Beware of unmarked spoilers!
Fridge Brilliance
- Majima's scheme in Episode 10 works so well because he knows the Tokyo police department has been lax for 10 years. Due to the Lycoris agents stopping violent crimes before they break out, the police don't know how to deal with potentially violent scenarios. This is shown in brutal fashion when a civilian picks up a handgun out of curiosity and an officer immediately panics and shoots him dead when said civilian accidentally points it in his direction.
- Shinji gets a new artificial heart for Chisato, but plans to blackmail her to kill. One might think she or someone else could just try to steal it from him, right? Wrong. He has the heart implanted into his chest, so she can't get it unless he dies.
- Why are Lycoris the main group we see active on the streets instead of LilyBell? Simple, loitering teenage girls would be seen as less threatening than guys, who are more likely to be assumed to be up to no good. Its not just the school uniforms that are part of the Lycoris's 'urban camo', but being a girl as well.
- Among the many horrible reasons to take in Lycoris as young children is the fact that in Japan, you can adopt children only up to the age of six. Once they are that old, they can't be adopted until their adult years, a practice used to keep family businesses owned by said family over many generations. Direct Attack is, on top of raising child soldiers, operating within Japan's adoption systems.
Fridge Horror
- For the series as a whole, DA has been covering up terrorist incidents in Tokyo for ten years, as well as the existence of the Lycoris agents. But what happens to any witnesses? Are they made to disappear as well?
- Episode 11 has Majima tell the people of Tokyo that 3,000 people a year go missing in the city. He then implies that a lot of them are due to Lycoris assassinations, whether due to being criminals or witnesses. So yes, that is the implication.
- He also tells the people how to identify Lycoris agents: by their uniforms. But what about normal schoolgirls who might be wearing something similar? They're likely to be victimized in a case of Mistaken Identity.
- And that's just the numbers for Tokyo. We know there are Lycoris in other cities like Kyoto. So who knows how many people are vanished every year in Japan by the Lycoris.
- To add onto the 3,000 people bit a year in Tokyo bit on top of the other cities bit, the Lycoris have been active for not just years, but decades. Robota can point their origins to at least the Meiji period. Meaning that they've been doing so for a very long time. The amount of people they've killed must be staggering.
- If Lycoris and its potential predecessors have been around since the Meiji Period if not earlier, there's a high chance they would've worked closely with the Kempeitei, Imperial Japan's Secret Police, during World War II to assist in stamping out internal dissent.
- The first episode shows that the Lycoris agents are combating terrorist threats on practically a daily basis. This creates a disturbing implication about the state of the world (not just Tokyo or Japan) if secret police Tyke Bomb girls need to kill people with such regularity.
- Robota also uses the term 'hired terrorist', which implies that someone out there is paying people to try and attack Japan, so clearly something's going on somewhere.
- In the end of Episode 2, upon seeing that Kurumi was hiding in the suitcase, one realizes that she could have died due to Takina using it as a shield. If those AKM-Ss had penetrated the suitcase, Kurumi would've been killed instantly.
- Dr. Kitamura is visibly absent when Himegama tampers with Chisato's heart in Episode 8. Considering she grew suspicious of her "new hire", it's entirely possible Himegawa did something to her that made her not aware of the specifics until after the fact.
- In Episode 9's flashback, Mika tells Shinji that Lycoris agents are only operational until they are 18 years old. What happens to them then?
- Seeing a police officer shoot a man dead in Episode 10 just because said man was curious over a gun he found is horrifying on several levels. That man had no ill intent, but because the officer didn't know what to do in a potentially hostile scenario, he immediately panicked and shot the civilian dead because he was holding a gun and accidentally pointed it in his direction. This also goes to show the downside of the Lycoris agents intercepting violent criminals: the police don't get exposure to the very thing they're supposed to protect against, resulting in them easily panicking at the sight of civilians with firearms and making the citizens they're supposed to protect distrustful of them even further.
- This also explains how Majima and his crew were able to massacre a police station in Episode 7: the police were too inexperienced with violent situations to put up any sort of resistance.
- Episode 12 reveals exactly the purpose of LilyBell and its agents — to eliminate Lycoris agents who have either gone rogue or been exposed to the general public. This not only reveals that they're an even more dangerous threat than their female counterparts like Chisato implied. But further suggests a possible hierarchy of agents of all sorts tasked to eliminate each other once their usefulness is done or compromised. Meaning that there may very likely be a group tasked with exterminating LilyBell agents out there that no one else but the higher-ups are aware of.
- Kusunoki's flaws seem to be reflected in the Lycoris themselves, and look what her flaws cost DA over the course of the series. Many of the Lycoris show a lack of empathy, even Takina initially. Fuki and Sakura are overconfident in victory ahead of their training exercise against Chisato and Takina, and Fuki doesn't take any more responsibility for the disastrous arms deal than Kusunoki does even though Fuki was the field leader and could have acted even with their communications being jammed. Chisato is the most emotionally well-adjusted Lycoris seen on screen, and she spends most of her time away from DA and Kusunoki. One wonders whether these issues may even in part be by design from someone who doesn't realize these flaws are something bad.
Fridge Logic
- Why does Chisato always try to get in close when she wants to shoot someone? Because rubber bullets are notoriously inaccurate at any sort of distance, so she's getting into point-blank range so accuracy isn't an issue.
- Why did Himegama hire Silent Jin to kill "Mr. Matsushita"? Because of Jin being reputed for never speaking, meaning he wouldn't claim innocence regarding the story of how he killed Matsushita's family. Any other assassin would speak up and say something was off with the story, but Jin only speaks after he's been subdued by Chisato and he meets with Mika.
- In Episode 9, Himegama short-circuits Chisato's artificial heart, giving her just two months to live. One might first think that Shinji wants to kill her for failing to accomplish her "mission" as a genius at killing, but if he wanted to do that, why didn't he just have Himegama execute her? Kurumi even points this out during her discussion with Mika. Then, during The Stinger of the episode, we see him with a suitcase that looks just like the one he brought her artificial heart in during the flashback, suggesting he plans to blackmail her with a new heart so she'll break her Thou Shalt Not Kill mantra.note
- Regarding the artificial heart, despite that Shinji told Mika during the flashback that it would only last until Chisato was around 18 years old, 10 years would be plenty of time for the Alan Institute to develop an improved model. Shinji could then easily blackmail Chisato with this new heart.
- The downside of Lycoris agents intercepting all violent crimes in Tokyo makes itself brutally apparent in Episode 10, when a police officer shoots a civilian who was curious over a pistol he found when said civilian accidentally pointed it in the officer's direction. This is because the police haven't had to deal with violent crimes for 10 years, so they don't have the necessary experience to deal with hostile situations.
