Even if I wanted to sum up the first half of this episode, i’m not entirely sure that I could. The thing that Reiko does to the parasites that were hunting her down, i’m not entirely sure I could articulate the right words. She first baits them off into a building under construction and then…breaks her cells in half and burrows into them and kills them from the inside?
OH MY GOD, I just don’t know. This part of the episode is so messed up, like you have to see it to know what i’m talking about. The rest of the episode is easy to sum up but his whole part in the beginning is just…crazy.
However, the tension of all of this is some what broken. Somewhat enhanced by while the intelligent half of her body is killing the parasites. The air headed version runs around, with half a head for a bit. Scares the hell out of a couple and then they come to see her about it and she rips her head in half and says something about having nothing up there.
So skipping past the first part of the episode, Reiko goes back to her house to find her baby missing with a note specifying a location, date and time to meet. Signed, Detective Sherlock Holmes. [Hey Detective guy, you don’t look like Jimmy Kudo or L to me!]
So she goes to Shinichi’s house and spies on his baby pictures, taking a look at a normal human family dynamic. Then gets in contact with Shinichi and tells him to meet with her at the park. After talking with him she hears the doorbell ring.
Murano is at Shinichi’s house trying to meet up with him again, worried that he’s been gone for such a long time. So Reiko leaves the house and talks with Murano. She assures Murano that Shinichi is strong and he’ll make it through this and he’ll be back soon.
Honestly, Reiko or Ryoko or whatever you want to call her has become one of the most interesting characters in the series. Her emotions have become slowly more and more human throughout the progression of her character and it’s rather interesting to see in contrast to the struggle with his own humanity that Shinichi is suffering through. It’s also a little frightening to think that a species as alien as the parasites could study us to such an extent that they could come to behave like us.
So, things come to a head when we get to the park. Shinichi’s there, Reiko’s there, the Detective is there, Murano’s there, the special investigation team for the parasites are there.
EVERYONE AT THE PARK.
So as Shinichi searches for Reiko, she meets up with the detective who has her baby. He goes on and on about how she couldn’t possibly care for the child, how it couldn’t be hers because it was a human baby. It hurts her, it legit hurts her to hear him say that. Then he goes to throw it over a ledge and kill it.
She stabs him and saves the baby. We cut to Migi who is confused, he can sense Reiko and sense that she’s feeling something but can’t understand what the emotion is. It’s something that no other of his kind has felt before. Sadness? Love? They never name what it is but we can assume that it’s probably one of these emotions.
The investigation team meets up with the dying detective and he tells them that Reiko is wearing white and carrying a baby. They try to press him for who his ‘partner’ in his report was. If he was human. The detective says that yes, he’s human and he’s lost everything to these parasites. That’s really nice to hear, considering an episode or two he was calling Shinichi inhuman.
So the investigation team spreads out and starts looking for Reiko, who meets up with Shinichi and thats where the episode wraps up.
Let’s be honest, we know she’s not going to make it through next episode and is going to ask Shinichi to take care of her child. What about Murano though, what will she learn? What will she see? How is her character arc going to continue. I’m generally interested in this, since she has the least to do with the parasites of everyone in the park.
Are there going to be more parasites like Reiko? Slowly becoming so human that they can feel other emotions and it will be hard to distinguish between who is a parasite and who is a human? I don’t even know anymore but what I do know is that I am totally hyped for what the rest of the series is going to look like with so many character arcs coming into their climaxes.
The largest hanging question in my mind is the purpose of the parasites. I am aware it has to do to some extent the fact that we are destroying the planet slowly but how are they supposed to help? Are they supposed to end the human race? Control us all into logical calculating people who would not destroy the earth? I don’t know, guess we’ll find out.
Next week, “More than Human.”, interesting title. Should be a good episode!
~Midnight