Last episode ended with a group breaking in and taking Max’s family captive. Jessica calls Max, or the people holding her hostage call and tell him to bring Ash or else. Ash and Max grab the guns and set out to go help his soon wife and son, they leave Shorter to take care of Eiji and Ibe. Not realizing that he’s being threatened into being a double agent. So as they set out, Ibe is drugged and Eiji is knocked out. Eiji completely knocked out so he is no more then a living doll at the moment and Ibe drugged to the point he can still hear everything being told to him. Yut tells him that Eiji is being brought to New York, that everyone should come back if they intend to get him.
Golzine wants Eiji so he can use him in the way that he used to use Ash. He would take him like that, because he found him lovely and because he knew it would hurt Ash to do it. Ibe also had to see Shorter betray them, but the thing is, Shorter made it clear how pained he was. He also swore to Ibe on his life that he wouldn’t allow them to lay a hand on Eiji.
Honestly, Shorter is really the hero of this episode. He protects Eiji at every turn, staying by his side even if it meant threatening to kill Eiji and himself to do it. Telling Arthur off, and calling him out for the lap dog he’s become and generally just being amazing. I can not stress how worried I am about him, we’ve already lost so many great characters and I feel like Shorter is going to be the next to go.
Meanwhile, we get some more insight into the goal that Golzine is headed towards. Which is basically striking a deal with the military and the US government to become the pinnacle of the underworld. We also meet the other Dawson brother, who explains the true nature of Banana Fish at last.
It clears up why the government and the military would be in on a drug like this. It’s so much more then a drug for assassinations as Golzine tried to pass it off as to the Lee family. It’s a drug that would make drug induced mind control 100% possible.
If someone under the influence of Banana Fish was told to kill immigrants, they would kill immigrants. Dawson portrays the effects of it as a living nightmare, it inflicts nightmares and fears and increases all nervous and paranoid feelings in the user.
Meanwhile, Yut is sent along with Shorter and Eiji to Golzine because the Lee family doesn’t believe that Golzine is being on the up and up with them. Yut has no intention of helping out his brothers though, they killed his mother and he will never forgive it.
So a lot of plot threads made their appearance in this episode. In the end of the episode, Dawson’s mansion is raided by the men who attacked Max’s family and after they capture everyone inside and get all the important information from the secret room. They burn the place to the ground.
I’m glad that Max’s family is alright. Though I think his wife might of been…sexually used by the men, his child seems like he was okay and I might be reading the signs wrong since everything is pretty vague. I’m kind of hoping i’m wrong, but at the very least nothing happened to Micheal and Jessica is alive. I am so nervous about the fate of Shorter. I am also nervous about the future for Eiji, but I have a little more confidence that things are going to work out for him. Who knows though, being a main character in a mafia story doesn’t grant you immunity. I’m still vaguely traumatized by 91 days…
We’ll see how things progress from here!