I feel like this episode of Endride answered most if not all of the remaining questions I think most viewers (including myself) had with the series. Namely, what the hell is going on with the Warp Particles??
We finally got our answer: Asanaga is siphoning off the Warp Particles from Endora to better life for humans on the surface. Warp Particles help better the environment and reduce pollution apparently, so he’s going to continue to steal Endora’s Warp Particles until the inner world eventually collapses, taking everyone with it. And yes you read that right: Shun’s sociopathic father has no problem with killing Endora’s entire civilization in order to take their Warp Particles. Wow, what a dickbag.
Naturally Shun is still having a hard time adjusting to the knowledge that his father is a killer, and that he’s delibrately hurting Endora in order to take something which was never his to begin with. Emilio does his best to try to cajole Shun into basic activities and taking care of himself, but he also proves a good judge of when to give Shun some space to figure out the stuff in his head.
Back in Endora, we finally get an update on the Ignauts. They’ve realized that Shun and Emilio are missing, and know that the last place they were seen was going into the lower dungeons. Eljuia offers to use his family’s special perception ability to find out more information about the missing Warp Particles.
In the Royal Laboratory, Joseph, Pascal and Rodney have found a new way to recover information from documents which are extremely faded with age. They have lots of volumes of notes to go through in their search for more information about Warp Particles.
Emilio attempts to see Asanaga at his office building, and nearly gets himself kicked out. However Asanaga intervenes and brings Emilio up to his office, where he holds the prince at gunpoint while he answers some of Emilio’s questions. Specifically that yes he did kill Alzerm (because he felt Alzerm wasn’t a good king), and yes he does love Shun (as much as he is capable of loving another person) despite Shun not being blood-related to him. Asanaga says that as long as Emilio does not interfere in his relationship with his son, he will not hurt Emilio.
Emilio returns to Shun’s home where he updates Shun on the confrontation he had with Asanaga. Emilio says that he was never able to make peace with Delzaine in the end, and he doesn’t want to see Shun repeat his mistake by hating his own father.
While Eljuia meditates for his ritual, Pascal and Joseph inform the Ignauts on how Shun was able to travel between Endora and the surface: a little blue stone called a parinblue. Asanaga has one inside himself, and after finding one such stone in Asanaga’s office at the beginning of the series, Shun does too. The stones are examples of some mysterious super-technology that Shun’s mother Makiko discovered, but its origins are unknown.
Between Pascal, Joseph and Asanaga, more information about the parinblue is revealed. We learn that the parinblues are activated by intense emotions such as anger, fear, passion, or even just an intense curiousity. *cough*Shun*cough* As long as Shun has the parinblue, theoretically he (and Emilio if they’re together) can travel between the surface and Endora.
Shun’s father doesn’t just boldly admit to not caring if he kills everyone on Endora, he goes one step further to guilt Shun over the medical bills his family paid to get him treatment as a child. Asanaga claims that if he’d never used Endora’s Warp Particles in his research and made all the money he did, he would’ve never been able to afford Shun’s medical bills.
As the situation heats up and Shun starts to yell at Asanaga, Shun’s parinblue is activated and he and Emilio are transported back to Endora. In the moments before the two youth are teleported away, Asanaga’s shown to be somewhat unhinged. He points a gun at Shun and says he doesn’t want to kill his son, whom he supposedly loves to dearly, but he clearly wants to shoot Emilio for the changes he inspired in Shun.
However now Shun and Emilio are in something of a tricky situation. If Endora is going to collapse because Asanaga’s draining all the Warp Particles, then Shun and Emilio will die too. Asanaga may not have to kill them with a bullet but instead just continue doing what he’s doing and then all of his problems will go away. His “precious son” wouldn’t be around anymore, but it’s obvious that he’s not capable of loving Shun anyways, at least not in the way a parent would ordinarily love their child.
In the final moments, Emilio and Shun land back on Endora in the middle of a battle between Ignauts and Ibelda!
My thoughts: I’m really glad that Endride hasn’t forgotten all of its remaining plot threads and is working to tie them all together. I’m also happy that we got more information about the loss of Warp Particles, and that it was explained clearly.
Now that Shun and Emilio are back on Endora, will Asanaga continue with his plans? Will Shun and Emilio be able to stop him from Endora? At the end of this adventure, will Shun lose his parinblue for good and be unable to return to Endora? If there is even an Endora left?