This episode had some plot development, but was mostly an opportunity to further develop the relationship between Hououin and Christina. I can appreciate that decision, since the two of them are just so much fun to watch together. My favorite moment was their posing in lab coats. A pose of radiant intelligence indeed! Hououin also has an amazing evil laugh, the best I’ve seen since Lelouch. His reaction to CERN’s conspiracy is equally awesome: instead of stopping their plot to change the future, he wants to beat them to it.
It seems that Christina had some issues with her father in the past, but for once they don’t beat us over the head with it but have it revealed through Hououin’s aggressiveness. The show’s characterization so far has been great — even the CRT store girl is becoming interesting. The only exception seems to be Mayuri, whose main role is to act cute. She’s probably batshit insane, but not in a very interesting way compared to the rest of the characters. Hopefully she will have a chance to develop soon.
The mystery further deepens as we learn that Christina and CRT girl will become enemies in the future. One question is what Christina will do, but for me the more pressing question is how does CRT girl know this? Is she from the future (perhaps John Titor)? She did just recently appear at the shop and seems to know about the IBN 5100. The more likely candidate for John Titor is the cell phone girl though. I should mention that if this show ever ends up having any action scenes, it’s going to be awesome. Just seeing CRT girl jump back and crouch was intense. Imagine what they’ll do with a full blown fight.
Although Steins; Gate has overall done an excellent job at building a conspiracy based on “history” and good pseudoscience, there were a few gaping inconsistencies in this episode. First of all: our favorite super hacker is copying a JPEG file from the IBN 5100. The JPEG spec was invented long after 1972. Besides, the IBN 5100 displays characters, not pixels. Is CERN supposed to be looking at the JPEGs converted to ASCII art? Second, Christina claims that the humans become squeezed out like a sponge because they’re compressing 10-21 grams into 10-19 meters (according to the translation I have). Let’s assume she means cubic meters and that they aren’t converting matter into a single dimension, since that probably would squeeze some stuff out. Then the process is achieving a density of one hundredth of a gram per cubic meter. The density of air is about 1 kg /m3. So the density that’s squeezing everything out of the matter is a whopping 10-5 times the density of air.
It was quite satisfying seeing Minko get a taste of her own insults. Hopefully this won’t dissuade her from further creativity.
I am wondering though if they decided to have Ohana and Minko make peace a bit too soon. This is a two course show they’re going to need some more drama, and Minko was a very nice source for this. I’m hoping that they don’t go the route of the grandmother’s “joke” in saving the inn from being closed since this trope has been done to death so many times in the past. It seems that in the immediate future Ohana’s friend Ko will be making a visit, so this should spice things up.
I was quite surprised to see this week that the author actually made a good addition to the cast as part of the inn’s staff. I half expected him to be squirreled away in the background for the remainder of the show, but his creative interpretations were the driving force for much of this episode. He complements Tomoe (the woman in the pink kimono above) well in terms of rumormongering.
I’d been wondering whether Shinku could become an animal ball since he’s from another world, and apparently he can’t. Oh well, it’s not like he’s going to die.
Shinku’s running and speed surfing was fun too, but his magic carpet ride moment with the princess was a bit stretched out. I just can’t imagine any kind of serious romance working with these characters.
This episode showed us more of Kimimaro’s family history. It turns out his father was also involved in the financial district, and died because he became bankrupt. His mother also passed away, leaving him to become the person hyper-concerned with money he did become. We’re also introduced to an International Monetary Fund employee investigating the financial district.
First of all, let’s give credit where it’s due: we have a show featuring the IMF. I think this beats out Stein’s Gate’s use of CERN as the secret evil organization. The IMF agent’s boss seems to be sending some rather loud double agent signals, but let’s hope things aren’t quite that obvious.
As far as the direction Kimimaro’s history is taking, it’s a bit too stereotypical for me. Father dies, mother passes away, boy hates father. The only way they could make it worse is have it turn out that Souichiro (the old guy) is actually his father. I’m actually kind of guessing that will happen though. The old man is quite sympathetic to the boy’s father. Their assets obviously have some sort of connection. And you lose your future, not your life by going bankrupt. Perhaps by losing his future he lost his family. Still, hopefully they will surprise me and do something less predictable.
In this episode, everyone meets up for a barbecue to search for Menma’s ghost (including Menma).
I like Tsurumi so far, but I’m fairly certain the creators are holding a lot back about her for later. The same is true of Matsuyuki, and it seems that the next episode will be dedicated to him. He seems to be hiding something in his closet, and I really hope it’s not what I think it is. If Matsuyuki used to be in love with Menma and is hiding her old clothes in his closet, I’m going to be annoyed.