Summary:
Canaan starts awake afraid she just got the bad end, but fortunately Maria is safe. While Maria and Canaan make bedroom eyes, Minoru chats with Kenji and learns that most victims die of the Ua virus well before developing any tissue changes. This leads Minoru to suspect that the Snakes have an antivirus and that the destroyed village was a human experiment. We then get scenes of Hakkoo rocking everyone’s mind, first in a flashback where she unknowingly blows up some random kid’s brain with her voice, and then in a Nene concert where her love of This is Life gives everyone a severe headache when Hakkoo tries to sing along.
When Minoru suspects Santana of being a Snake and controlling Hakkoo, Santana agrees to take everyone to the village that he destroyed. Hakkoo still hasn’t forgiven Santana, and through the whole ride she keeps shooting dirty glances at Canaan. After some painful male singing and some goofy photography, Canaan tells Maria that even without the colors she can sense Maria’s kindness. This display of shoujo-ai drives Hakkoo over the edge, and that night she tries to air-choke (shoulda used a blood choke!) Canaan. Hakkoo’s horrible melee skills and her pathetic pebble-throwing skills pose no threat to Canaan, but before the night ends Hakkoo silently mouths, “It’s all your fault [that I don't get more romantic scenes with Santana],” at Canaan. The next day, the boys wisely seat Maria in between Hakkoo and Canaan, and unexpectedly run into Yunyun.
Reaction:
All the VA did a great job this episode, but jumpy, vulnerable Canaan was another masterpiece by Miyuki (easily my favorite VA, though I only recently realized it). However, in terms of actual story this episode was very confusing. What was the importance of Liang’s factory? Why was Alphard so pissed at the map? I suspect that Alphard was looking at the location of the village, where Siam got himself a new, younger Canaan, but it wasn’t clear. I’m not sure I really understand the Snakes’ plan either. They made America look bad and now they’re going to mess around with various stock markets and stick it to capitalism? Oh well, I guess I’ve heard/seen much worse plans.
So now that we know that fear is green and hunger is gray, we’re going to get all the named village survivors gathered at the ruins. I liked the Canaan emo over losing her synesthesia, especially when she couldn’t figure out why Hakkoo was such a hater. It still kinda pisses me off to see Minoru doing all the reporting while Maria just goofs off, but the little road trip was amusing with the Canaan-Hakkoo tension. Did Hakkoo know young Canaan? I also wonder if Nene will end up being an important character since she keeps popping up the way Yunyun did at the start.
This post was written by...
Kabitzin – who has written 1970 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.
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Was the plot that confusing? I figured it’s all set-up, and it was there in this episode so that it wouldn’t all be crammed into one place in the next one. Always have to take the grand scheme of pacing into consideration. It’s not really important to understand everything all the time if it all makes sense in the end.
I definitely am interested in the idea of Nene becoming a major character. I think she has a very important underlying purpose somewhere.
Well it’s nice to be able to draw some possible conclusions, otherwise the twists feel very deus ex machina. I think I understand the plot from Canaan and Maria’s side of things, but I feel lost when it comes to Alphard.
Alphie’s good at being a big question mark when it comes to motives, but from the way she was talking with the US veep and Cummings it sounded like she’s trying to set the Snakes up as some kind of underground “mercenary terrorist” operation – with the trump card of a rather unusual personnel asset in the Ua survivors and of course the virus itself, though one would assume at least the US military had a sample of the stuff by now too.
Or she may just have gone nihilist and is trying to stir shit up to have a nice big playground to run amuck in, with the above as the smokescreen for that; “Why so serious?”
I bet she drunk dials the VP all the time just to piss him off.
Supervillain trolls hard. Though I must say I have some trouble imagining her getting drunk in the first place…
For drawing possible conclusions, you should see my blog for some of the awesome theories this ep gave me
I have no idea what’s going on at all. I’m only watching because of the yuri. This episode made Alphard more of a mystery than ever. I never thought she was the type to waste bullets shooting at paper, but there she was empty a clip into the map. Alphard looking for the missing village makes sense, and I wonder if that’s where Liang Qi’s so-called “factory” is located.
btw Marina Ismail had a great plan. She got her country back without doing a damn thing. No one else has been able to accomplish so much with so little effort. The Ultimate Freeloader!
Just a note of interest: in the Minnan dialect, ‘Nene’ means b00bs.
LOL I didn’t even think of that… Not sure if that was the intent though (especially since they are not in Taiwan/SE China, and Nene isn’t particularly stacked).
Your random ass Canaan summary reminds me of Resident Evil 5 in the LOLplot category, except with 500% more yuri. All it needs is a comic book english villain, a former-dead-brunette-partner-turned-mind-controlled-blonde-enemy, and a cracked inventory system and the parallels will be complete!
Have they finally gotten rid of that by 5, or should “UI designed neither by nor for humans” be added to that list ?
I haven’t played any RE games b4 #4 (this is where I put up my flame shield), but in 5, an Egg takes the same space as a Rocket Launcher, and Body Armor takes precious space in the pockets of your Body Armor. Figure that one out.
…doesn’t sound very different from RE1, certainly. If the pocket-dimension storage boxes and horribad cumbersome aiming system are still in too, one runs the risk of starting to lose faith in the idea of evolution…
Random? I tell it exactly how I see it!
Random as in I don’t follow any shows you blog about but I like to read this blog for the lulz, so they’re pretty random to me.
The world must be a very interesting place to you.
I don’t know if I should feel bad about this, but I laughed at Hakkoo killing that kid with her bad karaoke voice. She should get singing lessons from the taxi driver.
Also have to agree about not knowing wtf the Snakes are doing at all. But I’ll take Maaya Sakamoto vs. capitalism, I guess.
Oh also, gotta give you props for working in a Nice Boat reference. Well played indeed.
Sorry about that, lesbians in anime make me rage and there’s nothing more I enjoy than turning them straight. :love:
Now with more SUGOI:
“And what do we do with heretics?”
“…build bridges out of them?”
Random person: Geez, Maria and Kotonoha, haven’t you gals heard of ultrasound!?
Hakkoo: Someone called me?
Random person: *Basugasubakuhatsu*
Canaan receives a postcard inviting her to a one-on-one karaoke session.
I figured you would prefer Hakkoo leaning over and whispering sweet nothings in Canaan’s ear.
Ooooh yes! Though I’m sure Maria and Alphie might have something to say about that.
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