Kabitzin on May 7, 2009 · in Eden of the East

Summary:

Saki returns home, avoids helping her sister Asako at Sangetsu Breads, and wishes she could poach her brother-in-law, Ryousuke. Oosugi Satoshi has calling like crazy, and he finally reaches Saki and volunteers to accompany her to her interview tomorrow. After hanging up on the poor guy, Saki then sends a pathetic text to Akira, but not before erasing a bit of the desperation from the text. Meanwhile, Juiz won’t give Akira much useful information, so he tracks down Selecao #5, Hiura Hajime, through Hajime’s purchase of an MRI machine.

Hajime suspects that Akira is the Supporter, and so drugs Akira to knock him out until after an important afternoon prefecture assembly. With Hajime’s plans for his private geriatric self-sustaining hospital in place (through bribes), Hajime wakes Akira up in a recreation of how Hajime was chosen as a Selecao by Mr. Outside. Akira learns that you are killed by the Supporter whenever you try to cheat the game or use the phone for yourself and not the nation, and that only one Selecao will survive at the end. Hajime refuses to reveal much to Akira, saying only that Akira was very clever and traded his past to bet on his new self. As Akira leaves, a man in a suit shows up to kill Hiura for using up his funds without saving the nation.

Reaction:

There were a lot of reinforcing clues given this episode, although much of it was hinted at before. The 500 shipping containers that Akira bought suggests he did not kill the NEETs, and that grainy B&W flashback makes it seem as if Akira was a paperboy before becoming a Selecao. Both Yuusei and Hajime suspected Akira of being the Supporter, and yet it is interesting that Mr. Outside is the only one who knows who the Supporter is. Could it be that one Selecao is going around killing the other Selecao thinking that it will save the nation? The fact that the winner will meet Mr. Outside, has convinced me that Akira will survive and win the game.

Hajime’s main purpose in this episode was to show how 10 billion yen is not enough to save a nation using only conventional thinking. Hajime basically gave up immediately and set his sights on a smaller, achievable goal, but Akira must have something really grand and creative in mind. I’m not sure what this plan might have to do with the skeletal “Johnny” creatures Akira imagined while pondering Quadrophenia, but I noticed that he quickly went from happy to angry when he decided they were useless.