Well, this went even worse than I expected.

Let’s Summarize

Shion and Nezumi enter Safu’s room. Safu has become Elyurias. She activates the bee disease and kills everyone in the town square. She tells Shion that No. 6 has done human experimentation and deserves to die (biological weapons are ok though). Shion agrees and tries to destroy No. 6, then and there.

Nezumi is mad that Shion changed. Shion says he was dumb and naive when he wanted to tear down the wall, and gives a ridiculous scream. Elyurias overhears their conversation, and on a whim decides to go with Shion’s plan instead of the one he put years of planning into.

Nezumi plants a bomb on the supercomputer, and Safu stays behind. It’s not clear why. The bomb blows up, and Mother is destroyed. If the Mother is destroyed, all the other computers blow up too. Great security guys. So Shion and Nezumi run through the facility as shit blows up.

Now Shion’s mad that they left Safu behind. He tells Nezumi, “You used me! Your objective was the correctional facility’s destruction!” Nezumi says, “No shit, Sherlock.”

Then Nezumi gets shot, and Shion brings him to the infirmary to perform field surgery. (Shion, what are you unzipping?! That’s not where he got shot!) Then it’s Shion’s turn to get shot in the heart. They fall down a chute and meet up with Dogkeeper and the other guy.

While this is happening, Elyurias uses his rainbow power to make the bees turn into tornadoes and destroy the wall. I’m not making this up.

Back to Shion. He’s dead. Everyone cries. Dogkeeper says that she doesn’t want to die too, and runs off with the other guy in tow. Nezumi is alone with Shion’s corpse. Then Safu comes. She puts Shion’s head in her lap, transforms into the rainbow bee queen and explodes. Nezumi’s wounds are healed and Shion is resurrected.

Shion and Nezumi walk out, kiss, and part. The baby that Dogkeeper ditched finds its way back to Shion, and the cycle of life continues… or something. The people from inside No. 6 and the people from outside No. 6 head towards the broken wall, shuffling along like zombies. Now that the wall is gone everyone will be bestest best friends and live happily ever after.

That’s It

Not much more to say, I think what happened pretty much speaks for itself. A few stray observations.

• Note how we have the pile of machine parts instead of the pile of corpses now. Oooh, how symbolic!
• Karan continues to piss me off. I feel like the creators want me to like her, while all she’s done is hide and let other people solve her problems for her.
• On the same thread, Yoming is dead. Bastard got what he deserved, wanting to make trouble. At least that’s what it seems like I’m supposed to think…

“Ok, I’ll get on it after I kill these small fry.”

They aren’t People!

I really liked the opening scene. Dogkeeper, standing amidst the rubble of the destroyed town, scoffs at Shion’s idea that the people from No. 6 are human too.

Then one of her dogs comes up to her, who found something. The dog found a piece of gold. Dogkeeper tells it to go look for more.

So here Dogkeeper is in a ruined town, surrounded by the dead and the dying, searching for gold in the rubble. Who isn’t human again?

No. 6 is the BIG BAD

After last episode, the creators still hadn’t established the fact that No. 6 was EVIL. So they started the episode by having Shion and Nezumi climb a pile of corpses. How subtle.

When the villains level towns, kill babies, execute old ladies, and pile up mountains of corpses in the basement for no apparent reason, it’s kind of hard to take them seriously.

Bipolar Disorder

What is going on with Shion in this episode? He’s been a pansy for the entire show. This episode, he starts out cowering in the back of the truck, and gets grossed out by corpses.

Then he hears Safu’s voice. Courage reignites in his heart, and a smile lights up his face! He knows the positions of the security cameras and how to avoid them in a building he’s never entered. He even knows the secret passages! He fools doctors with his smooth talk, and outfights soldiers with his cloak. He shoots a soldier from across the room, and then comes in close for the kill, finishing him off from point blank range while the man cries and begs for mercy.

Finally his eyes glaze over, and Shion joins Nezumi in crying. What has he done?!

I appreciate the idea that people can change, but this is just silly. To go from a wuss to a special agent with skills exceeding Nezumi’s in the span of five minutes, and then back again? When the most “reasonable” explanation I can think of is that Elyurias is influencing his mental state, something’s off.

Random Thoughts

• The baby decides that Dogkeeper is her mother, and then starts suckling from a dog teat? What strong familial bonds.
• What has this whole pseudo-mystical angle with Elyurias added to the show? I will go ahead and propose nothing at all, except to give me more fodder to laugh at.
• I thought it was impossible to get inside the correctional facility? And then they go ahead and do it… because spoiled rich people become paralyzed by stinkiness.
• The fight scenes had a quite noticeable drop in animation quality. I suppose it is the first time anybody’s moved since the second episode.

This is more or less exactly how not to make me hate the bad guys.

Cheap Shots at No. 6

So the show No. 6 forgot about the city No. 6 since the first episode, and the creators seemed to just realize this. I can imagine how the conversation at the studio went.

“Hey, why is No. 6 evil again?”
“They killed the Indians.”
“Yeah, but everyone does that. That’s not too bad.”
“They tried to murder Shion!”
“Well, he was infected with a highly contagious disease. It’s disease control.”
“Hmm, you’re right… I know, let’s make them kill some babies!”
“Great idea! Let’s level a town and kill some old people too!”

This whole episode just screamed of laziness in developing the villains. This is made all the worse because there isn’t even a single face associated with the bad guys. As Mitt Romney would say, governments are people too.

Let’s examine the sins of No. 6 from this episode.

1. They trick a cute little girl with their propaganda by giving her a balloon.
2. They level an entire city and indiscriminately kill people with laser tanks.
3. They kill the manager, who did all of… nothing… in the entire show.
4. They try to kill a little baby.
5. The Twilight Home turns out to be an execution chamber. (man, this was obvious)
6. They dump people down garbage chutes.

No. 6 had the potential to comment on the dangers of totalitarian governments. But this isn’t the problem from the show’s perspective. Totalitarian governments are fine. Surveillance states are great. Second-class citizenship is A-OK. Shion and Nezumi need to overthrow the government because it kills babies, tricks little girls and has evil scientists modifying Safu. They’re simply appealing to the basest emotions pulling strings to elicit pity now. 1984 this is not. Instead of hating the government I’m laughing at how ridiculous it is and at the fact that not a single person in the show opposes it for rational reasons in the first place. Which brings us to…

The Opposition is More Evil

Nezumi also doesn’t particularly care about how No. 6 treats its citizens or the people on the outside. He wants to destroy No. 6 for revenge, since they killed the Indians. He doesn’t want to liberate it from an evil government, he wants to burn it to the ground and loot the place. Shion wants to stop people from dying from the bee disease, but seems perfectly content living in poverty and with people going to the correctional facility as long as he doesn’t know them. Everyone else outside No. 6 just assumes they’re powerless.

The situation inside No. 6 is even more dire. The reporter guy who’s hitting on Karan wants to overthrow No.6, but he’s evil, because… well… he has an evil laugh. He’s exactly like the creators of No. 6! It’s much better to sit around and do nothing than to start a revolution, because, well, we might get our hands dirty! Karan is the most morally bankrupt character in the entire show, and yet the creators seem to be taking her side. Why…?

None of the characters have any vision beyond burning No. 6 to the ground and looting it. The one character who may have such a vision is himself villainized for wishing to fight against No. 6. The message I’m getting from this show is that the best thing to do is submit to tyranny like Shion and his mother do.

Final Thoughts

• I liked the scene where Nezumi let Dogkeeper be licked, I wasn’t expecting her to be so upset. I always love a good dissin’, and Dogkeeper delivered here. Oh, and it seems confirmed that Dogkeeper is actually a guy.

• Why did the laser tanks stop their massacre of civilians when Nezumi raised his hands up? If only the rest of the town had thought of that…
• Where did the reporter’s comrades come from?
• Long insert song! Whoo hoo! Not.
• The correctional institute is in the middle of nowhere, how exactly is making it fall supposed to destroy No. 6…?

I seem to be in the minority here (well, among the non-homophobes at least), but I really don’t get it: why do so many people seem to like this show so much? Everything I read talks about how there’s some great relationship between Shion and Nezumi and brilliant dialogue, but I don’t see it at all. Shion and Nezumi annoy me even more together than they do alone, and the lines in the script seem like they’re taken out of a bad play. Someone told me that the bad play vibes are part of the charm, but I just can’t see the appeal.

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