Finally, we get the full flashback of how Rentarou met Sara/Souju. It was winter of 2002, and Rentarou was busy feeling depressed after his father perished in a traffic accident. He doesn’t even attend the funeral, and goes so far as to throw Ainosuke’s beloved lighter into the water (before changing his mind to save it). Of course now the lighter never seems to work, adding to Rentarou’s chagrin. During this time, Rentarou’s life is a downward spiral as he blows off his friends and gets suspended from college. Instead of following in his father’s footsteps, Rentarou lays around the house singing the KareKano ED. At the same time, Sara and Souju are looking for detective agencies in a phone book, before the happen upon Futaba Detective Agency. When they arrive, Rentarou tells them his father is dead, but Sara suggests that he can take over the agency if he can successfully complete their job. Somehow, this leads to the three of them being held hostage in a bathhouse by some machine gun touting wacko calling himself Dr. Ocean.
In a scene full of WTF moments, Dirty Harry rants outside while showing off his boner, as Sara and Souju keep Rentarou hidden under water by sitting on him. Dr. Ocean rants on the inside, and Dirty Harry knocks some girl out with his wood. Things look bad, as Rentarou is running out of air and probing Souju’s naked body trying to get her to let him up (a big ZOMG to the Souju facial expressions in this scene). Eventually, Dr. Ocean gets fed up with Dirty Harry, allowing Rentarou to fly through the air to mesmerize Dr. Ocean with his… “elephant” display. During the distraction, Sara launches a vicious kick to Dr. Ocean’s head, and it’s a 1-Hit K.O. for t3h win. As the three leave the bathhouse, Souju silently points out to Rentarou that something is up with Sara’s left hand.
The last part of the story has Rentarou finding that the twins have disappeared and left a series of dastardly clues to get him to find them. The clues are somewhat tricky, and Rentarou has to go through quite a lot to move from clue to clue. If he can find Sara and Souju before 6:00 PM, they will pay the entire fee. As it turns out, Rentarou was actually itching to get into action, as he remembers how his dad used to say, “What are you going to do?” all the time. Unfortunately, there is a vicious dog at the end, and Rentarou chickens out and goes home. While he’s at the apartment feeling sorry for himself, he finds a note that completely pisses him off. It informs him that Souju left the money for him anyway, in the event that he couldn’t find them. Rentarou is ashamed of himself for needing a pair of 12-year olds to expose how much he sucks, and in this moment he makes the transformation from standard spineless male harem lead to unbelievably clutch Robert Horry-like male harem lead. Combining his FLCL and Shounen Bat powers, Rentarou races off to commit acts of animal cruelty and retrieve the last clue. As he races off, the lighter suddenly works, even in the pouring rain, and Rentarou is completely fired up.
At the riverbank, it’s 6:00 PM, and Souju thinks they should leave; clearly the clues were too tough. After all, they just met Rentarou, and he has no reason to care about this kind of stuff. Sara refuses, however, and says that she doesn’t want to go back and she was so scared of the total darkness. Sara wants for the two of them to decide their future by themselves. Suddenly the rain stops, and Rentarou bursts onto the scene, screaming “FOUND YOU!!!” before driving into the river. It begins to snow, and Rentarou hugs Sara and Souju close, comforting them. This scene is then juxtaposed with the current image of Rentarou hugging the twins in the dark Agency HQ.
This was a completely awesome episode that mixed gripping mystery with frantic wackiness. The bathhouse scene had me completely boggled, and it was interesting to see that Dirty Harry and his partner also got led away in handcuffs. I was intrigued to learn about the difficult process by which a male harem lead becomes cool, and it clearly involves a lot of wangst and soul-searching. I guess most male harem leads just can’t hack it, and so stay spineless. The scene at the riverbank when it goes silent and the wind suddenly whips back Sara’s hood was so totally cool, that Rentarou is slowly edging his way into top 10 male anime character status. Is it wrong for me to lust after him so?!
I didn’t understand what was wrong with Sara’s hand, though. That whole female telepathy thing just completely goes over my head.
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This post was written by...
Kabitzin – who has written 1940 posts on Sea Slugs! Anime Blog.
One of the founders of Sea Slugs, I handle most of the blog admin tasks while wearing my I AM BOSS shirt. I like my action series well choreographed, and my romance series extra trashy. I also have a soft spot for puns.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
No, the bathhouse scene was a different flashback. The storytelling ‘fast forwarded’ in time a bit to some point where they’d been together for a while, to illustrate a point about Sara (“Sara was always like that, making decisions and calling the shots on her own”). Then after the bathhouse scene, ‘rewinded back’ to “Rentarou’s first case”.
And yes, it really takes a lot for a male harem lead to become l33t – see Ep 11 for his true transcendence into Coolness.
The hand was trembling because she had been scared and repressing it. It was to show that Sara has a vulnerable side to. And yeah this ep was freaking cool
oh .. oooohhhh !!!!
I finally got it why soujo mention rentarou about sara hands … thanks to conrath, i finally understand what really going on.
and this good anime and good episode ^^