Xebek’s Blog

Takumi, Sena, and Kozue face a dangerous struggle at Nozomi Corporation.

Impressions:

Well strangely enough we got a battle episode out of this series. I mean they’ve been carrying around swords for a while now so good to finally just get into it. Still have to say delusion battles can be pretty tough to follow sometimes. You just can’t be sure what is actually happening since they’ll suddenly reveal a person wasn’t really there at any particular moment. The entire fight was against a delusion copy of Norose made by the Noah II prototype. Still for all his talk of it not being able to fully copy his powers he put up an insane fight against Kozue and Sena. I say the two of them since Takumi showed great ability to turn a fight for their lives into a spectator sport.

It was still a pretty good fight even if the victory felt kind of hollow. Good thing that Ayase decided to show up when she did or it could have gone much worse for the group. Guess in part it was to thank Takumi for saving her with that garden from the last episode. Pretty impressive that she made her way all the way out there and even froze the guy up for a moment. Certainly reflected some care on Takumi’s part since he was worried about her condition. Guess the doubts about trusting her got a lot weaker when he started to experience things that shook his normal thinking. His powers also got a bit of flexing in this one though it was only involved in saving his neck. The fear of death was so strong he pretty much commanded Sena and Kozue to snap out of their delusions and come save him.

Perhaps one of the biggest moments of the entire episode was earlier on when we saw Rimi. She was just going around and paying a visit to Shogun! Her connection to that guy just makes things so much more complicated. Definitely she isn’t just some innocent bystander though that has been clear for a while now. She just vanishes for a while during this conflict and has quite the interesting chat. Was quite the surprise that she was actually suggesting that Takumi needed to be erased because of the danger he posed. Rimi appears worried about the possibility of Takumi killing Shogun at some point. Have a lot of questions about the state of reality in this series. Rimi talks about Shogun having to awaken soon. Oddly it’s the same message that has been passed to Takumi from a variety of characters along the way. They also spent a good amount of time discussing dreams. Also hinting at least that the world they are in is Shogun’s dream. I’m still banking on him being a future Takumi for some reason. But there is definitely more going on here than just the activities of Norose and the Nozomi group.

Felt pretty bad for Sena in this episode. Changing her name likely to her mother’s maiden name to be further separated from a father she despises. In Norose’s own words the man offered up his wife for an experiment for the “Church of the Divine Light.” Could see him doing it for the reason that she could be happy believing her dead child was still alive. But at the same time that action put her in a horrifying position for any human being. Finding that she had been holding the corpse of her daughter is just a painful thing. Maybe the husband didn’t have bad intentions but as a result he hurt everyone in his family. Wonder just where the man is now since knowing what he has done must have broken him.

The end of the episode was reached with a very important revelation. That jerk Norose seems to have kidnapped Nanami. Should have known something was up when Sena talked about people being kidnapped by Nozomi. But since she hadn’t been around in a while I didn’t think she was going to be someone targeted like that. It’s a very bad situation since Takumi’s complete disregard for his sister means it could be a very long time before he’d notice on his own. I’m hoping Sena or someone else informs him of this desperate situation before it’s too late. But from her silence in the last scene it may be too late to help her. Hopefully she was just knocked out or something and there is still time to go help. I’d like to think Takumi will step up for the sake of his sister but it doesn’t seem like part of his character to do anything but fall apart. Also the preview seems to set up an attack on his complete trust of Rimi.

Overall was a good episode for moving things along. Finally we’re getting some more answers from the series. We know that Nozomi is involved with some things and are a real threat to Takumi and others. But I don’t think they have much to do with the murders that have been going on and the Shogun. That appears to be a completely isolated situation that has yet to be dealt with. At least we got to know more about Kozue and Sena’s pasts. Sadly those pasts aren’t very happy so few smiles there. But at least we can understand Sena’s motivations more. Can’t wait to find out just what is going on with Shogun and what Rimi’s connection to him is.