Impression
Loki is such a dirty bastard for hurting Yaya like that. Though admittedly he’s not quite as bad as Felix was. While she was caught off guard, I was surprised that Yaya was hurt to such a significant extent – she’s supposed to be unbreakable! Charlotte ended up spelling it out for us, but I probably should have realized sooner that Yaya is in fact a Ban Doll (with more flesh parts than Sigmund). There’s so many of them now – I swear everyone and their dog is one (quite literally). The inclusion of live flesh is probably tantamount to an increase in power, something which all the Ban Dolls so far have displayed a considerable amount of. Yaya’s even got an extra boost through her close link with Raishin, at the cost of the latter’s life force. Raishin and Yaya are interesting enough to attract Kimberly’s attention – whose allegiance gets shadier every episode. It’s very unlikely she’s some sort of ally (after forcing the doctor to mark him) and especially as she’s described her group as enemies of the academy and of the government. Well, that actually means she’s completely opposing Raishin, who spies for Britain.
Concurrently, we had Raishin and Komurasaki meet Yomi, the prototype design for the Garm series of automatons. A lot of these dogs are likely to be Ban Dolls too – and the type which uses a living vessel to house magic circuits. It’s a cruel way of doing things, but I sort of grasped that already when Yomi mentioned she was about to be dismantled; these people clearly treat automatons in a disposable fashion. What’s even more concerning is the stuff they’re doing with humans – are those embryos growing in those tanks? There’s no way those “promised children” are siblings at all, it’s more likely they were artificially cloned from someone. If they all have a high affinity for mana, and are presumably going to be paired up with a dog automaton in the future, I’m getting the feeling that these kids are soldiers in the making, preparing for some kind of conflict. Whatever they’re doing, they’re willing to kill Raishin in order to safeguard their secrets. Yomi’s death happened before I formed a proper opinion of her, but there has to be merit in taking a hit for someone you’ve literally just met.
Raishin’s clearly torn between his duty to the government and his human morality here. While I don’t think he’ll directly oppose Shouko, I think he’ll still have qualms over killing Ravi, especially in light of Frey’s situation. Oh, and he was sort of responsible for Yomi’s death, too. For Frey, the Evening Party is a chance for her to demonstrate the power of the Garm series; her loss would imply that the Angel series is superior, and all her dog automatons would be dismantled as a result. I was under the impression she was #99, so I was confused as to why Loki took her place without any warning. Is that even allowed? I suppose it’s beneficial for Raishin – beating Loki allows him to take revenge for Yaya and discredit the Angel series at the same time! With that sort of opportunity available, I’m sure he’ll manage to grasp victory despite his tendency to get badly injured during fights.