“Flask Plan supervisor, Naze Youka. Remodelling people is my business. Muscles, bone placement, nerves, circulatory system, respiratory system and even her digestive system, there isn’t a place on Koga-chan’s sexy body that I haven’t touched yet!”
Summary
On the 3rd floor, the Student Council and Maguro come across an indoor zoo, filled with modified animals who don’t react to Medaka at all. As Akune walks through the floor, he comes across middle school classmate Naze Youka, now an Abnormal who acts as the manager for the Flask Plan. Introducing herself, she presents her BFF Koga Itami, a remodelled human that jumped from Normal to Abnormal and now has superior physical abilities, easily proving to be more than a match for Akune despite his former status as a “Destroyer”.
Impression
I think it’s pretty easy to tell that the third floor’s animals have something wrong with them despite looking perfectly normal – and that’s because of their neutrality towards Medaka, who absolutely loves animals yet has never really gotten the chance to know them because they were all terrified of her. When a bunch of zoo animals don’t react at all to someone who’s chased off a giant dog back from Season 1, you know that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. Zenkichi suggested drug manipulation I think, but what was more likely was that the animals were genetically modified, and by none other than Naze Youka, “Black White” and the one in charge of the Flask Plan’s unification.
She’s probably the most entertaining character in the Thirteen Party, and part of that is due to her remodelling Abnormality, which doesn’t seem all that special to begin with but turns out to be really fearsome because of the way Naze uses it. Similar to the rest of the Front Six she’s interested in the idea of the perfect human the Flask Keikaku can create, and in line with her speciality as a biologist her interest actually makes sense. The other unusual thing about her is her attire – from the strange paper bag she wore in middle school to the bandages kept in place with a knife stuck in her forehead (doesn’t it hurt?) she’s really intent on hiding her face. Which, of course interests us to find out what her face looks like. They kinda gave the game away in the preview and the OP, but even so it’s not that hard to figure out who she is – that shade of blue hair is something we’ve come across before, as well as siscon Maguro having an extreme interest in her.
Naze’s “masterpiece” is as every bit Abnormal as she is – Koga Itami, “Best Pain” and surprisingly, a former Normal. After all this it was strange seeing your standard school day, with Koga walking to school, eating lunch and hanging out with her friends. I wouldn’t think it was a bad thing to be away from all the constant fighting and turmoil, but it seems her emotional turmoil came from being absolutely Normal in the first place, and she wanted some excitement in her life and so turned to Naze for some craziness. Wow…what a brave girl. As Naze herself said, the Abnormal thing about Koga was her desire to be Abnormal, and so her entire body got remodelled. Oh god that must have hurt. I wish she hadn’t started wearing that hat though. Physically, she’s insanely strong now and even able to stand up to the likes of Akune – wait, Akune?
Yeah, I think all this time I’ve kinda played down Akune as merely a Special and a judo practitioner – my bad, as I’ve clearly forgotten Nabeshima Nekomi’s fight against Unzen Myouga a few weeks ago. It’s also partly due to his much more…agreeable nature now, as well as not outright looking like some kind of punk like he did in middle school, though admittedly Zenkichi was much, much worse. Medaka’s been reforming people since that time it seems, and the “Destroyer” didn’t stand a chance at all, even though Medaka didn’t really do much other than keep coming to school every day. Most worryingly, Akune was under the control of Kumagawa at the time, who was probably already extremely negative then. I bet he was pissed that Akune was reformed completely to someone who valued life and didn’t like harming people, though something of the old Akune still remains (breaking Koga’s bones after learning she was remodelled is still a bit harsh). Unlike the last two floors this fight isn’t one that’s going to last merely a single episode, and even at the halfway point this show is still going strong with this arc – I’ve been really impressed with the improvement this season’s had compared to last time.
