Robotics;Notes Ep. 5

Reviews without pictures may be faster to write, but they're not as fun. I'll put in the effort from now on.  But it would help if I could remember what Pixy said about FTP....

Before the credits, there's a brief recap of the end of the previous episode, where things might have gotten a little supernatural. Kai saw a girl through the camera of his PokeCom (Pocket Computer), and then after it rebooted, he got a strange email from "Sister Centipede" containing nothing but gibberish.  At school he overhears two girls talking about doing a "Test of Courage" at the supposedly haunted Space Hill Park, which was where he was that night. The girls mentioned they heard it from "That Karate Club girl", and thus another loop in the story is closed. A quick e-mail after the OP, and Kai has arranged to meet Juuna Daitoku, the incredibly shy Karate Club girl, up on the hill. This annoys Aki because she's expecting to meet at the clubhouse with the local paper to give an interview about their second place finish at the RoboOne competition. She wanted him there.


At the park, They discuss their similar experiences, although Kai's really got her topped. They discuss possible sources of interference, like this Russian shortwave station, "the Buzzer" that has been broadcasting this buzzer going on and off for 30 years. (True!) and they wonder if the nearby launch complex is broadcasting something similar that is causing the computers to lock up, since it is in the line of sight to the hill. That doesn't explain the ghostly girl though, so they wander around in search of the supernatural. And Kai cruelly startles her pointing at a mannequin head in the window that scares the bejebers out of her. In part he explains he did it because she was creeping him out by describing the legendary girl looking exactly like the girl he had seen. She pulls up a location of another sighting in a cave where she lives. He agrees to go, but ask if they can drop by the club's hangar on the way. She's not too thrilled with the idea. Apparently she's scared of, or hates robots, so they skip it.


At the Hangar, Aki is blowing it with the reporters, going on about the Gunvarrel project, instead of RoboOne. Subaru swings by with his Robot in hand, and the reporters instantly recognize it, but wonder why it's here. Aki nearly spills the beans, I guess the concept of a secret identity escapes her.

At the beach (I thought it was a cave?) Kai and Juuna don't find the digital ghost, although they do discover a dead whale on the beach, and she remarks that there have been a lot of them lately. They begin to discuss a lot of weird ecological phenomena around the world, a hot winter in Russia, snow in California, and some of the Nazca Lines were washed away by rain. Junna accidentally pokes him in a soft spot, by saying it's weird, like the S.S. Anemone incident, which I guess she doesn't know he was a victim of. At the end of their outing, he asks her about Karate, and she says that their season is over, so she's pretty much done with that. He then invites her to join the Robotics club, which she's not too thrilled with, but while she doesn't like robots, she wouldn't mind becoming better friends with Aki (hmmm?).


Kai drops by Aki's to find out what's going on at her end. The interview was a bust. Meeting with the candy guy about sponsorship was also a bust. She asks about what he was doing with Juuna, surious if she also managed to beat him at Kill-Ballad to get him to go with her, but he mentions that he asked her to go along. She embarrassedly says Hey, she doesn't mind if he dates Juuna, but it's unusual because he never really hangs around with anyone. (Does anyone think she really means that?)


That night, Kai returns to the hilltop to kill some time playing the game, and clearly to see if it will happen again. Just when he's about to give up, his PokeCom starts receiving again. He starts searching the grounds, using the PokeCom in Augmented Reality mode. Sneaking into an abandoned building, he makes contact, first spotting a password protected geotag, and then the ghost, who offers him the password. She's possibly an AI, rather than a ghost - would that be a ghost in the machine? She tells him to tap her on the screen, which allows him to talk to "Sister Centipede", and her voice and manner change. She mechanically states "Airi is a communications interface running on the Iru-O servers. Sister Centipede is a fully automated information gathering engine." It's nice to get some straight answers for once. Then, it gets a bit weird. Apparently he's been chosen as some kind of contact simply because he's been around the park so much, since he was a kid (when he was close to Airi's age setting) and they've been trying, 29 times in the last 8 years, to get through to him. Hell, Aki's known him even longer, and she can't get through to him either. Kai has NO real curiosity, no romance in his heart. His question? "How do I make you go away?" He pokes at the geotag, and Sister Centipede just coughs up the password for him. Now THAT'S security! It gives him full access to the Iru-O secret files. In particular, an "In case of my death" file written ten years earlier attached to the tag.


The file reveals that this guy knows that NASA has been hiding, since 2000, the discovery of Magnetic Monopoles at the south pole of the Sun. It leaked, but they make the leak of the truth look like a fake. He knows that this is a sign that the sun will explode, and has a schedule of upcoming massive solar flares. (This will probably ruin future RoboOne competitions).

Kai calls up Juuna, who confirms there are a lot of conspiracy theories about NASA and Solar Flares. She speculates that there must be a report #2 file to go with the #1 he read. And the dates he gave for the flares were accurate, she says. The aurora that's been oddly in the sky over Southern Japan has been there since the 2012 flare. And the crash that ruined the shop owner's legs was in '15. This comes to mind since he's making the call from the bench outside the mini-mart, and when she comes out to close the shutters, he mentions what he found to her. The name "Kimijima Kou" poleaxes her. She's on the verge of tears - something unusually for someone as hardened as she is - and wants to know where he heard that name.


Back at the evil Exoskeleton Corporation, Aki's sister gives her report on Kai to the CEO. She knows about his accident. And the episode leaves it hanging on that ominous note.

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