Chapter 58: Lab's White Walls
Arakawa comes back down to the lake, where Kakuzawa explains that the various rectangular stones are memorials for members of his family, also revealing that her boss was his son. He then gets really Feed Me about himself and Lucy birthing a new race that will wipe out humanity, which Arakawa's amusingly not very impressed by. Then he tells her that this will only take a year, which gets her attention.
Back to the situation with Kurama, which instantly becomes pretty darn awkward. Nana begs him to say it's not true, while Kurama just confirms for Mariko that he tried to kill her, and killed her mother. I honestly can't tell how literal he's being; we might be in for another retcon here.
More flashbacks, this time to Kurama meeting Kakuzawa as they go to college together. They're both scientific geniuses who become good friends, and have spirited debates over evolutionary theories. Shortly before graduation, Kakuzawa reveals that his father is starting a company to research evolution, and he thinks Kurama could get a job there. But when he arrives, it strikes him as "a haunted mansion with white walls." So we're in for another Start of Darkness story then, but it's still up in the air how much it'll make sense with what we've seen given the issues that Lucy's backstory had.
Kurama's backstory needs to answer a few things: why he strangled his newborn daughter, how his wife really died, and how Mariko is that daughter, or maybe another one. Though while I'm waiting for that, it's also quite nice to see Arakawa again; I was starting to get worried again that Okamoto had forgotten about her.
edited 1st Feb '10 9:20:11 PM by Eegah
Chapter 59: Tests on the Living
The cops investigate a murder scene, with a guy's head in a bicycle basket. Nice. They raid the house and find what I'm already sure is a young diclonius, though it's pretty darn hard to tell who. She lures them in and kills a couple before the others pump her full of lead. Nice to see the cops aren't completely useless. Kurama keeps narrating that at this point they didn't know how the mutants were born, just that they all became homicidal maniacs upon reaching age three. Oh god, the Unfortunate Implications are just staggering here.
Kakuzawa's father made the lab we know so well to study the new species, and we see one experiment where increasingly large projectiles are fired at a very young girl until she can't deflect one. Kurama doesn't quite approve, unlike seemingly every other scientist. This adds a whole new Tearjerker to how Nana was raised. He complains about it to Kakuzawa, who gives the Nazi-esque response that the advancement of science trumps all moral issues. Though we know that's not why he's really doing it, so the line's a bit more intriguing than usual. We get a cameo by the soon to be dead clumsy secretary from chapter 1, a fairly gratuitous Continuity Nod.
Kurama goes home, where we meet his wife properly. She couldn't conceive a child normally so they tried in-vitro fertilization, and she informs him it worked, smiling for the first time in a while. That's pure Tearjerker knowing what's coming.
Our last scene has a teenage Lucy killing someone, so the gap of how she got to the lab seems like it will be filled in too. Awesome.
No real surprises yet, but much like the first couple chapters of Lucy's backstory the stage is now set pretty well to give proper explanations of the remaining holes in the series' past. And of course the in-universe Funny Aneurysm Moments are flying just as freely as last time. Though I really question every diclonius being instinctively murderous, as was hinted at before. This means that the people doing these experiments were actually right, which could lead to greater moral complexity if handled well, but I don't get that sense here. Instead it just seems like something that wasn't very well thought through.
edited 2nd Feb '10 5:10:08 PM by Eegah
Chapter 60: The Annunciation
That same young girl is still getting shot at, to see if her vectors have grown stronger. They haven't, and Kurama is now even sicker of this. Yeah, hold that thought.
The girl is brought food and let out of her cuffs, and immediately rips out a piece of the wall. I guess this kind of thing is the reason they developed the restraints we first saw Lucy in; really nice job fleshing things out here.
Kurama talks with Kakuzawa, suddenly having become the Only Sane Man as he suspects the girl is taking a dive in the experiments, and is stronger than she's let on. Kakuzawa blows him off, and we Gilligan Cut to the girl making her way down the hallway, pretty much a precursor to Lucy's Implacable Man act. She even rips off one of the guards' heads, and shoots it at the face of the scientist in charge of the bullet tests. Kickass. She then appears at the office and presses a vector on Kurama's head, but is gunned down by Kakuzawa with a heavy machine gun. So that's the favor Kurama owes him; another pretty good job patching that up. Also, if I recall correctly Kurama is now infected, which is how Mariko was born. Kurama realizes she probably wasn't going to hurt him, having seen his disapproval of the tests, and to make him feel even worse, a call comes in that his wife is in the hospital. How many Woobies can one series hold?
Kurama's wife miscarried, but he's very sweet about it as they know the in-vitro can work now. He continues narrating that six months later, Mariko was conceived.
With as many questions as this backstory has to answer, it's doing a great job so far. We already have a few more pieces of knowledge about events before the first chapter, and as far as I can tell it all fits perfectly. Though the big question is how it can resolve what we saw earlier of Kurama strangling his daughter, and saying flat out that he'd killed her. I simple "I lied" won't really cut it, since he had no reason to lie about it.
edited 2nd Feb '10 5:55:45 PM by Eegah
Chapter 61: Final Choice
With the origin of the mutations still a mystery, Kakuzawa gives the order to have any of the children in custody marked off as deaths from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. I can't wait to see this guy die horribly. And we finally get the source of the word diclonius, from the term for two-horned dinosaurs. Not sure why they waited so long to explain that one as natural exposition wasn't exactly a priority in the early chapters, but whatever.
Kurama's wife feels the baby kick, though it's too early for that to happen. The look on Kurama's face gives yet another Tearjerker, which I think I'll just assign to this whole storyline so it's not just overrun with them. Especially since she was just playing a joke on him while giddy from pregnancy hormones, though we already well know what's coming. Plus, he continues to be tortured by the thought of her reaction to finding out his job.
One of Kurama's co-workers fathers a diclonius, and we get a quite horrible little scene where Kurama gently talks him through the simple logic of the situation: they have to kill her now, or it'll just be harder later on when he's developed an attachment to her. Kurama also volunteers to commit the deed himself, so the father won't feel the guilt and can just be angry at him. To quote Shadow Warden, damn you, show.
It Got Worse once again, as the mother of one diclonius gives birth to two more, proving that the mutation is passed on genetically. Now even more guilt-stricken by the thought that he killed the only child his co-worker will ever have, he passes the Despair Event Horizon and eliminates any emotional attachments where his job is concerned.
Mariko is born, but Kurama's wife is discovered to have cervical cancer and a hysterectomy is done at the same time. What we already knew about how this ends up just wasn't enough, was it? He sees his horned baby, and gets one of the saddest Oh, Crap! faces ever. He flashes through everything he said about this same situation, but clearly it's far more difficult for him now. Once again, damn you, show.
I've never had children, and never even been in a serious relationship yet, but this is still unbelievably painful. Even if I wasn't already incredibly sympathetic toward Kurama, this would do it, as the man is just pounded on all sides unmercifully. All I can hope is that he's able to get some kind of happy ending with Nana after all this, but I kind of doubt it'll happen.
Chapter 62: Deeply Held Resentment
Kurama's wife is on a respirator after the blood she's lost, so while she's sleeping he goes to Mariko and starts choking her, as we saw before. Then things really get High Octane Nightmare Fuel as his wife walks in on it, blood dripping from between her legs in a huge trail behind her. She insists Mariko is good despite the horns, with tears pouring from her eyes and a huge grin on her face. Okay, who let Junji Ito write this part? She passes out after begging him not to hate Mariko, and Kurama agrees but it's too late for her. It reeks of a retcon just as much as I was fearing, but that was still an insanely emotional scene.
That brings us back to the present, and Kurama exposits that he's been keeping an eye on Mariko in the last five years, during which they've learned that only men can pass on the virus, and any children born that way will be female. They're all sterile except for Lucy, who I can only assume evolved naturally. The diclonius are a natural evolution from homo sapiens designed to overthrow them, which is why they have an instinct to kill people. It kind of makes sense, but I still find this development pretty distasteful. He points a gun at Mariko to finally finish the job, but when we come back from the long shot she's out of her wheelchair, having gotten unfastened somehow, the bullet having landed next to her. Mariko cries that she's been wanting to meet her parents her whole life, and this hits her own Berserk Button. She lifts herself into the air, and slices off the arm of the guy holding the detonator because he idiotically didn't just blow her up immediately. But somehow, I really don't feel much sympathy for her. I guess that whole torture session with Nana was too much of a Moral Event Horizon.
And with that all the rules are set in place for the rest of the story. These mutants have evolved to kill mankind, elevating everyone at the lab to Well-Intentioned Extremist though Kakuzawa himself still gets to be completely evil. Not to mention Nana's vector disabling seems to have a shorter effectiveness than was apparent the first time. And with his motives for strangling his daughter fully fleshed out, I'm finally comfortable in labeling Kurama an Anti-Villain. Now let's just see if he lives to enjoy it.
edited 3rd Feb '10 5:19:33 PM by Eegah
Chapter 63: Grin
A Wait What Whoa to start this one off, as Kakuzawa's secretary who's been lurking in the background this whole time is actually The Mole, and everything she did was so she could obtain a high level keycard. Have I mentioned how much I love the huge variety of characters in this thing? She enters a room that houses "the true form of the human butchering demon," but all the data on it has been erased. Kakuzawa's Magnificent Bastard status continues.
Back with Mariko, they need to hold out for three more minutes until the lack of a password makes the bombs explode. She goes straight for Nana, but then something awesome happens: the boardwalk splits in half between the two sides. The man responsible: Bandou and his rocket launcher. He gets his own likely defining Crowning Moment Of Awesome when he fires another at Mariko, and then shoots it after she stops it from hitting her. The split second Oh, Crap! Mariko gets is the perfect topper. But then Mariko gets her own CMOA, as she's still alive and uses her handler's belt to tie off his arm stump. She then gives a big speech about how she's okay with dying now that she's been outside, and I don't buy it at all. But the handler does, and tells her the password to stop the bombs from exploding. Even with a bit of Idiot Ball involved, I'd say she's moved up to Magnificent Bastard herself. And even though he's not going to survive long, she rips off his head. Be very afraid.
We have plenty of villains already, so I did actually suspect Mariko might die here. But instead she proves up to the role of ongoing villain and is probably the scariest of them all. The most powerful of anyone in the series, savvy enough to get out of a sticky situation, and instant sympathy points from looking like a crippled little girl; now the question becomes if Okamoto will be able to come up with a satisfying way for our heroes to beat her. I'm guessing it'll take a Heroic Sacrifice or two.
Wow, this scene lasted longer than I remembered. The generally agreed-upon "halfway point" is right after this scene.
Chapter 64: Blaze of Glory
Kakuzawa's secretary is in his office once again, but this time she's completely naked. And he fondles her mercilessly while demanding to know what she's up to. Definitely not wasting any time putting this one through hell after making her more of an identifiable character; thanks guys. She finally reveals that Kurama's left and probably intends to kill Mariko, but Kakuzawa hints that this was actually part of his plan too, and also that Kurama doesn't know about the bombs inside Mariko. As well, there's some big experiment that he told everyone would be in six months but is actually happening today, as he suspected someone in the staff was working against him. Yeah, I'll definitely give him Magnificent Bastard now even with the shocking Complete Monster stuff he just did.
Our heroes have run a bit away while Mariko was getting the password, and Kurama tells Nana to leave while he goes back to finish it. He also asks Bandou to go with her, so Bandou distracts her and whacks her unconcious with his gun. Heh, he's gotten a bit nicer but is still enough of a jerk about it to make it more believable. SAT flies in, but before they go Kurama puts his tie around Nana's neck. Aww.
Another really devastating sequence as Kurama watches the fight between SAT and Mariko while flashing back to his wife, and trying to kill her. But this onslaught which she easily throws off is actually just to distract her from a Navy missile. As it flies in, Kurama runs over and hugs Mariko, saying they can be together right as the missile lands. Nooooo!
Given that Mariko was able to survive a rocket literally blowing up in her face, I have my doubts that she'd be killed by this either, meaning Kurama's sacrifice would be completely pointless. Though I honestly don't know which I'd prefer; that tragic Shakepearian setup or the more happy ending where they do die together. In any case, I'm not seeing any way for Kurama to survive this, meaning that the most morally ambiguous villain is gone and we now have a comparitively traditional fight between good and evil. Though Nana and Lucy still throw enough of wrench into the setup to keep interest up.
edited 4th Feb '10 7:29:43 AM by Eegah
Chapter 65: Midway to Heaven
The Tearjerker continues as two missiles land, one right on top of Mariko. But surprise, they've actually managed to come up with a good way of having Kurama survive: they're dud practice missiles, and there's more to this plan than just killing Mariko.
Nana wakes up, and when Bandou tells her what's going on she runs right back to the battle scene. She gets a Tearjerker of her own as she digs through the missile debris looking for Kurama, suddenly no longer caring that she's only wearing a jacket.
Kouta finally decides to go look for Nana, and Nyu insists on coming too as she can't eat until Nana comes back. Looks like they won't miss out on yet another fight after all.
Kurama and Mariko have a little existential near-death scene that still doesn't do much for me in making Mariko more sympathetic, but then Nana finds Kurama and he wakes up. She says Mariko is dead, but of course the girl who survived a point-blank rocket explosion isn't going to be taken out by a dud missile. Nana wonders why she didn't sense anything, and then...oh, this is just too good. Mariko's developed an innocent split personality just like Lucy, named Myu. We've got to get these two together.
Awesome, awesome twist for Mariko, which should make the inevitable showdown between her and Lucy all the more fun. And if this was actually Kakuzawa's plan, I can't wait to see what purpose it serves. Though I do hope we get some explanation for her being Made of Iron; she doesn't have a scratch on her after everything she's just been through in distinct contrast to every other diclonius we've seen. And of course, Kouta's on his way right now which promises to make things even more complicated as we head deeper into the second half.
edited 4th Feb '10 8:59:40 AM by Eegah
Chapter 66: Humanity's Fall
Kakuzawa brings Arakawa to a room deep underground, so she can oversee the experiment that will destroy humanity. Arakawa's Jumping Off the Slippery Slope, as she eagerly agrees to help out. They enter the same room that his secretary was in before, and she goes a bit Oh, Crap! as she sees something being pulled out of the floor. But we'll have to wait on that.
Myu still recognizes Kurama as her father, and we get a brief shot of the crushed detonator, meaning Mariko's going to be an even bigger problem when she comes back. Nana explains how the same thing happened with Lucy, but Kurama only sees that he can kill her now, very movingly imagining what she would be like with a normal upbringing. Nana destroys his gun, and the Tearjerker continues as they discuss whether he can really do it, especially given Nana's inability to kill Lucy when she's Nyu. She gets Kurama to accept that Myu is a good person, but then Kakuzawa's secretary arrives in a helicopter to tell them about the plan that's been moved to today.
That secret room in the lab is now revealed to contain a concentrated sample of the virus, which Kakuzawa plans to detonate above Tokyo. This will infect the entire world in less than a year, and no one will know about it until it's too late. Today a rocket launch to repair a weather sattelite has been rigged for this to happen, in just a few minutes. Arakawa realizes just what she's gotten involved in, but the most she can probably hope for now is Redemption Equals Death.
Kakuzawa's plan fully lives up to the buildup, though it's still unclear how Nana being released is part of it. Kurama's continued character development also keeps things nicely emotionally grounded even while we're facing The End of the World as We Know It. Humanity really seems completely screwed right now, though I don't think the series would quite go that far, so I've got no idea where this is going.
Chapter 67: Backup Measure
More with Kakuzawa, simply setting up that there's ten minutes until the virus is launched.
Kouta sees the smoke from the battle site, but can't get past the roadblocks. But Nyu just shouts that Nana is there and jumps over the barricade; now we're really getting somewhere.
The secretary (can we get a name for her too now, please?) apologizes as her whole plan of seducing Kakuzawa to stop the launch was for nothing, and now there's nothing they can do about it. However, he still needs Lucy to continue making "pure" mutants or they'll die out in a generation, so if they can keep Kakuzawa from her he'll have to stop his own plan. I really like it. Kurama asks Nana where she is, but Nana's put in a tough spot as telling him will put Kouta and the others in harm's way. But she doesn't have to worry about it long, as Nyu arrives. Kurama gets the soldiers to hold her down, and tells the secretary to call Kakuzawa. But it's all a Hope Spot as the missile launches, and detonates. Well. Fu-
All right, I was wrong. Though there's still a bit of hope of coming up with some kind of cure to the mutation (it is called a virus even by Kakuzawa, after all). I'm guessing Arakawa will be a big help there, given how horrified she appeared when she found out what the plan really was. And now that all our heroes are finally about to meet up, they might be able to take the fight to Kakuzawa.
edited 4th Feb '10 12:24:38 PM by Eegah
Chapter 68: The Heart and the Uterus
Kurama has a bit of a Heroic BSoD watching the virus spread, but then notices Myu and snaps out of it. Now the one thing left for him is to kill Lucy and deny a future for either species, a bit petty but hey, I'd probably do it. Nyu bites a soldier's fingers and breaks free, and tells Nana to run back to the inn. And with that she gets a bullet through her heart...but it comes right back out of the wound, Lucy having woken up and stopped it at the very last instant. Nana throws herself in front of Kurama and tells him to run, and it seems that Myu also snaps back to being Mariko. Bring on the Mêlée à Trois!
An unusually short chapter, though it's better this way than throwing in filler like the series usually does. It functions entirely as setup, but the promise of a three-way fight between Lucy, Nana, and Mariko is incredibly enticing so I'm glad the chapters dealing with it won't have to worry about including that setup.
Chapter 69: Isolation
Lucy prepares to attack Nana, but then Mariko steps in. Seems her recent experience has put her through a Heel–Face Turn, or at least made her more inclined to protect her "family." She promises not to do any more bad things if Kurama doesn't kill her, though given her little trick before I'm still not buying it. I'm sure there's some deeper plan behind this, maybe even tying into Kakuzawa's plan, which would be why she was even released. Whatever the case, she kicks the everloving crap out of Lucy, in very abstract panels that suggest so much painful stuff is happening that even a snapshot view won't catch it. But then the bomb detonator gives out a warning signal, as even cracked in half it still seems to be working. And it also happens to be right next to where Lucy's just been thrown. With three minutes to get the detonator and put the code in, the secretary picks up a pipe to distract Lucy. She also gets a name, Shirakawa, though I doubt I'll be able to make use of it for much longer. Lucy catches on and throws the detonator into the river, but Mariko catches it with a few vectors. Except that distraction allows Lucy to throw her in the air and slice her legs off; nice to see Okamoto still hasn't lost his touch in showing differently powered people doing anything to hold onto the advantage in a fight.
Mariko going through a Nana Special (tm) does come a bit closer to giving me sympathy for her, but I'm still suspicious there's some evil long term goal to all this. Good to see the detonator survived too, as it adds a great new element to the fight and is pretty much the only thing that could give the upper hand to anyone who goes against her. Though that makes the panel highlighting it's being broken a very gratuitous red herring, which I don't really care for.
edited 4th Feb '10 2:17:37 PM by Eegah
Chapter 70: Heartbreak
Not only did Lucy do everything we saw last time, but she's also picked up on Nana's vector disabling trick. Kurama steps up and offers to let her kill him if she leaves Mariko alone, telling Shirakawa he trusts her to continue the fight. Nana says she'll fight, but Kurama declines. Meanwhile, Shirakawa is berating herself for not destroying the virus when she had the chance, just because of a strange feeling that came over her once she saw the data had been erased. Yeah, that's definitely going to need an explanation. Though she does make a pretense of hugging Kurama, so she can tell him about the detonator. And we find that she really does love him (ouch, Strangled by the Red String a bit there), enough to start an Indy Ploy as she approaches Lucy and asks for the detonator. Lucy hands it over, but it turns out she's already disassembled it and then kills Shirakawa for good measure. Well, at least it was a brief out of nowhere romance. Lucy kills all the SAT members (so that Red Shirt Army quip of mine finally pays off!) before turning to Kurama, but then Mariko grabs her (with her one remaining limb, remember) and has her own Tearjerker even with my suspecting it's fake, as she talks about how she thought she hated her father her whole life, but then screams that she loves him. I'm calling for her to get a nice Crowning Moment Of Awesome from this in the next chapter.
Somehow, the story's completely turned on its head with Lucy as the villain and Mariko as her victim. Not sure how that happened, but it still shows some incredible writing skill, up to par with most of the rest of this series. The continual seesawing of who has the upper hand is even better with so many participants, and it also gets more and more emotional as it goes on with the bonds that has developed between them. This really feels like it could be the climax of the whole story, which probably means something even better is going to close this thing out.
Chapter 71: Wish Upon Tomorrow
Time for another Wait What Whoa: Lucy simply rips off Mariko's head and throws it in the ocean. No CMOA, no big plan behind her Heel–Face Turn (at least none we'll find out about), just Shoot the Shaggy Dog regarding not only her but everything she was connected to in Kakuzawa's plan. I'm really not sure how I feel about that. Ah, but then on the next page she does at least pull off a Dying Moment of Awesome, as her body explodes and turns Lucy back into Nyu. And her horns were broken off in the explosion, which Kurama helpfully exposits means that she's Nyu for good. But he picks up a gun, still wanting to kill her to stop the next generation of diclonius. Nana begs him not to, promising to keep watch over her in another Tearjerker speech. As a helicopter comes to take Kurama back in, he parts with Nana again, who says she doesn't want to be his daughter anymore as she'd be replacing the one who deserves that title. But then Mood Whiplash as she says she'll consider herself his wife instead, and says he can come see her anytime. And then reverse Mood Whiplash, as after they leave, Kurama is overcome by all his failings and turns the gun on himself. How much emotion do you expect me to take?
Nana and Nyu meet Kouta on their way back, and Nana notes that he unusually doesn't ask anything about what happened. At home they have a happy domestic scene of Nana and Nyu having a bath together, then everyone having dinner, all while Nana continues to be haunted by the fight. She starts crying over the idea that Mariko never got to experience happiness like she has, for yet another Tearjerker.
At the lab Kakuzawa tells Arakawa that the next step in the plan should be obvious just from her being at the underground lake. Turns out the lake is made of amniotic fluid (Squick) and inside is some huge thing that Kakuzawa calls the embryo of a god. A new High Octane Nightmare Fuel character after Mariko's gone, I guess.
So, I guess this is the chapter people were talking about being the series' real halfway point, like L's death in Death Note. And until that last scene it really does feel like it could be an ending, plus we've lost a couple very strong characters so I unfortunately have some doubts that the remaining chapters can be as strong. Thankfully, there's still lots of potential in the ones we still have to keep me reading.
edited 4th Feb '10 5:03:22 PM by Eegah
Yup, this is halfway. (Or maybe it's shortly into the next chapter; I forget. >_>)
Chapter 72: Anna
Nice What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic? with a quote from Genesis as Kakuzawa watches the lake. He speechifies some more about all the same stuff as before, until we find out the creature in the lake is named Anna. And she has some seriously freaky Mismatched Eyes at different...orientations is the best word I can think of, as a word for this kind of thing should not need to exist.
Nana wakes up from a nightmare where she relives parting from Kurama, which we find out has been happening for a while now. There's been another Time Skip and it's now winter, which is naturally a completely new concept to Nana. Wanta's sitting on Mayu's lap at the dining table; very endearing to me as a dog person. And it seems this chapter was designed to try to hook new readers, as Nana goes through a character rundown of everyone at the inn, listing their personalities and relationships with each other. I've never understood this kind of thing; why would someone who's never read the series before even pick up a volume this far into it? Though we do get some new tidbits: Nozomi is now living full time at the inn and has opened up about her incontinence, and Nyu has gained a sizable vocabulary. They also just happen to have a conversation about Nyu's arrival, revealing that she doesn't remember it and still has the occasional outburst of "nyu" when she's surprised. Some more filler until Nozomi talks about how her practice exam scores are excellent, but she's worried she'll wet herself in the real thing.
Nyu finds a baby bird outside and gets permission from Kouta to raise it, after he makes sure she understands everything involved. I imagine the shippers weren't too happy at this point, with Kouta pretty much becoming Nyu's father. Nana keeps narrating that she can't quite enjoy this peaceful life, as she knows she'll have to kill Nyu if Kakuzawa ever comes for her. We have our new main plot!
A woman has an ultrasound, revealing horns on the fetus. Very impressive artwork on the ultrasound image; it truly looks photo-realistic.
Kakuzawa goes to the pond and asks Anna if she has a grudge against him. No idea what that's about. Someone else, whose face we very noticably don't get a good look at, tells him that the virus' effects are beginning to take shape. He asks Kakuzawa if he thinks it was worth sacrificing his daughter. Wait, so is that daughter Anna? That's a new one even for this series. As a giant arm comes out of the pond, we flash back once again to a young Kakuzawa who's disappointed that his daughter is getting horrible grades unlike her brothers. So he has another son out there somewhere too? We've officially reached Loads And Loads Of Characters here, and it's a bit too late in the story to be doing that. She keeps trying to live up to him, but finally he talks her into having an operation to make her "superior." There's a Tearjerker and Nightmare Fuel combined as she's put into an MRI type machine and suddenly decides she doesn't want the operation, but then we're back to the present. Now giant Anna climbs out of the pond as Kakuzawa describes her again as a goddess.
Once Kakuzawa crosses the Moral Event Horizon, he just doesn't stop, does he? And I'm very curious who that other guy is; my guess right now is Bandou as The Mole trying to stop him. If that is the case, I'm sure he'll have more luck. This is an unusually long chapter with a high amount of filler, but it does set up the new status quo before it's inevitably ripped to shreds, which is nice as we get a real sense of what these people are losing before the heavier stuff. Though Nozomi still seems kind of superfluous even if she did provide the series' title; hopefully her purpose in the story will be revealed soon.
edited 4th Feb '10 7:07:05 PM by Eegah
Okay, really not in a good mood here. This next chapter's another unusually long one, and I was halfway through it (ie, I'd gone the length of a regular chapter) when my computer contracted a very nasty virus and I had to lose the recap so far. After five straight hours of purging everything that was infected, I'm ready to try again and will do my best to recreate my original comments.
Chapter 73: What Are You Searching For?
Anna rises out of the lake, and we see that those things from before are indeed her eyes, with one horizontal and one vertical. That's just incredibly disturbing for reasons I can't quite articulate. Kakuzawa exposits to the mystery man (who turns out to be an entirely new character, by the way, so that whole buildup to seeing his face was pretty much pointless) that she was made so large to increase her brainpower. Ugh, major Did Not Do The Research there, as the idea that brain size is related to intelligence has been discredited for a long time. But that's what we're going with, so Anna has now been made so intelligent she's pretty much clairvoyant, and informs her father that it's possible for his plan to succeed. The tradeoff is that she's stuck in that pool by her own brain weight; yeah, I can see where the grudge might come from now. Then a pretty funny bit from Arakawa, as she reminds Kakuzawa she's still here, and it's pretty uncomfortable in this place so could he, you know, get around to telling her why he called her here? Kakuzawa assigns her and the new guy to find Lucy, and the new guy turns out to be a Smug Snake who bets that Arakawa become his sex slave if he finds her first. Well, I guess with the variety of villain characters one of these had to show up at some point. Arakawa agrees, if he'll cut off his own penis if he loses. Now things are getting interesting with her!
Brief Fanservice bit of Yuka struggling to get her underwear on, when Nyu starts to slip. But it's a false alarm...well, sort of, as she's actually getting an overwhelming urge to grab Yuka's breasts. Crowning Moment Of Funny as she shuts her eyes to stop looking at them, but then finds herself unconciously doing it, when we cut to our heroes heading out to school, Kouta none the wiser. Nana's left behind with Nyu's bird, but quickly gets bored and decides to look for Kurama. She's still calling him "Papa" despite her change in the view of their relationship, which is slightly creepy.
We catch up with Bandou, who's now living in a shanty on the beach. Heh. Mayu's now bringing him food, though she's confident enough to screw with him about it being Wanta's leftovers. Turns out she knows full well he still wants revenge on Lucy, which is what's keeping him in these uncomfortable circumstances, so she's helping him as pennance for not telling him where she is. I really like this development between them; it makes them believably closer without compromising either character. And hey, Kurama's in the shanty too. Bandou saved him from killing himself, an explanation I love as it means that sound effect of the gun being fired wasn't a cheat at all, and the scene doesn't lose any emotional resonance in retrospect.
Arakawa's back in her old job, where she hopes to find Kouta. She also knows about a secret compartmet in Kakuzawa Jr.'s desk, which contains a vial of some kind of dark liquid. She gets her own negative-shaded closeup of evil as she says the god of the new world (oh god, not that again) will actually be her. Wow, we're starting to enter Thirty Xanatos Pileup territory now; I can't wait to see how this develops.
As our heroes walk into school, Kouta just happens to exposit that Nana came with them once, but just found it boring. Okamoto's good at a lot of things, but exposition isn't one of them. They note an abandoned department store nearby that's been closed since a massacre inside. Uh, okay. I'm sure it'll be important later but it really seems out of the blue right now. Up above them, Arakawa is starting to lose hope of finding Kouta since she didn't have any kind of plan besides watching out the window. Back to Kouta and the gang, and bizarrely Kakuzawa Jr.'s class is still just listed as cancelled after all these months. This place's scheduling must be modeled after Sunnydale High. This gets Kouta thinking that they should try to avoid Arakawa to not bring attention to Nyu, but of course this is right as they pass by each other. That happens a lot in this series.
Arakawa having her own plan is quite a good twist, and hopefully it'll be given proper time to develop, unlike the material with Mariko which was cut short much sooner than it could have been used well. Also good to see Nyu still hasn't quite gotten over some of her more eccentric behavior, which not only provides good comic relief but adds quite an element of risk if she ever gets those urges in public. Plus, I always find it fun to gradually catch up with various characters after a Time Skip; those kind of scenes were one of my favorite parts of Twentieth Century Boys and it works well here too.
edited 5th Feb '10 8:02:06 PM by Eegah
Chapter 74: God of Death
Kouta distracts Arakawa by crassly commenting on her breasts (using the word nyu if I recall correctly), then gets the others to run. But Arakawa quickly grabs on to Nyu; well, that was exciting. Though thanks to Nyu's horns being gone she doesn't realize she's effectively won the bet, so she just tries to intimidate them with how dangerous the diclonius are. Though she's technically telling the truth, adding a nice extra irony to the scene. Then Kouta laughs that she'd be dead already if that were true, and Arakawa notices the remains of Nyu's horns. This gives our heroes a better distraction, and they skedaddle. Interesting place to take Arakawa; she knows just what she wants but can't get close to it. Kouta decides that Nyu should stay at the inn for a while, but realizes things will be even worse if she's found there. Finally, real involvement in the story from him.
The new Smug Snake villain (NAME!) is assigned a new diclonius to do something ominious with, number 28. But first he wants to have some fun, and takes out a huge Trigun type crossbow gun. Still not really feeling this guy at all.
A weird little scene of Bandou picking up litter on the beach while Mayu grabs Wanta and takes him home. That's it. Possibly the most obvious piece of filler yet.
Smug Snake is right in the neighborhood, and has brought along a radar device that somehow tells him where Lucy is. Whatever, let's just get to the fight.
Inside the inn, Nana's despairing of finding Kurama, and Mayu offers to help her. She's overjoyed in another Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming as they bond over their similarly crappy lives. That's when Smug Snake arrives outside and does...something that puts Nana in a blank space, with an Eldritch Abomination that begs her to kill it and run. Mayu snaps her out of it but then lets Smug Snake in. He's surprised to find just Nana, so it seems that radar actually picks up any diclonius, which makes a lot more sense. But for now he just reveals the horrific And I Must Scream fate of 28; her legs were cut off for her to fit into a case he wears on his back and she's been given an injection to keep her constantly in pain, all so he can use the diclonius instinctive locating system to find Lucy. Yeah, this guy just made the jump to Complete Monster. He then kills her as useless, and Nana realizes this was the reason for her vision. Nana's now gotten her Berserk Button pushed again, but he pulls out his crossbow and reveals it fires heavy spiked balls that also inject a painful neurotoxin. Nana's down for the count, so he turns his attention to Mayu.
Well, I'm definitely feeling something for this new guy now, in the sense of wanting him to die as painfully as possible. Rather shocking for him to come out of nowhere like this, even with the series being as dark as it's been before now. Though this also means that Kouta, Yuka, and the others at the inn are now good and involved in everything else that's going on, and it's about freaking time.
Chapter 75: Animal Scent
Damn, all the chapters are suddenly twice as long as normal. What's the deal? The newly renamed Complete Monster now gets to literally Kick the Dog when Wanta attacks him, hard enough that he spits up blood. He then tells Mayu to take her clothes off, which naturally gets her flashing back to her stepfather, but the expected Crowning Moment Of Awesome doesn't come as Mayu simply screams on the floor. Then another Audience Sucker Punch as Nana dredges up the strength to stand again, only to get another spiked ball in her gut. This lets Mayu get away, where Bandou's offer to her becomes a long-term Chekhov's Gun after all as she uses the number he gave her. Or not as Complete Monster stomps the phone cord out of the wall before she can give her location. Things go right to Tearjerker High Octane Nightmare Fuel from there as he rips Mayu's shirt open and pauses to savor her. Mayu gets a bit of a Crowning Moment Of Awesome when she pulls the phone down onto his head and breaks his nose with a kick, but it's only delaying things a bit and now he's good and pissed off. Then, BANDOU! Definite Crowning Moment Of Awesome for him with a Dynamic Entry flying kick to the guy's face. After pausing to explain that Mayu told him about the inn once on the beach, he turns back to Complete Monster and the awesome beatdown continues...until he gets to his crossbow and hits Bandou in the gut. After a bit of gloating about how the spikes mean the ball can't be gripped hard enough to pull it out, Bandou reveals a Disability Superpower of his own: mechanical arm equals no pain! And with that he manages to top his previous CMOA by shoving the ball up Complete Monster's ass! Unfortunately, Mayu stops him from killing the guy so he can help Nana, giving him time to escape. Well, at least he's in a hell of a lot of pain.
Bandou is able to remove both balls from Nana, and gives Mayu instructions on taking care of her while he goes off to bury 28. Wanta's also fine, thankfully. But right then is when the others get home, and we're treated to quite a few looks of recognition. Awkward.
It may have taken a scene of Even Evil Has Standards, but getting me to root whoeheartedly for someone like Bandou is still quite a feat, one I've only seen once before to this extent with Jaime Lannister from A Song Of Ice And Fire. And while I still wish this new guy would get a name, I'm fine with his survival for now just because it's so damn satisfying to see him get the crap beaten out of him. Just like Bandou's early fights, in fact. Cosmic.
edited 6th Feb '10 12:31:22 PM by Eegah
Chapter 76: An Unachievable Retribution
After a bit of confusion all around, Bandou whips out his gun and we cut away for a sound effect. Sorry, you already spent that nickel and there's no way I'm getting fooled by it again. And yep, Nana wakes up having sensed that Lucy's back in charge. Lucy deflects the shot so it grazes her face, and quickly takes in what's going on but just smiles at Kouta. Aw. Bandou tells Kouta why he's there, which seems to reach into his past with Lucy once again. Okay Okamoto, you really need to shit or get off the pot with that. Lucy agrees to fight somewhere else so the others won't be involved, but just before he goes Bandou realizes that Mayu knew where she was this whole time, so their relationship's pretty much done too. He also gets to punch Kouta one more time for refusing to accept this; that kid really is a Determinator when he wants to be, but kind of a stupid one.
Complete Monster has gone to the beach, where he's Hoist by His Own Petard as he can't pull his own ball out of his ass. Double entendre completely intentional, by the way. This also happens to be where Bandou and Lucy choose to have their fight, which remarkably doesn't seem contrived at all since it's where they first met.
Kouta wakes up and sees all the blood in the inn for the first time. There goes his free home, I guess. Nana's also gone, and Kouta angrily laments how he wasn't able to do anything. Oh, don't you dare become Shinji Ikari on me now.
Nana's out in town, having realized that this kind of thing will keep happening as long as she lives with the others. This leads into a major Tearjerker as she slams her head into a wall until she bleeds, trying to give herself an innocent split personality so she can keep her new family.
On the beach, Bandou's Crazy-Prepared explanation of his cleaning it during the fight with Nana becomes a Brick Joke, as he's been keeping it clean and now that will finally pay off. He also demonstrates his heavier bullets by shooting her arm, but as we've seen before Lucy's a bit stronger than the rest. And now that she knows how heavy the bullets are, she can deflect them just fine. But it seems Bandou's Crazy Prepared went even further than that, and he's buried a flash bang grenade that he now shoots, light being the one thing Lucy has no defense against. And while she's distracted he hits her with a tear gas grenade, both of them being the reason he's been wearing those sunglasses this whole time. Bandou's become a definite master of the Batman Gambit and gets one more Crowning Moment Of Awesome for this, and even more amazing is that I'm still rooting for him. How the hell did that happen? But then Complete Monster has to ruin it by throwing himself in front of Lucy, offering to be her eyes. Lucy decides to Take a Third Option and throws his head at Bandou, explaining that he didn't quite think things through and she was only slightly affected by the tear gas thanks to closing her eyes against the light. And with that she reaches into his brain; guess I'll have to take back that CMOA. First time I've had to do that.
I assume these longer chapters were a demand of the publisher, but Okamoto's using them well to spread both character scenes and fights through a single chapter rather than devoting each chapter to one or the other. Bandou and Lucy's rematch has been building for almost the whole series up to this point, and it's definitely not a disappointment with both of them having honed up on Xanatos Speed Chess. And I'm even fine with Complete Monster's death; we have a ton of better characters and his purpose was served in getting Bandou and Lucy together; Arakawa can easily fill in for any other plot purpose he might have had.
edited 6th Feb '10 3:51:41 PM by Eegah
Chapter 77: Can Life Merely Be Despair
Mayu looks for Nana at the gazebo, still feeling bad about Bandou. Then there's kind of a weird moment where she seems to read Wanta's mind that they should go to the beach. Um, okay.
After Bandou's Big Damn Heroes back at the inn, this time Nana returns the favor, with some ball on a string that I guess is a piece of trash he somehow didn't get around to. She tells Bandou she's still weak and can barely use her vectors, but he brushes her off as everything he's done has been for this rematch and he doesn't need them anymore. Way to avoid Spikeification once he started getting more developed. He rushes back to the fight, dodging Lucy's vectors much to Nana's astonishment before one slices his gun up...but then he brings out the crossbow and fires a ball into Lucy's gut. A couple more blows and Lucy's down for the count, but we get inoppurtune arrival number...385 I'd say as this is when Mayu shows up. Bandou doesn't really care about her seeing him like this, but it still distracts him enough that Lucy rips his other arm off, the ball having been used before and lost all its poison. Mayu naturally doesn't react too well, and we get what looks quite disturbingly like Lucy ripping her in half. It's another long shot so I'm sure there'll be some twist to it, but it's still pretty startling.
We continue to get our ducks in a row with more people showing up on the beach. I'm sure Kouta and Yuka can't be far behind, and then the party can really get started. And I also can't shake the suspicion that all this is somehow playing right into Kakuzawa's plan, though maybe I'm giving Okamoto a bit too much credit in being able to tie his myriad subplots together like that. But whatever, it's still a blast to see this personal climax for Bandou take such a turn, before we get to the actual climax of the whole story where Kakuzawa is hopefully taken down.
Chapter 78: Boy Meets Girl
Oh god, please don't do this. Okay, what we have here is Bandou narrating his outlook on life, a sure way to put someone through Badass Decay if it's not handled properly. Fortunately it doesn't last long, and we find out it was actually him who Lucy cut in half, and he's surprised that Nana and Mayu are crying about it. He jumped in front of Mayu and took a shot at Lucy, and now he has no idea why he did it. Mayu tells him that his shot killed Lucy, but it's a lie so he'll die happy. Quite unexpectedly, this turns into another Tearjerker as Bandou jokes that Mayu really owes him for this one, and realizes the reason he saved her was that he wanted just one person in the world to be sorry he was gone. Mayu completely falls apart when he actually goes, and Nana has to tell her to pull it together and leave before the police show up. She also swears to kill Lucy the next time they meet, even if she's Nyu. Once again, not a piece of character development I wanted, but one that makes perfect sense and is more true to the character.
Kurama finds Bandou's body, while Lucy rests in the woods and uses a vector to get the ball out. The sun comes up, and the Tearjerker continues as Mayu has returned to find Bandou's body gone, but she's taken up his cleaning of the beach.
So I was wrong about Kouta and Yuka's involvement, but they're still in a place where they can't avoid getting involved so it's only a matter of time. And back when we first met Bandou, I could never imagine his death being this emotional. That's some good development, and I'm quite sad that it's over. At least Kurama's still around to carry on the Anti-Villain role; it would have been even worse if he'd died.
edited 6th Feb '10 5:50:13 PM by Eegah
Chapter 79: Helpless
Anna tells Kakuzawa that the time has come for his plan to reach its final stage. He calls someone called Nousou; how many villains does Okamoto think is enough?
Some scientists discuss another doctor who only eats candy. Hmm, fancy that. He comes in, and would be a major cause for Viewer Gender Confusion if the others hadn't already called him "he." They discuss their work for a bit, which turns out to have something to do with the spinal cords of dead diclonius. Oh yeah, didn't take long to find this guy squicky.
Kouta's moping a bit over Nyu's disappearance, and a talk with Yuka reveals Nana and Mayu haven't come back either. We get a pretty sad look of just the two of them sitting at the table together; hey, you know what would make this better? Kicking some Mad Scientist ass!
Nyu wakes up in the woods, and tries to figure out what's going on and why she has a huge wound in her belly. Another really sad bit where she starts crying over having lost everyone. They've got to get back together sometime, right?
Nana and Mayu hang out in the gazebo, where Nana still refuses to go back and cries about how Bandou would still be alive if she hadn't been at the inn. Mayu asks what's been going on, and Nana finally tells her the whole story. Nyu happens to come up and overhear them as Nana repeats her vow to kill either Lucy or Nyu, and runs off. And she missed the bit about Nana not wanting to go back to the inn, so now she thinks she can't go back either. They really are pouring on the Tearjerker in this section of the series.
Turns out Nousou is the candy-eating doctor, who shows Kakuzawa four homegrown diclonius, the only survivors out of thousands of experiments. This should make the climax a bit more heartwrenching too.
As the climax gets closer, status quo is thrown to the winds with our heroes scattered or dead, and the villains progressing with their plans perfectly. I'm starting to think the series will actually end with Kakuzawa winning, though I desperately hope that's not the case. But either way the series is now mercilessly pouring on the sadness, quite a shock after it had so much well-integrated comedy material early on. And yet it still feels like a natural progression, so well done Okamoto.
Chapter 57: Papa for Two
Kakuzawa gets a phone call, and is surprised by what he hears. He goes a bit philosophical about humans only having two hands, so I think this is a flashback to him hearing about Kurama saving Nana. Though he earlier claimed he'd planned for that, so that might not be right.
We're back at Mariko yanking Nana into the air for the final blow, where she makes the mistake of saying she'll kill Kurama next. This hits Nana's Berserk Button but good, and she shoots her arm at Mariko so hard that she's thrown out of her chair. Next thing we see, she's standing next to Mariko, her nudity making her look like a classical Greek avenging hero statue. Definite Crowning Moment Of Awesome again. She makes an irony-dripping statement that their fathers are nothing alike. Damn, that honestly does not seem contrived at all. Kudos. Then Nana does the same trick that she performed on Lucy before and reaches inside Mariko's head to disable her vectors. That's when Kurama arrives, which I guess is what that first scene was really about. This should definitely be good. Nana turns her back on Mariko to run to him, then a Wait What Whoa two page spread of her head flying off, but once again it didn't really happen. Okay, once was really enough for that gag. Kurama recognizes Mariko, who calls him her father. Oh, Crap!.
I don't usually care for these kinds of "Hulk moments" where someone's immediately able to kick all kinds of ass after a certain statement pisses them off. However, this one really works because Nana's mind truly has fractured enough to send her over the Despair Event Horizon, before the threat to Kurama crystalizes her will enough for her to take back the upper hand. And the use of Kurama as the father to both of them, though neither of them know it, promises some especially good dramatic material soon.
edited 1st Feb '10 7:19:43 PM by Eegah