So, it seems that Nozomi is really dead. Although no one saw her body land at the bottom of the gorge, it’s assumed no one could survive that fall. I am still holding out a sliver of hope that she might reappear in the last episode, but that’s the eternal optimist in me.
Mizuho and Nagara put together a little makeshift memorial for Nozomi. Mizuho finds a music box with a compartment inside where they can put little mementos of Nozomi. They text out an invitation to their other classmates who are adrift somewhere in space-time, but no one shows up to the ceremony.
The memorial ends with Nagara and Mizuho putting Nozomi’s box on a little boat and sending it out into the ocean. They sit on the beach together and Mizuho cries. I was a little surprised that Nagara seemed to show no emotion, but that’s explained a bit later.
The next day, a wonderful surprise – Rajdhani returns! Omg yay! 2,000 years have passed since he left the Island world, and he’s changed a bit. He’s got a parrot companion with him now plus he seems wiser somehow.
Rajdhani has decided to remain on the Island world and not return to his human world, but he will help and support Nagara and Mizuho in their decision to leave. Apparently only two years will have passed back in the real world, and in Nozomi’s case she could even be dead after she returns (as seen in the episode where they were “copied” into a version of their home in another world). Although of couse, the latter no longer matters as she’s supposedly dead in War’s world. Nozomi’s theory about potentially being dead back home is shown as a flashback in a conversation with Nagara.
Also it was very surprising to me was that it was apparently an easy thing for Nagara and Mizuho to return home – fly a rocket into space! With the way Sonny Boy’s episodes and plot have been structured, I feel a little disappointed that the solution was so easy. Or alternately, that the solution came from nowhere. Again, I wish Sonny Boy had more continuity in its episodes and more information given. For example, how did Rajdhani know that the solution was to go to space? How did he know that only two years have passed back home? Sonny Boy feels like an animation short of a horse running, except only the main frames have been animated and it’s up to the viewer to fill in the gaps on their own.
The space flight is assembled via the cats copying real-world items from back home. In this case, they’ve copied the parts for the rocket that was used to take humans to the moon for the first time. And Rajdhani has some kind of special “gel gun” that can materialize parts from goo, plus some other handy tools that are accelerating the group’s ability to build a fricking rocket from scratch.
As the trio prep for the upcoming space flight, Rajdhani tells Mizuho and Nagara about some of his travels. To Mizuho, Rajdhani described one world he found that was run by a man consumed by his memories. He painted pictures of his girlfriend and the world he’d come from, but they turned out to be idealized visions of what he remembered. His girlfriend was never that pretty, and his home city, a place Rajdhani was actually familiar with, looked different from how Rajdhani remembered it.
To Nagara, Rajdhani tells of a world he found with fasters on it. People who didn’t eat meat or plants because they were trying to keep their minds and bodies “spotless.” Why? Because they were supposedly the children of God. The world was very advanced. What was unusual about it was there there was one person on the fringe of that world who was obsessed with dying. He wanted to invent “death.” Sound familiar yet? Rajdhani doesn’t ever give the name of this student, but I had the feeling from the images shown and Rajdhani’s description that it was either Asakaze or Hoshi. Remember that both students are off in space-time somewhere, traveling with the other students and with Ms. Aki, respectively. And if 2,000 years have passed for the other students as they have for Rajdhani, then Hoshi or Asakaze could’ve evolved into anyone.
Rajdhani says that this student did finally succeed in creating “death” by killing himself using a machine of his own invention. Rajdhani was able to find the machine and it looked like a mini electrical chair, the kind used to execute criminals. Rajdhani admits that he was tempted to sit down in the device, but in the end he chose not to.
The information Rajdhani provides about his travels and the differences he’s started noticing in himself are intriguing. Rajdhani says that after living for so long, there’s something about a person that grows more and more “irregular.” As that lifetime continues to grow, individual meanings become more diluted because everything sorta blends together. Over more time, those differences will result in a large, “gaping hole” in Rajdhani’s consciousness.
Speaking of which, Rajdhani says to Nagara that there is no such thing as a soul. Furthermore, the human consciousness is born for no reason, then fades away at the end of its cycle. But because it’s meaningless, there is beauty in the brilliance of that person’s being.
As he is now, Rajdhani says that he notices himself growing more and more apathetic over time. As his lifetime in space-time continues, those changes will get worse until finally he ends up in a static state like Nozomi has (dead). If I’m misunderstanding his words, please feel free to gently correct me down in the comments.
Rajdhani goes on to tell Nagara that Nozomi isn’t ever coming back; her consciousness is gone. This admission hits Nagara like a book to his face and it’s immediately clear that Nagara had been avoiding thinking of Nozomi as being permanently gone. After all, he’d been growing closer to her and they had even promised to be friends again if one of them remembered the other after returning to the real world. Now Nagara will never be able to act on that promise because Nozomi is dead. Later after dark, Nagara is finally able to cry and grieve for the loss of his friend.
As the space flight approaches, there is some sadness to the situation. We already know Rajdhani is willingly choosing to stay behind, but Mizuho’s beloved cats also have to remain behind too, and Yamabiko as well. Sad panda face. T_T
As the credits roll, Nagara and Mizuho successfully enter space. They stand on their ship and look out at the world, then use a magnet-gun to pull themselves up towards a long tube with a bulb on the end. Once inside they’re able to take off their glass helmets. In a way Nozomi is with them as well, since her compass was made into a watch.
We briefly see God in what looks like an office (maybe inside the tube?), so I’m hoping there will be a long conversation with him next episode that explains a bunch of stuff I’ve been curious about.
One more episode to go! I was excited for Sonny Boy in the first half but as the plot got more convoluted and I started missing certain details, I’ve been a bit more blah about it. I kinda just want to get some answers and not have to watch it anymore.
