’s child that Fengming accidentally poisoned with honey, while Jinshi grew up to become the chief administrator of the Inner Palace (whether he’s actually even a eunuch remains to be seen). When Lishu chases after Ah-Duo and bids her farewell, Maomao observes that Ah-Duo looks every bit the caring, loving mother.

The Apothecary Diaries – 10 – Blood and Honey

Maomao gets the pulse of the Inner Palace from Xiaolan, who says word is the servant who tried to poison Lady Lishu committed suicide, and Ah-Duo may be on the cusp of being replaced with a new, younger concubine. This has Maomao reflecting on the fragility of the fruits in the Inner Palace. Ah-Duo had borne the emperor a son, but the babe died. The primary purpose of concubines is to provide heirs.

In the meantime, Maomao attends Gyokuyou’s tea party with Lady Lishu, and notes what a tense affair it is, with every woman sizing every other woman up. She remarks how skilled Gyokuyou is at extracting information with simple conversation, and also takes note of Lishu’s reaction to being offered honey—a very similar reaction to the fish she had an allergy to. Finally, she sees that Lishu’s ladies-in-waiting continue to look down on their lady.

Jinshi, more annoying to Maomao than usual, wants her thoughts on whether that servant really took her own life or if it was only meant to look that way, and who is responsible. To that end, he dispatches her and two other of Gyokuyou’s ladies to the Garnet Pavilion, home of Concumbine Ah-Duo.

Maomao is given no further instruction, but suspects that Jinshi wants her to use her time there to observe the various parties there, to either implicate or rule out their role in a possible murder. So Maomao observes and takes mental notes as she and the others help do a deep clean on the pavilion.

Despite being 35, a year older than the emperor, Ah-Duo appears younger, with a “androgynous, gallant” beauty that Maomao suspects would look better in a riding outfit. And whether she’s being intentionally obtuse or not, Ah-Duo’s resemblance to the androgynous Jinshi is clear to see.

Maomao is impressed by the diligence and work ethic of Ah-Duo’s ladies-in-waiting, and sees that the head lady Fengming leads by example. While she’s from a powerful house that runs a large apiary (i.e. honey), Maomao finds her down-to-earth, kind, and easy to converse with.

But the fact Fengming’s family runs a honey farm, and the bandage on her left arm, makes her a potential suspect in the colored-fire case. Maomao doesn’t put the various pieces together until Jinshi teases her by backing her against a wall and asking her to taste the honey from his fingers.

A pissed Gyokuyou thankfully puts and end to that, and Gaoshun owes Maomao a favor for simply standing by during the prank, so he gets her an audience with Lishu, who is disappointed Maomao didn’t come with Jinshi. Maomao only has two questions for Lishu. The first is about whether honey disagrees with her.

Lishu tells her that she once had some when she was a baby and it nearly killed her, so that’s a big yes. Lishu’s ladies express their displeasure with Maomao’s direct questioning of Lishu, which sounds rich coming from them. Maomao realizes that they’re intentionally isolating Lishu by making her think they’re her only friends.

Maomao’s second question goes unanswered, but Lishu’s face says it all: she does know Ah-Duo’s head lady Fengming, and it’s a name she fears as much as the foods to which she’s allergic.

Maomao asks Gaoshun to provide her with some Inner Palace records to get more context, and she unearths a bombshell: her dad, named Luomen, was the doctor who delivered Ah-Duo’s son—the one who didn’t make it and now has Ah-Duo in danger of losing her position as one of the emperor’s top Concubines.

Other important details: Ah-Duo was the emperor’s foster sibling, and became his only concubine when he was still a prince, while her son was born around the same time as the emperor’s younger brother.

Her dad was then expelled from the palace. This is the first we learn that he is not her biological father, as he is also a eunuch. But it’s also the first we learn that her connection to the palace is much closer than she ever imagined. What she doesn’t seem to consider yet is what that means for her, a girl adopted from the former doctor responsible for delivering the potential imperial heirs.

We’ll see how much more we and Maomao learn about her father, her own origins, whether Fengming’s honey connections and Lishu’s allergy, or the resemblance of Jinshi and Ah-Duo are merely red herrings. Whatever transpires in the final two episodes of the season, whether she likes it or not Maomao is no longer just an apothecary … if she even ever was.

The Apothecary Diaries – 09 – Sweet and Salty

One evening at a drinking party, a clearly sloshed older man doesn’t even finish one jar of booze before letting it shatter to the ground and asking for more. Someone whose full face is obscured offers him a new jar after adding something to it.

Gaoshun eventually gets Gyokuyou to “stop laughing uncontrollably” long enough to explain that Maomao didn’t sleep with Lihaku, she merely set him up with a star courtesan. While surely relieved, Jinshi remains in an unproductive childish mood and his work piles up.

This only adds fuel to one of my working theories that he may be an actual prince—perhaps the emperor’s brother?—and may not even be a eunuch. There’s plenty of show left to confirm or debunk this theory, so we shall see.

In the meantime, when Jinshi meets with Maomao by way of Gyokuyou, Maomao assumes an open-shut case of the older Sir Kounen simply drinking himself to death, as alcohol is a poison when abused. She can’t muster much sympathy for someone she never met who apparently did himself in, but she also notices Jinshi isn’t his usual “excessively shiny” self.

Upon sampling the booze at the party (something she’s very excited about) she finds it has a distinct taste: sweet, but also very salty. Examination of the broken jar reveals considerable salt buildup. When Maomao learns that a change in tastes from spicy foods to sweet eventually led to Sir Kounen losing his ability to taste salt.

Perhaps someone who wanted to play a prank started adding more and more salt to his drink, and the salt is what killed him. But unlike your Holmeses or Poirots, Maomao is weary of pointing the finger at a specific culprit, loath as she is to be responsible for their execution. She may call herself a coward, but no decent person would want that burden.

Kounen became a different man after his wife and child were lost in an epidemic. His resulting unbalanced diet, stress, and alcoholism led to his loss of salt. When Maomao also learns that Kounen played a key role in Jinshi’s upbringing, Jinshi’s dour demeanor makes more sense.

Maomao is delighted to receive the reward of a bottle of booze for her investigation, but when Jinshi teases her about it, she tells him to get back to work. When he tells her that work involves a bill setting the legal drinking age at 20, complete with peace sign and return of his shiny smile, Maomao freaks out.

She grabs his cloak and pleads with him not to pass such a bill, and he watches her squirm in his lack of response. Call it revenge for her getting one over on him with Lihaku, but we see later that evening that Jinshi’s mood has improved considerably. Maomao didn’t need to make a medicine for him; she just had to be herself.

The second half is considerably more dour, as guards retrieve the corpse of a tall servant woman with bound feet (the first time that unpleasant custom is mentioned in this show) from the moat. When the doctor is summoned with Maomao, he is terrified of the corpse, while Maomao notes the cold weather slowed the decomp considerably.

We learn that Maomao’s dad forbade her from handling corpses, as her innate curiosity might well eventually lead her to use “human ingredients” for her apothecary work, leading to grave-robbing. That she heeds this rule even in her dad’s absence speaks to how well Maomao knows full well who she is and what she’s capable of.

But more than any previous victim, Maomao internalizes this woman’s death, even thinking about how cold the water must’ve been. While the guards believe the woman climbed the wall and threw herself in to off herself, Maomao notes the difficulty (though not impossibility) of someone with her bound feet scaling the wall. The possibility exists she was thrown in by someone.

The victim’s red and bloodied hands also suggest she clawed at the wall trying to get out after falling in, either because she had been thrown in against her will, or threw herself in and immediately regretted it. In this case, Maomao can’t say for certain whether it was murder or suicide.

But as she admires a fruiting plant in Jinshi’s office, she thinks about how impossible she would find it to try to kill herself. She likes living, because it means she gets to test poisons and make medicines. She’d never take that away willingly.

At the same time, as the faces and bodies of all the people who have ended up dead around the palace, she thinks about how delicate and cheap her commoner’s life is. Death can come for her at any time, even for making a mistake, so it would come down to how she’d meet her end.

Assuming Jinshi would be the one to make the call, she considers what poison she’d use to die, and asks that he use that potion if he ever had to execute her. Needless to say, all this morbid talk upsets Jinshi, who’d never considered the possibility he’d have to kill her.

But even as he tells her he would never do such a thing, he tells him it’s more of a can or can not issue. If the emperor told him she had to die, could he a.) do it, and b.) do it the way she preferred?

Maomao is probably being realistic and pragmatic with this kind of thinking, as despite her current high station as lady-in-waiting to the emperor’s favorite concubine, this society still assigns a low enough value on her life to at least consider the details.

Meanwhile, Jinshi is looking more and more like someone of such high birth his true identity is being concealed. That said, part of me still believes Maomao is of far less “common” blood than she’s been led to believe her whole life.

As all of that simmers in my mind, we learn the drowned woman was present at the garden party where the poisoning took place, while Gaoshun has finally found someone with burns on her arms, as instructed by Jinshi. That person is none other than the head lady-in-waiting for Concubine Ah-Duo, whom we have yet to formally meet, and who has purplish hair and eyes reminiscent of Jinshi’s. Coincidence?

Heavenly Delusion – 08 – Behind the Curtain

Dr. Usami takes Kiruko and Maru past a gauntlet of people who want to ask him about their prosthetics and leads them to the room with the curtain. Beyond that curtain is a young woman being kept alive by machines, calling to mind shades of Akira. Usami wants Maru to try to kill her the way he did the dormant Man-eaters in the garage.

Why not just disconnect her from the machines? Because they’re not just keeping her alive—they’re keeping her from becoming a monster. This is how Maru and Kiruko learn that all Man-eaters began as humans. Maru places his hand on her heavily bandaged body, and discovers that she has a core. He can do what Usami wishes and end her pain. But what does she want?

Thanks to a tablet, the young woman Hoshio is able to communicate her final wish: to see the sky. She’s been in that dark, depressing room for God knows how long clinging to both life and humanity. Kiruko and Maru agree that they won’t do as Usami asks unless Hoshio can see the sky, so Usami makes it happen.

The episode lingers on the logistics and careful maneuvering needed to move her and all her machines and cables just a few feet to the balcony where a impossibly gorgeous azure sky opens up above them. She stares up at that sky with her single blue eye, takes a few breaths, and then Maru lets her finally rest. It is without doubt one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking scenes I’ve ever seen, and not by accident: this episode was guest story boarded by a KyoAni veteran.

After she’s passed, Kiruko and Maru discover that Hoshio left a few final messages on the tablet, thanking Usami for letting her die as a human, thanking him for giving her his eye, and for everything, and telling him she loves him. Usami’s mask slips and he breaks down in big sobbing tears.

As all this was going on, Mizuhashi was apparently killed hitting her head when a rock was thrown by an Immortal Order member. Liviuman storms the facility, and IO’s staff and patients evacuate. Kiruko asks the IO folks about the photo of their Dr. Usami and Robin, and they recognize Robin, much to Kiruko’s delight. They could be inching closer to finding him.

But just as Kiruko and Maru are getting ready to escort Usami after he buries Hoshio, he shoots himself in the head on the roof of the facility, cradling Hoshio in his arms. He’s also holding the same button as the kids’ uniforms in Heaven. Just as he no longer saw any reason to continue Immortal Order with Hoshio gone, he no longer wanted to live in a world without her.

Faced with a dead Usami with a dead Hoshio in his arms, Maru begins to despair, saying that unlike Usami or Robin, his hands “only bring death”. Kiruko hurries to him and takes his hands in theirs, telling him that’s not true. Those hands, my God. Countless people have been saved by him killing Man-eaters. He’s saved Kiruko more than once as well. That matters.

While what happened to Hoshio and Usami is tragic, I’m glad the episode ends on a less somber note, with Kiruko and Maru closer than ever. No matter what happens in this world, if they can just stay together and keep surviving, you get the sense everything will be okay.

Only the episode doesn’t quite end with them. It ends with Mimihime’s dream of being in a dark and scary place, before suddenly being joined by someone who offers their hand (probably her crush Shiro).

When Tokio sees her grinning on the balcony, she asks what the dream was about that made her so happy, and Mimihime says she’s already forgotten. But even if the details of the dream are gone, the emotions remain.

Similarly, the precise nature and timeframe of the “Heaven” where Mimi and Tokio reside remains shrouded in mystery and intrigue, but what matters is that I desperately want to learn whatever answers Heavenly Delusion is willing to provide in its final five episodes.

CERTIFIED GODDAMN TEARJERKER

Heavenly Delusion – 05 – Pride (In the Name of Love)

Back in the remnants of Tokyo, Maru plays old 8-bit arcade games while he and Kiruko ponder their next move. Maru is interrupted by some thugs who judge a book by it’s cover and try to bully him, but he fights back and kicks all eight of their asses, suffering only a chipped front tooth and a bruise on the cheek. Kiruko arrives to mop up, assuming the thugs started the fight—and they mostly did by picking on him—but there’s no doubt he escalated.

We learn that before Mikura took him in and taught him how to kill Hiruko, he lived in a home with a bunch of other kids, but that place was eventually shut down and the kids were split up among other places. Maru ended up in a roving gang—which explains why he can handle himself in a fight—until Mikura entered his life. Unlike Kiruko, he didn’t see Mikura as a woman so much as another person he had to listen to and obey. It’s in these scenes of his youth that his resemblance to Tokio is really made clear.

Deciding to keep Maru hidden while they goes on a shopping / gun-charging run downtown, Kiruko overhears the thugs still searching for Maru, and also mentioning a “Ministry of Reconstruction”, which they believe may just be an urban legend. They’re glad and even proud to hear “their Maru” is tough, but then wonders why—after all, when their mission is complete, they’ll be all alone again.

Kiruko is in that state of mind when they return to the room to find Maru missing, and immediately panics. Turns out he was next door jerking off to a porno mag, but he can tell how shook Kiruko is, and gives them a supportive hug. He also apologizes for being so dramatic about his past without considering that Kiruko’s was worse…at least in terms of what they lost.

Back in “Heaven”, despite the efforts of the children to keep Tarao in good spirits with a music and dance performance, the next morning the AI cheerfully reports that he has passed away. The children are allowed to participate in the memorial service.

Tokio is particularly wracked by the loss, and brings up the only other kid to die, Asura, with whom Kona was friends. Asura died of suicide, but the director blames their own research for causing her death. When we see Tokio vomiting into a toilet, it’s a bad sign. Is she now ill like Tarao, either just because, or somehow from her adventure with Kuku?

The paths of Kiruko/Maru and Tokio edge ever-so-slightly closer together when a man who was on the boat comes to Kiruko and Maru asks if he can hire them as bodyguards. He’s headed for a place called “Immortal Order” with a priceless sample of the Hiruko. But when he shows them the jar containing the sample, it has already rotted away to nothing.

Nevertheless, Kiruko and Maru are keen on going to this “Immortal Order”, which is in the same area on a map Kiruko purchased where there’s 100% clean water, suggesting it might be the “Heaven” Maru is seeking. Of course, it’s long since been established there’s nothing heavenly about “Heaven”, and the additional label “strange people” is also foreboding.

The researchers at “Heaven” don’t know what killed Tarao (who was immune to everything prior to taking ill), or whether it will happen to the other kids. And when they cremate Tarao’s body, a bizarre, creepy growth remains, untouched by the flames. The man from the boat mentioned transplanting parts of monsters into humans to give them powers and make them immortal.

In / Spectre – 23 – The Merciless Protector of Order

Kotoko’s Columbo-style “One More Thing” involves the remainder of her interrogation of Fubuki, the yoko with whom President Otonashi contracted to murder Sumi. At the end of their chat, Kotoko deduces that Fubuki didn’t actually kill Sumi. He was about to, but someone beat him to it. He kept this secret from Otonashi so that he’d hold up his end of the bargain.

Fubuki also transformed into Sumi to scream out that the killer was a man in black in order to obscure the true killer: Kaoruko. She was able to fake the time she broke her leg after all, and made it look like a burglary. She now points out that Koya knew about Kaoruko’s role in the murder before this meeting, which is why Kaoruko wasn’t present, and yet Koya was willing to let his father-in-law take the fall.

When Koya scoffs and reminds Kotoko that Sumi screamed that a man attacked her. Kotoko can’t mention that a yoko actually screamed that, but it’s just as plausible that Sumi was protecting her daughter and the Otonashi brand. As Koya gets more agitated, Kotoko gets him to slip up and confirm Kaoruko wasn’t able to confirm Sumi’s death—a combination of her inexperience with murder and the gloves she wore that wouldn’t have been able to detect a pulse or faint breath.

As all of this unfolds, Rion realizes Kotoko guided her to the wrong answer in order to corner Koya and Kaoruko. Now that she has achieved this, awakened the truth, and protected the order of things, Kotoko starts to take her leave. But then Koya pulls a gun, and when Kurou approaches him, he shoots him in the head then aims for Kotoko’s. He can believe his family won’t tell a soul, but doesn’t trust her or Kurou.

As you’d expect, Kotoko doesn’t flinch for a moment. The following exchange is a standout of this arc:

Koya: Now there’s no turning back for me. You and that boy were wrong.

Kotoko: I am correct, and you can still turn back.

When the resurrected Kurou comes from behind and disarms him, Koya, like the others, is somewhat shocked. Kurou’s half-assed period drama explanation doesn’t hold water, and Kotoko saying they’re “people who live in a daydream” for which normal laws and reality don’t apply, isn’t any more reassuring.

Some time passes, and Rion narrates the aftermath of Kotoko’s awakening of a long dormant truth. An always guilt-ridden Kaoruko tried to take her own life, but failed, and Koya remains steadfastly by her side. Her father and Susumu have become closer, something she deems to be a saving grace.

Her grandfather the president’s health took a turn for the worse, as he deals with both his cancer and wrestles with his own guilt and doubt over whether it was the right thing to even approach Kotoko. She and Kurou actually visit him at his bedside, where he admits he’s always both believed in and been fascinated by the supernatural. That’s how he came into contact with the person who referred him to Kotoko and Kurou: none other than Sakuragawa Rikka, who told him they’d be able solve his problem.

This new kernel of information irks Kotoko, who wonders if Rikka was merely trying to bully her. Kurou thinks it could be Rikka wanted Kotoko to get all tangled up in this case to distract her from whatever Rikka was planning. He also believes Rikka wanted him to see Kotoko at work, and in particular how jealously and mercilessly she would protect order by revealing a truth, no matter the cost to her audience.

Kurou silently recalls Rikka telling him he still hasn’t realized how “terrifying” Kotoko is, and as he remembers this, Kotoko falls asleep beside him, looking like the very picture of an innocent angel. Whether this case was meant to be a diversion for Kotoko or not, it is true that Kurou learned more about his girlfriend. But I don’t think it hurt his opinion of her like Rikka probably wanted.

Quite the contrary: it’s surely better for one’s partner to be terrifyingly just than boringly corrupt!

In / Spectre – 22 – Squirrel Lion

During a brief recess when Goichi’s heirs get some air, Kurou lies down, but doesn’t get to rest long as a frisky Kotoko pounces on him with the full force of her 90-ish pounds (which is to say, not much). It’s another fun reminder of how close they’ve become, and it’s also a prime opportunity for Kotoko to confer with Kurou on her progress baiting the heirs into admitting their murder plans, which adequately prepares them for the false solution she’s prepared.

Of the three “contestants”, she believes Rion will be the first one to come upon that conclusion, as early as that night, and that proves to be exactly the case. While Susumu and Koya were successfully baited, the genuinely innocent Rion was also given everything she needed to craft a solution. A phone call with her dad is the catalyst that helps Rion organize and connect the clues swimming in her mind.

Missing from the meeting’s revelations is the true nature of Otonashi Sumi’s motivations. She wasn’t simply a tyrant bent on success at any cost, but was herself a puppet of her father Denjiro’s machinations. Denjirou laid out an intricately detailed plan, Sumi carried it out, and it resulted in the company’s success. Under that kind of pressure, it was virtually impossible for Sumi to disobey Denjirou even after he passed, even if she knew his plans were fracturing her family and eventually even the company.

That’s when Rion remembers how Kotoko phrased it—success sometimes harms people and leads them to their own destruction—and eureka, she has the solution: Sumi committed suicide. Trapped between her family’s happiness and the success of her company on one side an Denjiro’s orders on the other, Sumi took herself out of the equation.

Rion even surmises that Sumi made it look like a murder knowing her family had alibis to avoid harming the brand or their reputations. Kotoko looks happy with Rion’s answer—not necessarily because it’s the correct one, but because it’s the one she wanted Rion to come upon. Kotoko even softens the tension between them by saying her name is cute and brave, like a squirrel and a lion.

I like how that led to Susumu saying if Rion were a boy she’d be named Reo, since his big bro loved lions. It’s enough to suggest that amends between the brothers is possible. When the time comes to deliver the group’s answer to Goichi, Rion is the one to present it. Not only does Goichi accept it, and accept the even distribution of the inheritance, but laments that he didn’t do something like this sooner.

To do so would have saved his children undue guilt. While Susumu, Koya, and Kaoruko feel they’ve sinned, Goichi points out that there’s a very wide space between wishing to kill someone—and even holding a knife to someone’s neck—and actually going through with it. In doing his part to manipulate Sumi into commiting suicide, he believes himself the sole culprit in her death, and plans to pay for it by foregoing medication and dying a painful miserable death.

In this way, Goichi hopes to powerfully impress upon his heirs the lesson that one should never expect success as a result of murdering someone. The cost may have came late for him, but it will come all the same. That would wrap things up, except that Kotoko isn’t done. She rejects Rion’s theory of suicide, and provides valid reasons why.

The most important of these reasons is simply that making a suicide look like a murder carried far too much unnecessary risk and complexity. Engineering an accidental death, on the other hand, would have precluded the need for any alibis and prevented any police investigation.

Also, Goichi can claim he’ll pay for his crime, but the fact his family was protected by this solution means he doesn’t regret the choice he made or the success it led to. No, Otonahi Sumi didn’t commit suicide, she was murdered, and next week Kotoko will reveal the identity of the true killer. The question is, will that really be the fox ayakashi, or still someone else?

Made in Abyss – S2 08 – The Child

Reg wants to know what he promised Faputa long ago, and in response, she rips off one of her arms and ears and tells him she’ll “offer up her all” if it’s for the promise…which doesn’t really help Reg understand what it was, only how important it is.

From there we return to Vueko’s torrid tale. Wazukyan shows her what Irumyuui has become: a sedentary pink juggernaut that gives birth every day to larger and larger doomed young. Wazukyan now slaughters them live and they cure everyone of the effects of the living water.

While Vueko has more or less recovered fully, Belaf fares much worse, racked with guilt over eating Irumyuui’s young (and finding them tasty), and he always looks like he’s about to pull his face off. Wazukyan offers to show her how to prepare and cook the young, but she can’t bear it.

What follows is Vueko’s first attempt to kill herself, but Irumyuui is still in that hulking mass of flesh somewhere, and she convinces Vueko not to do it with her warm embrace. Eventually Irumyuui grows too large for the caves where they dwell. Vueko and the others follow her as she finds a spot out in the open, sheds her skin, and starts to devour the flying monsters they find there.

While at least one Ganja member gets carried off by one of the flying monsters, the end result is Irumyuui creates a green portal not unlike the lift that bore them all there from the higher Layer. Belaf, truly at the end of his physical and emotional tether, steps through the membrane and is instantly transformed into the snakelike creature of the present.

The others follow, one by one, shedding their human bodies and being transformed into the hollows that define their innermost desires. The only holdout is Vueko, who would rather jump off a cliff, but Wazukyan still has plans for her, and grabs her with an arm reinforced by one of the many Cradles of Desire he’s instructed the Interference Units to find.

When Vueko next wakes up, she’s naked, restrained, and kneeling in the mass of dark mud-like goo where Riko would discover her centuries later. Wazukyan tells her she’s now within Irumyuui’s brain, where she can commune directly with her. She accepts her new task of naming, singing to, and caring for the countless “children” of Irumyuui, deep in the warm darkness.

But gradually, quietly, Irumyuui was growing a different kind of child, a creature who we learn to be Faputa. When Faputa hatches, she goes on a rampage, for which Vueko is glad, since Faputa embodies all of the pent-up resentment and despair of her mother, who can no longer speak or move.

Back in the present, Vueko tells Riko that she believes Faputa’s ultimate goal is to destroy the village and free her mother, who, as it turns out, physically became the village. If and when I ever rewatch, those earlier episodes when Riko & Co. first find the village will hit different.

Did Reg promise long ago to help Faputa carry out her goal? We’ll obviously find out soon. In the meantime, Riko finds herself in the middle of a very volatile situation. Vueko’s only desire is that she not forget who Irumyuui was, and I don’t believe she’d miss it if it were Faputa’s (and thus Irumyuui’s) will for the village to die.

NIGHT HEAD 2041 – 03 – Taking a Turn

Fresh off their narrow escape from the diner and SWE, Naoto and Naoya  decide to pay a visit to their dear old parents who drugged them and sent them away to the lab when they were kids, because there might not have been any choice considering the powers they possessed. Predictably, not only are the parents gone, but so is the very house they grew up in.

The balance of the episode is focused on a high school, where a circle of friends are apparently suffering the effects of a black magic spell that backfired. They intended to get revenge on someone, but their “spell” seemingly results in a string of gruesome suicides at school, all of which are worth a solid trigger warning.

The SWE squad is dispatched to the school to investigate, with Takuya driving while Kimie rides shotgun and tries to relate to him as a fellow Psychic. They raid the club room and find a treasure trove of fiction and occult contraband, any one item of which carries the death penalty.

I’m sorry, but I don’t understand how this society…works. The SWE can’t be everywhere all the time, so I imagine bastions of lawbreaking are quite prevalent—especially in schools! In any case, Mikie can sense a powerful psychic at work, controlling the minds of people, including Michio and Reika, who shoot wildly at their Kuroki brother comrades like brainwashed zombies.

The one survivng high schooler ends up crossing paths with the Kiriharas at their dad’s old factory, where they also encounter the time-traveling Futami Shouko, who ties her hair…with her hair, which is…unsettling, somehow. I guess that’s the point; she’s an inscrutable person.

Before Shouko blips out (returning to several years in the past), Naoya’s clairvoyance senses a voice telling them to go to a certain place. That place happens to be where the culprit behind the mind control murders lives. He’s just a little boy, but he’s a powerful Psychic whose puppy the high schooler who spearheaded the black magic ritual slaughtered for its blood…hence the desire for revenge.

Mikie and Reika roll in and neutralize the boy, ending the immediate threat, while Naoto uses his psychokinesis to shove the ladies aside so he and his brother can escape. They’re met outside by Takuya and Yuuya and the two pairs of brothers recognize each other from their strange visions. It’s like that Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man meme.

Thankfully, the Kirihara brothers have an ally in the shadows, who reveals himself to knock out the Kuroki’s and tells them to come with him. He doesn’t add “if they want to live”, Sarah Connor style, however. I can’t say I’m the most engaged with these characters, but it’s a very slick looking show and the music is great, so I can’t complain that much.

Wonder Egg Priority – 13 (Fin) – Deus Eggs Machina

Instead of being represented by an angel and  a devil perched on her shoulders, Neiru works through her indecision by giving voices to her bunny slippers. She determines it’s time to be “selfish”. She encounters Ai, and they have a listless conversation about the weather before going their separate ways.

Ai returns home to find Neiru’s pet rat Adam by her door, and a text from Neiru asking her to take care of him. That’s all Ai gets; she calls and the phone rings and rings, but Neiru never answers. In a way, Ai is a good part of the audience of Wonder Egg Priority who waited three months for some kind of definitive conclusion.

Unfortunately, this is not really that. Oh, it takes a turn or two in new directions, but very few loose ends are tied up. Indeed, the first half of this special is a recap. Like Ai listening to those droning tones on the phone, we never should have expected answers would be forthcoming. Instead, we get more questions; fresh avenues for contemplation.

After the frankly obnoxious recap (the second, as the first was a necessary evil when the pandemic and time constrained production could not keep up with cruelly unrealistic deadlines), we learn that Ai and the others actually did bring their dead people back to life, only now they have no connections to them. Koito treats Ai coldly and even joins in bullying her.

Worse, when Ai calls Neiru’s office and meets her on the ground floor, Neiru tells her she won’t be her friend and walks away. Ai is so frustrated she tosses her phone, shattering the screen, and even buys a pack of cigarettes…though one sniff of one and she reconsiders actually smoking one.

It’s little moments like that, and all of the angst and depression and panic that sets in as Ai realizes the people closest to her have suddenly drifted away, that reminds me of the best this show could offer. Those painstakingly rendered quiet moments that really brought Ai, the others, and their world to vivid life. Ai decides to vent her frustrations into the mic, singing the ending theme (badly) at karaoke with Rika and Momo

Rika doesn’t like how Neiru just up and left, and suggests they return to the Accas to investigate. Momo doesn’t want to go. She, quite justifiably, doesn’t want to be hurt (anymore than she already has, of course). Rika calls her a coward, but Ai tells her how sad she’d be if Momo got hurt. Rika then says she’d just go and save her all over again.

It, and the scene of the three on the train, exemplifies the highs and lows of friendships. Sometimes we get on each others’ nerves, or have fundamental disagreements, but the bonds endure. Then Ai gets a call from Neiru’s secretary admitting that the cold, dismissive Neiru she encountered earlier wasn’t really Neiru, but Neiru’s sister Aira.

They are invited to Neiru’s house, which was once Kotobuki’s before she died…and becomes Kotobuki’s again when she is revived. Or, to be more precise, she and the other girls’ dead people aren’t the same people because they came from alternate timelines.

That whole can of worms has always been a hard pill of magical realism to swallow, and the more detail given to it, the more it starts to fall apart, so it’s to WEP’s credit they mostly wave their hands and say “it’s fine, just go with it.” Ditto Ai and Rika watching the last dream Neiru recorded, and essentially learning that Neiru…was never human, but an AI???

Rika, always quick to anger and saying things she might not mean, says she’s not willing to “risk her life for a machine.” But what is a sophisticated AI but an infinitely less complex version of the Real McCoy? We are just machines; machines we’ll probably never be able to perfectly replicate no matter how many shows and movies explore the possibility.

When Neiru does finally call Ai, Ai decides to be the one not to answer. She throws her phone over the balcony of her apartment building, then cries into her loving mother’s lap. Not all friendships are forever, and even when turning the page is in one’s best interest, it’s often far more difficult and painful than simply ripping a band-aid off of a hairy arm.

Time passes, and Ai not only leaves Neiru, but drifts away from Momo and Rika as well; sadly we don’t get to see them again. Ai changes schools, since Koito isn’t her Koito anymore, and seems to be adjusting and adapting just fine.

But then one day she walks past a familiar storefront with capsule dispensers, and suddenly all the memories of her friends and of Neiru rush into the foreground of her mind, and she decides to do what Rika wanted to do back at Karaoke: return to the Accas and get cracking. Not all friendships are forever, but not all friendships that end necessarily stay over forever.

Higehiro – 09 – The Things She Carried

Like Sayu, I was dreading the day someone from her family finally found her and forced her to come home…but that isn’t what happens. It turns out Issa is just as decent and kind a person as Yoshida, and doesn’t jump to conclusions even when Yoshida and Sayu greet him at the door in their PJs.

Instead, he’s the latest in a long line of refreshingly reasonable, level-headed human beings that populate Higehiro and make it feel more real. He’s not simply doing their mother’s bidding; he wanted to be the one who found Sayu, because he loves her and is worried about her.

Issa is greatly relieved Sayu managed to find a good soul who took her in without asking for anything inappropriate, and takes both of them at their word when they say nothing’s happened. As a high-achieving corporate type, I imagine Issa trusts his instincts when it comes to reading people.

But that’s not all: Issa can also tell, even if Sayu can’t, that she’s taken some important steps forward as a person. He notes how she’s more able to speak her mind, as she explains why she needs a few more days to think about things. He’s proud and caring n a way only a big brother can be, and grants her one more week.

I have to say, I never imagined in a million years that Issa would be such a good guy, especially considering the uncomfortable way the series has handled the bastard who took her in for sex and ended up her co-worker. But it’s not the show’s fault I automatically expect the worst…it’s because men, and especially anime men, are so often just that…the worst.

Of course, women are the worst too, as we learn when Sayu invites Asami over and sits her and Yoshida down to finally tell them about everything that’s happened that led her to run away. In effect, she’s unloading all of the burdens she’s carried before two friends who are all too happy to help share that load. Her first step in getting ready to go back is telling the people important to her about where she came from.

Sayu and her mother never got along. Her mother put all of her hopes and aspirations into her firstborn son Issa, and never had a kind word for Sayu. Because she never received love, Sayu didn’t bother putting any effort into anything, be it academics or socializing. She was alone, emanated a “stay away” aura, and came to prefer it that way.

But along came another outcast in Yuuko, for whom Sayu’s repelling aura had the opposite effect. Yuuko always told Sayu she was pretty and cool—as pretty and cool as Yuuko claimed not to be—and the two became fast, close friends. But Sayu’s looks and unimpeachable “goodness” kept the other girls from bullying her directly when she turned down a guy one of them liked, so they started bullying Yuuko instead.

Yuuko always said Sayu looked best when she was smiling and happy. But as the bullying intensified and Sayu dug in her heels, determined to stand beside Yuuko and fight for her, she stopped smiling and laughing, and was always depressed, because she felt responsible for her friend’s suffering and felt powerless to stop it.

Yuuko, however, felt differently. When Sayu told her she’d support her and fight for her against the bullying, it hurt Yuuko more than anything, as she believed she was ruining Sayu’s happiness by deigning to become friends with her in the first place.

So one day, Sayu found Yuuko standing on the wrong side of the balcony, waiting for her. Yuuko told her what happened was her fault, but it would be better if she were no longer in her life. Before leaping to her death, Yuuko asked Sayu to keep smiling, obviously in no mental state to realize how hard that would be if she killed herself.

Witnessing her first and only friend commit suicide for her sake would have been plenty of trauma for any teenager or adult to bear, but that wassn’t the end of Sayu’s suffering. As the Ogiwara household became besieged with press and stories and rumors of the true cause of Yuuko’s death, her mother did all the exact wrong things, only exacerbating Sayu’s despair.

Rather than support her daughter and help her grief, she blamed her for their predicament, and even went so far as to ask, seriously, if Sayu really did kill Yuuko. That despicable question is the last straw for Sayu, and you really can’t blame her for not wanting to spend one more second inside that house with that despicable woman. Instead, it’s Issa who offers Sayu a shoulder to cry on as she prepares to run away on foot.

Demonstrating he was just as empathetic and kind back then as he is in the present, he actually helps his sister get the distance and time she needs, giving her $3000 for a decent hotel and food for two weeks, if she promises to call him if she ever gets into trouble. If there’s a right way to run away, this was it: acknowledging and respecting what Sayu needed, but building checks into the arrangement.

But even with those measures in place, Issa would still need Sayu to actualy call him if she got in trouble, and she never does that. As she burns through her cash, she continues to be crushed by isolation and self-loathing, with no one there to help pull her out of her downward spiral. Issa’s mistake wasn’t getting Sayu away from their mom, it was sending Sayu away all by herself when she was in no condition to be entirely alone.

The episode includes a scene we previously saw only a flash of, in which Sayu masturbates and looks down at her hand afterwards. As this happens before she first sleeps with a man, I’m not sure why such a graphic scene was included, except to underscore that there was really not much for Sayu to do during this time but sleep, eat, and pleasure herself, and none of it was helping.

When Issa calls Sayu to check on her, her battery dies, and she tosses her phone out, believing in that moment that his kindness was merely pity she didn’t want or deserve. She wanders the streets, bumps into a man, and when she explains her situation he offers her a place to stay. He eventually asks for sex in return, and Sayu gives in, though doesn’t even remember the name of her first. She then went from guy to guy, trading sex for shelter, until ending up on Yoshida’s doorstep. The rest, we know.

The first to speak after her tale of woe is Asami, who gives Sayu the affection she needs and tells her just how hard she hung in there all this time. Having gotten all of this out, Sayu breaks down, having a much-needed cathartic cry. Once she’s calmed down and in bed, Asami asks Yoshida on the balcony what he’s going to do about her.

Yoshida says it’s up to Sayu’s family to figure this out and it’s not his place to interfere. Asami points out that’s not what she asked, idiot, and again asks: what does he want to do? He may say he’s a stranger, but he’s not; he and Asami are as much family to Sayu as Issa, and certainly more than Sayu’s mom.

What they want matters too, especially if it aligns with what Sayu herself wants. But first those things must be said, just as the things Sayu carried needed to be said to fully understand where she’s been, and determine what she should do. It’s not just Sayu who needs to think about things in the week she has left.

86 – 08 – We Weren’t Ready

A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.—Kay, Men In Black

The Alba are right: the Eighty Six aren’t human. They’re better than that. The humans who populate the serene Republic of San Magnolia blindly accept the government’s policy of ethnic cleansing as the cost of peace, order, and harmony. Lena, like the Eighty Six, knows there’s a wrong, but isn’t prepared to do more wrong to right it.

It’s why when Lena discovers the orders basically sentencing what’s left of Spearhead to their almost certain deaths, she wants to rescind them. Annette pulls her out of the records room for some tea and biscuits, but when Lena once again says it’s wrong not to try to do anything, all of the simmering resentment within Annette finally comes to a caustic boil.

Annette isn’t merely “pretending” to be a bad person; she’s fully embraced the role, heart and soul. She doesn’t need an excuse to do nothing; her inaction has already caused the death of her former neighbor and friend (who it’s pretty clear from the suspenders was none other than Nouzen Shinei) while her research is built upon the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of Eighty Six.

Like the vast majority of people would in such a situation, Annette chose not to fight a force that could not be beaten, but to join them. Even though her father committed suicide after the suffering he caused developing the Para-Raid, Annette carried on his work. She might’ve scared herself when she first called her friend a “filthy colored” like her classmates did, but that fear soon dissipated into acceptance.

After everything she’s been through and done in the name of not being able to do anything else, Annette doesn’t want to hear one more idealistic word out of Lena’s mouth. After all, the Para-Raid that enables Lena to speak to Shin and the other members of Spearhead was the product of involuntary human experimentation and state-sanctioned suffering. So is her comfy bed, her crisp uniform, her tasty coffee and sweets. It’s all tainted by evil.

Annette tells Lena she hates her and never wants to see her again. I mean, we already new full well Annette wouldn’t join any potential crusade against injustice Lena might concoct, but this really twists the knife, as Lena doesn’t even have a pretend friend in the capital in which to confide.

When she confronts her uncle before the statue of San Magnolia, he tells her the orders sending Spearhead to their deaths cant be recinded because it is the will of the republic that evry Eighty Six not only die, but be forgotten and erased from having ever existed. The only way San Magnolia will avoid becoming a pariah state after the war is if the atrocities they committed against the Eighty Six never come to light.

When Lena begs her uncle to remember the spirit of Saint Magnolia, he tells her their republic was never anything other than a country full of fools and villains who executed Magnolia for their wealth and greed. She says that’s just his despair talking, but he doesn’t consider his despair any different from her hope.

If Lena werent already having one of the worst days of her life, Shin also bids her farewell, fully accepting his suicide mission. Lena deduces he’s going after his brother, but Shin doens’t want her to hear his last words. Instead, he warns her that once the Shepherd is destroyed, the Legion is temporarily thrown into chaos, .

He urges her to head for the Eastern border, where she won’t hear the Legion’s voices and go mad. He and the others will buy her some time. With that, he signs off, for what seems like the last time. Now all Lena has is her tears.

With Lena left very much at rock bottom, we return to Spearhead, now only five strong: Kurena, Anju, Theo, Raiden, and Shin. They clean up their barracks, polish up their Juggernauts, have a final meal, and then set off on their deep recon mission with their heads held high.

As we’ve learned, they’re not just doing this because the alternative is summary execution. They’re doing it for their fallen comrades, and because just because they were always called pigs doesn’t mean they’ll become them. There’s a biting sense of inescapable dread and crushing unfairness to their scenes. More than anything, they feel like five kids who shouldn’t have to be anywhere near a battlefield.

Post-credits, we get one more taste of despair in the absence of anything else, in the form of the complete flashback of Shourei choking Shinei. He had been barely keeping it together before that point, crushed by his powerlessness to do anything about the loss of his parents. In a moment of weakness, he let himself blame Shinei for everything, and nearly killing him until someone pulls them apart.

A roboticized, Legionized Shourei narrates this final scene, lamenting that he couldn’t protect Shinei before. But this time, as Shin and his four companions approach him and his Legion unit, Shourei says he’ll protect his brother forever. All he has to do is come to him…which is what he’s doing.

All I can say to any of this is damn…this is some good shit, but it is also incredibly heavy and upsetting. I can only hope that we’ll get some glimmer of light at some point before the end…but that’s hardly a sure thing.

Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song – 09 – Diva’s Final Curtain

Matsumoto, always entertaining when thrown for a loop, finds himself speaking to Antonio through Ophelia, as he decides the best way to fulfill his mission to support her was to become her, sparing her the burden of fame and the pursuit of perfection, but also sparing her an independent existence. He considers his mission far more noble than Matsumoto’s designs to prevent her suicide, though he might not say that if he knew the bigger picture.

Speaking of that, Kakitani’s youth is promptly explained: he’s an AI copy of the human, and his mission is to get an answer he couldn’t from his teacher, which only Vivy could provide. That means infecting the captured Diva with a custom logic palette that “doesn’t belong in this era” which, throughout the episode, slowly erases Diva’s personality, eventually leaving only Vivy behind to answer him.

Thankfully, it’s a slow countdown, and while it is technically a ticking clock, because it’s only one of several spinning plates in this arc finale, it feels earned rather than cliched. That it is an inevitability even Matsumoto’s hacking skillz cannot override also adds gravitas to every moment Diva is on screen, because they’ll be her last.

It also assures that the titular Vivy we know and love, who can neither act like a human nor sing half as well as Diva, will ultimately return. It occurs to me that at the conclusion of every previous arc, we didn’t just say goodbye to one of Vivy’s sisters, but a part of Vivy as well, as her interactions with them helped her grow, both as a songstress and a person.

This time we don’t just say goodbye to a part of Vivy, but an entire alternate version of her, who lived for sixty years. It’s a tough loss…but before she goes Diva makes sure she puts absolutely everything she’s got in all the time she has left to be the best temporary partner to Matsumoto he could ask for…and vice versa.

While packed with drama, pathos, tragedy and romance, Wit Studio flexes its muscles like never before in this episode, as we cut between the parallel battles, one of the more abstract electronic variety, one more down-and-dirty hand-to-hand combat, but both equally gorgeous an awesome to watch unfold.

That Kakitani is also an AI means both he and Diva can take the fight to levels humans would not be able to survive, while Matsumoto manages to copy himself into enough cubes to fight his battle with Antonio while supporting Diva. Compare this to Antonio, who happily accepted Kakitani’s help but is otherwise not working towards the same mission, making them inherently weaker against a united front.

Among other Kakitani’s surprises is an elaborate arm cannon (always a sharp feature when going on a timeline-bending crusade to avenge his mentor—and a special knife that seems to act as an EMP, deactivating the Matsumoto cubes aiding Diva.

All the while, Diva tries to impress upon Kakitani the fact that she’s not Vivy, and has no answers for him he’ll find satisfying. When she says she puts everything she has into her singing to make people happy, that includes everything about Vivy, despite her knowing next to nothing about her.

On the Antonio side of things, Matsumoto says he almost turned into him, discarding his partner as part of his “perfect calculations”. Looking at what’s become of Antonio, he’s not glad he didn’t eliminate her. As for his mission, it was never specifically to stop Ophelia’s suicide; it was to carry out the Singularity Project with his partner.

Even taking over Ophelia couldn’t satisfy Antonio, because no matter how happy the crowds were with his performances, he always knew he wouldn’t be able to match the power of the true Ophelia’s singing. In fact, it irked him that their standards for excellence were so low, resenting the very people it was Ophelia’s mission to make happy.

The Matsumoto cubes manage to hack both Antonio and Kakitani and disable both, and transfers Antonio back into his own clunky body. It’s only then in his last moments that he admits that all he really wanted was for Ophelia to sing for him and no one else. Ophelia, regaining consciousness before shutting down, admits she only wanted to sing for him; to make him smile.

In the end, their mutual love and devotion to each other corrupted their missions. In true Shakespearian tragic fashion, it was a love that could never be. In that same vein, the moment Kakitani uploaded that logic palette, Diva was a version of Vivy that could never be, even though she did a bang-up job serving as Matsumoto’s partner. Before Kakitani shuts down, he tries to twist the knife once more, telling Diva “there were humans who suffered because you existed!”

That line might’ve worked on Vivy, but it doesn’t faze Diva that much. And in true Diva fashion, she gives one last snap and tells Matsumoto she’s going to use her last five or so minutes of existence doing what she was built to do: dazzle the stage, put her heart into her singing, and make everyone in attendance happy to be there. As she performs, she simultaneously opens a dialogue with Vivy within the Construct.

In this lovely parallel scene, their positions couldn’t be better illustrated, as Diva is both on stage and in the brightly lit classroom, while Vivy is relegated to a dark, shadowy, morose office. The pair lean against the same door, and Diva says she hears how Vivy had been struggling with putting her heart into her singing. She says the answer is to simply to hear the song she’s singing now, in her final performance, as in the Construct she slowly dissolves away into cybernetic oblivion.

And yet, as Vivy opens the door and steps into the light, then wakes up on stage to a deliriously ecstatic crowd cheering the song Diva just sang, Vivy still doesn’t understand. Then again, she only just woke back up; maybe she needs a few decades to process what she heard and what it means. Thanks to Diva, she has her existence back, which means anything is possible for her. As long as she sticks with her partner Matsumoto, who promised Diva he’d take care of her.