Phi Brain – 03

Science: the ultimate form of swag

I really hope all of our site issues have been resolved. For a while I could barely load screencaps into my posts and couldn’t load a draft if I had to save my life. Thankfully, things seem to be back to normal. Whew, I don’t have to be super late with my posts. What ever would I do if I couldn’t share my rantings about Phi Brain to the world?!

Kaito complained to the principal about the whole DEATH penalty for not solving puzzles, and tells them he wants to quit. They bribe him with the fee of the destroyed antique car, and manage to persuade him not to call the police or anything. With the issue still unresolved, Kaito leaves the office and bumps into a rather smug looking kid from the middle school division.

He introduces himself as Edison, yet another genius, and pesters Kaito to follow him to his wonderful research lab. He preaches of the wonders of research as opposed to sitting in a corner and playing Professor Layton all day. Kaito is not swayed by his attempt to bring him over to the dark side where he might produce results that are actually useful to society, and simply ignores the brat. Where persuasion doesn’t work, there’s always mind-controlling bracelets, though!

On the bus home, Kaito receives a puzzle challenge. As he tries to solve it, his head starts to ache. Whenever he tries to think, the bracelet somehow causes his brain to ache. Which means he must not do a whole lot of thinking other than puzzles. Hmm. Luckily Galileo is stalking them and solves the puzzle himself. He happily prances off to meet the Solver and get the treasure. Forgetting about his speech vowing to never risk his life for a stupid puzzle again, he RUNS after Galileo to get there first.

Urggg, my douchebag senses are being overloaded!

An aging man gives them another sudoku-like puzzle, but it has vowels (well, katakana vowels) in some of the squares. Before they can solve it, Edison appears and decides to make the puzzle harder for them by deleting a few numbers. It doesn’t matter that they only have 16 minutes or else the city will explode, because he has to prove that PUZZLES ARE DUMB. Kaito and Galileo somehow manage to solve the modified puzzle, which once again uses the same 01=a 02=b etc. etc. pattern to signify that phase 2 of the puzzle is in the park. Once they get there, a new grid appears.

Each area of the park has been built specifically so it represents a certain number. They must enter all the numbers correctly on the grid to win. Having no choice but to explore manually, they all split up and look for clues. Dude was REAL THOROUGH and installed listening devices/speakers everywhere so he could tell them whether they’re right or wrong. After a long period of searching, Edison tells them to give up so the old man can call it a day. Too bad he really intends to blow up his precious city.

The greatest puzzle of this show: how Galileo’s face does these…THINGS.

With only a few minutes left, Kaito activates his Phi Brain powers and rushes back to enter the numbers. He draws a grid on the park, and enters the numbers they found out through searching. The rest of the numbers, he deduces through calculations since the whole thing is a magic square. He solves it, they win a pretty sunset as their prize, and Edison is less of a douche than before. The end~

Bonus Puzzles:

Hmm, I have to choose girls or puzzles? Let me think abou-PUZZLES.

Rooftop confession….not quite what you expected.

Fact: a Galileo can expand its head 3x the size to ward off predators when it is threatened.

Argg it hurts! I hope I am not suddenly tied up after this with conveniently appearing rope for no real reason!

End Thoughts: Where do I even begin? This show is just…everything I loved about Yu-Gi-Oh! bundled into one crazy show. When you revolve absolutely everything around something trivial like children’s card games or brain teasers, things inevitably become lulz-inducing (to put it in the most scientific of terms). All of the Givers thus far have been so totally obsessed with puzzles that they’re 100% okay with murdering a few high school students or blowing up an entire portion of the city to keep their puzzle in the legendary “unsolved” category. I’m pretty sure if your main goal is to get someone to solve a God-like puzzle, threatening your potential candidates with death isn’t a very productive strategy. There are so many logic issues with this show that it has become THAT show. The one you laugh at, not with. And it’s incredibly fun! I don’t think there’s any other show I actually ENJOY writing the summary for.

Myriad of strange anime logic aside, this episode is probably my favourite so far. That’s not saying much since there’s only 3 out right now, but this week’s puzzle was on a much bigger scale than usual. It had multiple parts and involved more than just staring at a touchscreen and doing math. I liked this way more than the car-sliding puzzle. My one puzzle-complaint…too much math. If it’s a non-math puzzle, I will actually pause the show and try to solve it myself. But I hate sudoku and magic squares, so forget that. But other than my desire to solve puzzles, it was a good mix of action and number-crunching. Who would’ve thought Nonoha would be a useful sidekick?! I love how she has her own specific talents that come into play when the other two overlook simple solutions. Nonoha is really growing on me, although I don’t think I can say the same for Edison…

Edison was the character we were supposed to be introduced to this episode, but he didn’t really do much except be a massive prick and RUIN EVERYTHING. I originally had him pegged as the most sober character of the show, seeing as he dedicated his high IQ to research instead of scouring newspapers for sudoku. Then I realized he gets around on a shape-shifting robot, and the illusion was shattered. He’s a pushy, arrogant, narrow-minded kid who tries to enforce his own thoughts on Kaito. There’s a chance the city could blow up, and he’s still convinced that keeping his crazyass bracelet on Kaito is a good idea. Kid..just…NO, YOU DON’T DO THAT. I liked when he ate some humble pie at the end and started to praise and even admire Kaito. Everyone kind of hates him or just tolerates him so far, it’d be nice to see someone genuinely adore him. I don’t dig the whole “I must study you~” aspect though. Can there be any normal relationships in this show?

Preview: We get to meet the cheery, airhead chick (the “Hanazawa Kana” staple character…minus HanaKana) in the next episode. Also, art puzzles with deadly traps and Nonoha to the rescue.

I may or may not have to diagnose her with ADHD