I always thought Diet was such an awesome name. My favorite Diet is the Diet of Worms.
Setup
Anyway, this was more of a setup episode. It was fairly straightforward, at least by UN-GO’s standards. It was obvious after Kaishou showed up in two places at the same time that Bettenou was involved somehow. Although that still leaves pretty much everything else open. I’m especially curious about what happened to Inga.
Let me take a moment to compare this show to Dantalian no Shoka. Both were nominally episodic mysteries. Dantalian was by far the weaker, largely because it was chained to its format. Every arc would be completely independent from all the others. It would always end as if nothing had happened, and Dalian and Huey would continue traveling.
UN-GO is different. It isn’t constricted by its format. If a two or three episode arc would be better, it goes with it. And the arcs aren’t all independent. The mysteries that are solved have permanence and meeting. For example, this episode used events from the Vocaloids episode in an essential role. Shinjuurou’s detective work matters. This is paying off in spades and leading us up to a much more memorable finale.
The Mystery
First, what a great way to setup the mystery: have a table full of people start joking that a bomb will set off, and then blow the room to smithereens. The bombing doesn’t even come as a surprise. It’s like we’re still part of a story, which the fact that anyone from that room survived suggests as well. UN-GO does an excellent job at messing with your expectations.
Now for some speculation. I wonder why Rie didn’t tell Shinjuurou that she saw Kaishou at the house? If she’s asking him to prove his innocence, you’d think that would have been a good clue. Also, since Shinjuurou knows he’s in an illusion, why doesn’t he go shock himself again?
And what does he think that Kaishou is trying to do? Is he attempting to use Bettenou to control the media more effectively? I think that Shinjuurou is probably wrong once again…
Internet Gossip
My favorite part of this episode had to be the short segments showing the dredges of the internet. Is Full Circle trying to imply that Kaishou and Izumi are secret lovers here?
Then there’s the NicoNico comments on Rie:
I confess, “The horse is so cool!!!www” sounds like it could be me.
And then there’s this email:
What?
It’s details like these that add depth to the wold of UN-GO and ascribe a meaning to Kaishou’s job of information control.
On a Diet
I like the new character from the Diet a lot so far, although she barely had any screen time yet.
I know the Japanese are all about humility and stuff, but isn’t this a bit much?
This girl seems like a complete ditz. At first I thought it was unbelievable that someone like her would get elected to the Diet. But then I decided that it was vastly preferable to the evil supervillains we have leading Congress here in the US.
And hey, I would vote for her too if I got this cute postcard instead of robocalls!
I loved this scene too:
Thank you for being the only person who thinks it’s weird that Shinjuurou carries around a stuffed animal!
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Comparing UN-GO to Danatalian I like UN-GO’s characters more but I prefer Dantalian’s plot. UN-GO’s episodes are quite complicated and carry a lot of meaning. Dantalian’s were were mostly anticlimatic and bordering on the absurd. I particularly liked “The Children of the Damned” But well, this is my personal anime taste – the less happens the more you can focus on the atmosphere, the aesthetics and the characters!
I understood the Diet member clutz as political satire. The Nationa Diet of Japan, as I learned from wikipedia, seems to have a mixed party-list/ direct election composition. The girl exemplifies that real power lies in the hand of the few upper-echelon guys within each party whereas the other representatives are basically disposable. It may also mean to critizise that female parliamentarians are no more influential than OL’s even though elected.
Seconded re the Nico Nico comments!
That was my favorite episode of Dantalian as well. At first, I did like the stories of Dantalian better, but by the end they became repetitive and predictable. UN-GO has avoided that pitfall by a wide margin.
Thanks for explaining about the Diet! Everything I know about the diet (i.e., nothing) comes from reading the Wind-up Bird Chronicle. I kind of wish we had a European-style system here in the US, so we could get multiple parties, but I guess that other systems have their issues as well.