I said last week that I wasn’t going to blog this. I lied. This episode was pretty good, and since I’ve blogged every other noitaminA series since I started this blog…
A Bitch in Heat
I complained last week that Inga bothered me. Well, he / she has already started to grow on me. The whole transformation sequence this week was great.
First, you see Inga with this big grin and his eyes rolled up to the top of his head, eyeing his prey, as the two women make what seems to be an obvious lie. Then he tries to provoke the two women, claiming the murderer could be the ghost of their friend. He laughs uproariously and keeps pointing at the girl’s picture when they don’t take the bait, clearly impatient. One of the women runs away, and he literally leaps after her, chasing the woman down a long corridor, giggling while the woman pants.
The detective grabs Inga’s shoulder, and his face is plastered with a goofy grin. Inga shakes back and forth and shouts that he can’t hold it in anymore, as the lights begin to flicker. He grasps the detective and transforms.
My point is, this sequence did a great job at portraying Inga’s excitement. He is more beast than human, and his excitement is sexual in nature.
The Mystery Itself
Shrek: Uh… ogres are like onions!
[holds up an onion, which Donkey sniffs]
Donkey: They stink?
Shrek: Yes… No!
Donkey: Oh, they make you cry?
Shrek: No!
Donkey: Oh, you leave ’em out in the sun, they get all brown, start sproutin’ little white hairs…
Shrek: [peels an onion] NO! Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. Onions have layers. You get it? We both have layers.
It was interesting how they pulled off the mystery of this episode. They set up the problem quite quickly. And before we had much time to even think about what had happened, Kaishou presents his solution. This solution is not obvious at all from the setup— the taxi driver is a cross-dresser. This seems suspect, but the show doesn’t stop to give us time to think about it. Immediately we jump to the Defeated Detective’s meeting with his client.
One idea comes out on top, that the two members of the singing group precipitated the murder. But it turns out that this isn’t the truth either: the woman the detective met with originally is the killer. Then, we discover that behind this is a deeper myster. The idol group itself was created as a government conspiracy. So we have an enigma (the government coverup) behind an enigma (the Defeated Detective’s explanation) behind an enigma (the murderer’s explanation) behind an enigma (Kaishou’s explanation) behind an enigma (the original mystery).
UN-GO is like an onion.
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Oh wow, I never thought it was like an onion, nice analogy. 😛
I am enjoying this anime, though I will admit that it is quite depressing in some ways.
Namely, in the way it presents the chairman and hides the truth.
I mean, normally, you would except such outright lies to be hated upon by the main characters, but he goes along with them, mostly because he has no choice.
It’s also even more saddening because the chairman seems like such a nice guy, and yet he keeps trying to control the internet (which is his job).
Watching the chairman cancel those download requests was saddening, I would hate to live in a country with such restricted internet access and a lack of privacy.
I hate to bring politics into this, but maybe the creators of Un-Go are quietly hinting that our fear of terrorists is going to lead down to this heavily controlled society.
Don’t say that too loudly! You might get on some sort of watch list.
The onion thing was a joke. 🙂
I actually started cracking up when he cancelled the download requests. If someone has to manually click buttons to block things, their control of the internet is not going to be very effective.
It is kind of depressing, but I think that’s one of its better points. And I completely agree with your last statement. Except for the “quietly” part.
I’m not quite sold on UN-GO yet, but this episode was a big step up from the last one. I think that we’re watching a very good 26 episode show condensed into 11 and that the episode length hurts it quite a bit, but placing the conspiracy front and center instead of the mystery was a good move since the story of the episode was pretty interesting. I’ll even agree that Inga was better this episode when he got to go feral, he certainly beats annoyingly chipper Inga and plot device Inga.
The episode certainly gave me more faith in the show. I can see the ways that it can go wrong, but I’ll stick around and see where it goes. I just hope that we get an overarching plot sooner than later, if the show is able to take a story like the one we got this episode and develop it over two or three, we could have a winner.
It seems to have the components for an overarching plot, with the rivalry between the detective and the older guy, and all the government coverup. Although I said the same thing about Dantalian no Shoka, and look how that turned out.
Un-GO really proved itself worthy of notice with its second episode. I don’t quite understand the obsession with vocaloids though cause in the first episode there was a split second appearance of Miku on the screen and then this episode they decided to have an episode inspired from the program…
Anywho, I personally liked Inga from the start, and he(?) only proved to be even more interested in this episode. There’s supposed to be an episode 0 that will come out in November about how Inga and Yuuki met, but apparently its actually going to be released in theatres, so we’ll either have to hope for cam quality or wait months till DVD release to be able to get the full story that UN-GO has to tell. Sadness 🙁
Advertising gimmick? Who knows…
That episode 0 sounds promising, too bad we have to wait for it.
see this new vocaloid from australia
Ange Wayne