Gunslinger Stratos Ep 7 [ Dead End ]

The timekeepers are completely revealed this episode as the sands of degradation that Remy dissolved into take form – they have absorbed Tohru and for the first major part of the episode the result is a serious mindfuck of a dream. Come on Gunslinger your show is enough of a mindfuck without the rest of this shit. I gotta give this show this: the things we learn aren’t exactly making me feel it’s the best anime of all time, but I stay entertained and usually feel a connection to the characters.

One thing this episode really did was start to hammer home that I should care more about Tohru. I will admit even after the episode the guy is pretty bland and I usually prefer his white counterpart because while emotionally stunted, the guy does seem to have a better handle. Only thing is he never bothered to listen to the ghosts and instead blindly fights. Sorry white!Tohru, that kind of shit leads to your counterpart getting to be the true main character, woops.

We do learn that Tohru lost his parent’s in a car accident and we’re really starting to see just how vital his romance to Kyoka is. I’m standing behind that the purple haired ghost is his daughter, especially after this episode. Tohru is captured by the sand and when the delusions are done it seems they’re broken by the phrase ‘Help me’ in the book of his mind, a phrase set by the purple haired ghost.

What we learn this episode is a big one. We learn that ultimately the war does break out, but what resulted from it was an omnipotent power source that absorbed all that used it and all that fell to it. The sand itself was this power and it was dubbed “Dead End.” As it turns out the world came to an end because of this and was assimilated into ‘Dead End’. Eventually, once the worlds were destroyed Dead End returned to the past. Their collective consciousness is called the ‘Timekeepers’ and the purple haired ghost wanted to stop them.

Dead End’s goal? Well, they want to spare humanity the war and absorb them all into their consciousness, so all humanity will sleep forever and ultimately be ‘saved’. What the fuck are these people, Sailor Moon villains? Black Dreamhole much? That being said we see that an older version of the purple haired girl sent enough of her technology into the past in hopes to save them, and she provides a single hope. Together she and Tohru devise to use the energy cubes to connect to a time that does not lead to the Dead End.

The Timekeepers actually try to stop this because it might be the one way to stop Dead End, but it works and we see the ghost smile and say she’s sure she’ll see them in the future. Ghost daughter confirmed I win this round. I mean why else would they emphasize Kyoka so heavily if it wasn’t for the fact that their eventual daughter would become so important? Almost transparent there, anime.

I actually wanted to see more when this episode was over. I want to see what the ultimate energy cube might do for Tohru’s powers and I’m interested in learning more about the conflict. Might’ve been a bit early to play all the cards so I’m hoping for a little more. As usual, Gunslinger Stratos is full of surprises.

Oki