Impression
Shinya’s an extremely observant guy – I was wondering how he’d figure out that this Spooky Boogie was a fake and had hijacked then murdered the real one, as he caught on to a vital clue really fast. The hint ended up lying in Spooky Boogie regretting that she asked for any help from the “police”, while previously she’s always referred to them as the MWPSB. This slight chance in nature was enough for Shinya to know that the one talking to Akane now was a fake, though I picked up on another point as well – while first Spooky Boogie was the one to freely offer assistance to Akane and the CID, in their latest meeting she uses the word “cooperated”, indicating that she went along with the police’s demands and had no choice. She also made no reference to being old friends with Akane as well, and never mentioned her actual willingness to aid the government, labelling herself as an anarchist, which is obviously her public image.
We had various references to teachings and theories in this episode (which I had to go and look up to understand the context of) and one of those came about from Masaoka’s lack of understanding towards the virtual net – I suppose it’s become something so commonplace in that time and age that people just accept that it’s there and treat it naturally without asking any questions. For Masaoka (whom I presume was around before the whole VR diving era) it may seem a little unnatural, and so he tries to pose it as a form of communication fuelled by the idea that two hunters will work together as humans are social by nature.
And this is why neither Talisman nor Spooky Boogie were seen as fakes, because they’re net idols, icons – who built up status through their fans and through public. Because of this and the rising popularities of their CommuField, there is an “expected” way someone like Spooky Boogie should act and so the guy, Masatake Mido, he has taken advantage of that and used it towards his own means, as Masatake only has to act in the way that the fans would like to see. Anyway, let alone crash a party, but he’s applying interior holograms to the wall too? His Crime Coefficient when he was finally caught was soaring – over 330, resulting in the use of the lethal eliminator instead of normal gun paralysis. Painkillers or not, I’m surprised he managed to run all the way to his room in that gory state, with an entire arm completely blown off at the joint to the shoulder. Actually, to be honest the room wasn’t too great either – maybe he was clouded with pain or something, but it seemed like a holo-room in which all three of his avatars were intelligent and supporting his cause – Plato’s idea that all non-material abstract things (such as forms or ideas) are actually the highest forms of reality in comparison to a material existence. Due to Masatake’s lack of his own personality, as well as Makishima’s hijacking of those three avatars which meant the world to him, he is probably going to need massive amounts of therapy even if he had the option to reform, as he’s completely empty inside, and is near hallucination by blurring the line that one crosses to reach reality. Yeah, the internet does that. So, he died – boom, splatter, blood-soaked glasses as seems to be the norm for those undergoing the lethal eliminator “measure”.
At the moment it’s pretty evident that Makishima, our white-haired dude is behind most of the incidents seemingly for his own amusement – and perhaps he has something to do with the “unsolved case”, in which Shinya refused therapy treatment to prioritize the investigation and thus went from an Inspector to an Enforcer. What made his CC rise that rapidly is beyond me, but it must have been a tough, tough sacrifice to make if it was worth confining yourself to one floor of a building and literally treated as a hunting dog that is only let out to feast on its prey.
