The Island where our heroes live, Tanegashima, happens to be the home of the Japanese space program. (Yes, they have one). And this episode starts with a scene on May 21st, 2010, where a young Aki and Kai are with Aki's older sister in a crowd waiting to watch a launch.

At the end of the last episode, Aki proposed that they go to the JAXA (The Japanese Space Agency) for help. And it is revealed in this episode why she thinks of this. We come back from the OP with her making a presentation asking for facilities, assistance, and money from JAXA to help them build their robot. The director listens, but first "Your Father has to go to the bathroom." Yeah, her dad's the president of the base. He insists he's just a middle manager, but Aki will have none of it. Practically chasing him around the conference table trying to get him to give in. He even begs Kai to intervene. She's just about got him on the ropes when a call from her mother, who is far less of a dreamer than any of them gives him a chance to escape.

After school at the Hangar, it turns out they don't have access to the Robo-One prize money either. Kai gets a mysterious message while playing his game and leaves. But the location given turns out the be another building in the "Abandoned" complex. He arrives, but nobody is there, until their club adviser shows up in a mini-pickup, loaded with boxes. And from the top of those boxes emerges Frau Koujirou. Mitche, the adviser, reveals that her real name is Furugoori Kona. "What's Frau Koujirou? Your pen name?" Mitchie bitches about the principal making him help a student move in, which arouses Kai's curiosity. Kona says that she bought the entire place. In typical fashion, Kai gets ready to bail. "If you want me to help, defeat me in Kill Ballad." But as he turns to walk away, she grabs his hand, saying that he owes her, after all, she gave him the control code. So, thus it is revealed that she is the author of his favorite game.

As a character, I'm a little curious to see more, as she has a bit of a stutter, but also this twisted smile she makes. The credits seem to indicate she has a bit of a sultry side too.

Back in the hangar, Subaru is telling Aki all the things they should change about the robot, like removing the cockpit and making it remote control, and removing all the armor that makes it look like Gunvarrel. She refuses, citing the goals and history of the club which she won't abandon, and Subaru leaves.

Things get worse. Kai calls just then, bitching that he just found out this candy he eats all the time is made by a company owned by Mitchie's uncle. He hates that he's been giving that family his money. They should be giving some of that money back to the club, he says. This is a trick. Kai has been to the convenience store and taken Mizuka's challenge to eat this nasty passion-fruit dumpling she keeps on hand in exchange for information. (The first time was in Episode 2, where he eats it to find out about "Doc's" granddaughter, a classmate of theirs in the Karate Club. They wanted to use her to try to get a discount on the robot parts, but it didn't pan out.)

Kai shows up at the no-longer abandoned office building with some groceries for Kona. She thanks him, but apparently her manner of speaking confuses him. It's because she's saying TXT-speak out loud ("Thx", "TX", and "Facedesk" in Japanese are a revelation.). She gets even crazier from there, muttering about security, and how "They" shouldn't get at her "BL Folder", and refusing Kai's suggestion that a regular house would be better. And finally how the abandoned look is more Moe, and how he should get out, or bring her back a half-naked guy. "Time to fap," she says (I can't be 100% sure about this translation). Kai wonders about her parents, but all she says is that her dad is in Tokyo, and mom.... she doesn't say.

There is a brief interlude at Subaru's home. His dad, watching baseball, mentions that he heard about a robot tournament last week, but Subaru swears he had nothing to do with it, and that he's through with robots. He was a champion in Jr. High. The implication hanging heavy in the air is that dad must have a real hate-on for the whole robot thing. Mom being absent could be related?

Aki goes with Mitchie to the candy company to ask about sponsorship. It does not go well. The man is a vulgar creep (he trained his parrots to say "Hooters").

At the hangar, Subaru asks Kai if he'll team up with him to go the the first Robo-One world cup in Las Vegas next month. He refuses. Oddly, it's Subaru who issues the challenge to settle it with a Kill-Ballad match. Apparently after 22 wins, Subaru finally beat him, and so we next see him packing up the club's robot for practice.

In front of the hangar, they square off with their robots, and after explaining how M45 works, he asks Kai how it is he avoided the unavoidable attack. Kai doesn't want to talk about it, but says that it wasn't a gaming trick.

We get a flashback, which he narrates, how four months after they watched the rocket launch, on 9/11/10, some event on the ferry SS Anemone caused everyone aboard to faint. This included his class, on their way back from a school trip to Kagoshima. He and Aki were the only ones permanently affected. He calls it "Elephant-Mouse Syndrome" where their time perception is skewed. Aki's seizures result in her experiencing five minutes as if it were a second, and apparently Kai's is the reverse. This explains his incredible reaction times.

While sitting on a hillside in the twilight, about to play his game, he suddenly gets reception issues, and barely catches a glimpse of the lavender-haired girl. Then, as his game tries to reconnect, a voice comes through asking "Can you hear me?"

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I had to go back to the first episode to check on a few things, and I noticed a few other things. The girl with the long brown hair (Aki's sister, Misa), the one watching them compete appears on a commercial for the Exoskeleton company. She's the one who provided the robotic leg braces to the girl in the convenience store (Irei Mizuka), who was injured in a crash 15 years earlier and has had the legs for 4.

I had forgotten about a scene at the end, because it didn't seem to fit with the conventional, plausible nature of the show. A girl with long lavender hair and a glowing ring on her forehead is standing there, holding a feather, apparently dictating a report, but all we hear of it is her reciting the date and time (June 13th, 2019 19:09) and that nothing has changed.

Posted by: Mauser at 08:20 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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