The first moment I knew something was wrong was when there was nothing before the opening credits. By a general rule of thumb, if up until a certain episode a anime has had part of the episode before the opening credits and you get to an episode where there is nothing before the opening credits. You know something is going to go wrong.
The same rule applies to episodes that don’t play the opening credits at all.
That aside, that was my first hint. Then I saw the episode title, “The promise I wanted to keep.” and I promptly flipped my laptop because I knew, I KNEW, there was nowhere good this episode could go with a title like that.
This episode did a variety of things for me, first off, it warmed me up to Michiru if only a little. Let’s start at the beginning, we pick up where we left off last episode with the black market guy talking to Souta. Asking him where Marcia is, she’s out shopping and the guy goes and stuns and kidnaps her. Now they have to go on a full out search and rescue mission, before twenty-four hours are up and Marcia becomes a wanderer.
However, they’re not the only ones called out on this. There is also R. Security, called in from the main headquarters as back up…and by back up. I mean, get in the way and be obnoxious as possible.
Now that I’ve got as far as R. Security I can dive into the back story and by that, I mean I can sob openly. Are you kidding? They had no reason to get involved. Kuzuki totally had that under control, and because of you, she got injured. Trigger happy nutjobs. I just, no child should ever have to see their father get shot up like that. It doesn’t matter if that father is a flesh and blood human or an android.
[props to the Seiyuu for a heart wrenching scream.]
Gah, so as the title promises, Tsukasa is not able to keep his promise to Souta to prevent Marcia from becoming a wanderer. Not only that, Souta somehow sneak past all of R. Security’s stuff and gets involved and nearly killed by the Giftia he loves so much. Honestly, you keep the people who should have authorization to do their jobs from getting into this Black Market hideout district but you can’t keep out a small civilian child? How useless ARE you R. Security?
Isla gets hurt as Marcia grabs Souta and runs away with him. However, she asks Tsukasa to help her so they can go capture Marcia themselves. Nobody on the retrieval team wanting the security company getting involved and gunning her down.
So Isla and Tsukasa find her, and they almost talk her down. However, then her memory snaps and Tsukasa to prevent her from strangling Souta. Fires a special virus program that will shut her down.
I think Isla took some of the blast. I’m not entirely sure, but i’m fairly sure that’s what the end of the episode implies. The very last thing we see is a cut to the duty roster and that Isla is not on duty. I hope she’s alright.
GAH, every week this show reaches a new level of absolutely heart breaking. The back story, the moment before Tsukasa fired and he thought about the happy events of last episode. This episode did however, introduce a lot of interesting concepts, along with make more sense of the names of the roles that they are given. I’m getting progressively worried about where this series is going though, with Isla’s time coming up.
The addition of R.Security to the plot. The concept of the virus program, and how wanderer’s act and will often try to murder the person that was closest to them when they had their memories.
[Marcia attacked Souta, Michiru’s dad attacked her.]
Is Isla going to become a wanderer? Is Tsukasa going to save her from that? I JUST, CAN’T HANDLE ALL THESE FEELINGS. Well anyway, for now I’m going to take episode 5, place it in a box labeled ‘Things that ruined me’ and drop it in a very deep hole and then crab walk away from it going “Nope, Nope, Nope.” -sobs openly-
~Midnight
I’m hoping the data destruction device doesn’t work EXACTLY the same on a Giftia who’s not become a Wanderer… I mean a stable Giftia would have “anti-virus” to combat the shot’s “virus”, whereas an unstable Wanderer, even a newly turned one, wouldn’t be able to combat the virus nearly as well due to its systems being out of sorts. Perhaps Isla will lose her memories and gain a fresh start..?
It could even be the key to solving the life-span issue. Just develop a “virus” that isolates their memories and then crashes all other systems, then reboot/reinstall/defrag and reinsert the memories? Look at me… trying to talk about technical topics and all. It’s just really strange that their memories can’t be put in a new body!
As for Souta getting in, I’d always hoped that even Wanderers could still display affection for their human companion(s) since the memories don’t vanish in an instant, but become increasingly twisted. With Marcia as powerful as she is, I wouldn’t doubt that she kept Souta safe as he was sneaking in.
Poor Marcia probably kept switching between the reality of protecting Souta from R. Security and then back to a memory of playing tag with him, hence running from him. Half of the time she’s choking him out of pain and an assortment of other horrible, uncontrollable feelings, she probably switches over to believing she’s hugging him.