Phi Brain – 04

Kaito’s bird-theme katamari was coming along nicely.

Whenever I feel bad about homework, I am just glad there isn’t a giant bus hovering over my head in case I don’t finish on time. Phi Brain is the sort of show that can approach any crappy day and axe kick it in its noggin. It’s hard not to be cheered up after watching a show about understanding the feelings of puzzles set to addictive techno songs like BRAIN DIVER. When that single comes out, by god, the neighbours will hate me.

Jikugawa is indulging in his favourite hobby of watching Kaito. He doesn’t notice the juicebox-sipping weasel until he’s done with his flashback of making a promise with his childhood to trust puzzles and not people. Following this trend, Kaito reluctantly agrees to solve another deathly puzzle because hey! Gotta trust dem puzzles! The catch this time is that he’s been assigned a specific partner to solve the puzzle.

Kaito doesn’t want a partner when he already has a violent tomboy and a face-contorting weirdo tagging along, so he goes to the art room to meet this “Da Vinci” girl and tell her to just stay home. Convincing her that he should go alone isn’t quite so easy though. She’s either too busy being covered in birds, stripping, being oddly prodigious at recognizing paintings and their respective artist, or just basically overheating from trying to comprehend Kaito’s arguments against her getting in his way.

The fire of jealousy are raging in Nonoha’s heart. I guess she’s not actually his girlfriend yet, so she doesn’t like the idea of Kaito being all alone with her while she’s playing baseball. Kaito doesn’t seem impressed with the airhead though, so I’m pretty sure Nonoha has nothing to worry about. Back to BUSINESS (that is, puzzles), Kaito and Da Vinci arrive at a mansion where the puzzle is to be solved. The owner was a famous painter, and Da Vinci is a big fan of his works. However, they’re greeted by a tsun-tsun old lady instead of the painter.

After a slew of insults, she finally asks them to open the safe to her husband’s treasure so she can sell the mansion. He died in a plane crash, but she doesn’t seem the least bit affected by his death. It’s all a bit sketchy, but they agree to do it for the sake of puzzles and perhaps finding out what the treasure is. The butler opens a secret room that has a safe and paintings on the wall. Secret room ALWAYS means that a door will shut if you walk into it, but I guess no one told Kaito and Da Vinci that.

This week’s POG Giver is Sebastian, and he dares them to try and solve the puzzle his master had him build. The catch? Gas is slowly filling up the room. Without using his armlet, Kaito carefully scans the room and spots a pattern in the frames of the pictures. He takes all of the paintings down with Da Vinci, leaving 3 paintings on one wall that are permanently stuck there. This is where the real puzzle begins – finding a pattern between all the different frames.

Hmmm, wonder if I could slip this under his shirt on the way out…

After a long pause, he finally figures out where each painting should go so that each edge of the frame matches the painting next to it. It’s not long before they have everything neatly hanged up on one wall. The problem now is…how the hell does this translate to a number code to open a safe? Da Vinci haphazardly starts spouting the names of all the painters, which gives Kaito a eureka moment. All of the painters are grouped in columns by the first initial of the painter’s name!

Except letters aren’t numbers so this doesn’t work. Derp. There are probably a ton of possible codes to transfer letter to numbers, so they can’t just guess at random. The clock in the room chimes, which gives Kaito yet another revelation. Roman numerals. The clock is in roman numerals. Back in the time of using roman numerals, larger numbers were shortened to things like D and M, which means all of the initials can be changed into numbers. When the numbers all add up, you get 1655 – the correct number to open the safe!

The vault opens to reveal yet another room full of paintings. Much to the wife’s surprise, they’re all paintings he has done of her from both when she was young and in her current, more wrinkly state. She recalls how the two of them met in his studio (room number 1655) and fell in love. Despite her harsh words at the beginning, she really did love him. The butler drops the cold, calculating persona as well and tells them the gas was innocuous. I guess not all Givers are psychopaths, hmm?

I didn’t forget about Nonoha, don’t worry. While Kaito solved puzzles, Nonoha dragged Galileo to the mansion to try and spy on him. It’s no painfully obvious that Galileo has a huge crush on Nonoha, as he acted as her slave for the entire day, letting her stand on his back and shoulders to try to peer through the windows. They don’t see anything, so they give up and just walk home with Kaito and Da Vinci once the puzzle is done.

Ouch.

Did we mention Da Vinci is a trap? Well, Da Vinci IS A TRAP. He’s just a feminine boy who likes wearing dresses and kissing other boys on the cheek. No big deal. If that isn’t enough insanity before the episode ends, how about seeing afro man naked in a bath tub? Not enough? How about afro man naked in a bath tub in the middle of a room that’s 50% windows? Hope you enjoyed this week’s Phi Brain, folks…

….YEP.

Secret Screencap Vault:

“ARRGGHHH DO NOT WANT! …I think…wait, do it again so I can figure this out.”

Thank goodness they let me keep my motorcycle after they kicked me out of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5DS!

😀

Do your puzzles every day kids and you too can have indestructible eyeballs like Kaito

End Thoughts: I just…I…Phi Brain is……just….WOWWWWWW. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to write coherently about this show, because it is just so absurd. Once again, Kaito is “tricked” into solving more puzzles by Jikugawa far too easily. Kaito needs to sort out his priorities so that solving puzzles to show you’re smart and continuing to exist aren’t competing so closely for importance. The reason puzzles seem to rank so highly is not just an unfortunate side effect of living in a puzzle-obsessed society, but he actually has a dark past with puzzles. A dark past. with puzzles. Did they beat him up? Did they call him name or forget to tuck him in at night? Did they take his virginity? I’m not really sure why he’s so hung up on puzzles or why Da Vinci saying he secretly hates them has such a strong impact on him. His childhood friend who looks like a dandelion puff seems to be part of this aversion for puzzles. Perhaps he betrayed Kaito somehow (with something involving puzzles no doubt) and now he’s bitter when he has to solve a puzzle? Whatever the case, I can’t wait for this ludicrous sob story to be revealed. I’ll be laughing the entire time.

I can’t wait to see afroman (I know he has a name, shhh) next episode. As for this week’s “character of the week,” we meet Da Vinci. Of course, he’s a trap. They just had to make him a trap for NO REASON except to have him kiss Kaito and make him blush. So Kaito doesn’t even blink at Nonoha, but he’s prone to becoming a tomato when another fella gives him a quick peck? I hope this becomes a theme. I want crack pairings to make this show even better. Aside from being a trap, Da Vinci is actually a pretty cool character. He’s as off-kilter as the rest of the cast, but his ditziness actually isn’t annoying. It’s almost refreshing to see him like that when everyone else is so uptight about PUZZLE PUZZLES PUZZLES or RESEARCH RESEARCH RESEARCH. A man in a dress flouncing about and stripping every now and then is just what this show needs to balance it all out.

Da Vinci is useful too. Kaito totally couldn’t have solved that puzzle without him. I really like these multi-part puzzles where you have to go through multiple steps and deductions before arriving at the final answer. Kaito actually spending time thinking was a nice addition too. Instead of just showing us the puzzle and having him solve it in a flash, there’s that tense moment of watching him think. If there’s a clever way to keep that time, and let us see the pictures as he thinks, they should do it. I would have totally paused and tried to arrange them all if I could. This week’s puzzle was a good one that was well thought out…and NOT sudoku bullshit. YES!

Preview: The puzzle solving group takes a plane ride to their next puzzle challenge! Wow, it must be serious. The again, they might just REALLY like puzzles. Their opponent this time appears to be Kaito’s childhood friend – I-HAVE-A-BABY-SHEEP-ON-MY-HEAD!

About Overcooled

A neuroscience graduate, black belt, and all-around nerd. You'll either find me in my lab or curled up in my rilakkuma kigurumi watching anime.