Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge – 06

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Apparently being slapped through a window just wasn’t enough abuse for Kiri.

…Reading the manga, Dansai Bunri has left a bit out. Like, they explained that poison in Yamane’s syringe is super potent, but apparently she can use different liquids on herself too in order to enhance her abilities. Or the fact that Seiji needs absolute evidence before he can judge someone. …Oh, and they also shortened the pants of what Iwai is wearing this episode from biker shorts to bloomers for no reason whatsoever (other than the obvious reason of fanservice).

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Hint: If you hear a voice telling you to assault girls, you probably shouldn’t listen to it.

Well that was a twist. I really thought it was Romio in charge. Since, you know, he was the one to explain the history of the object, he signed his name on that creepy letter and he was the one holding the whip in the last episode. …Iwai actually commented on Kiri mysteriously being able to let go of the scissors in the manga, but even then that still had no explanation of why Romio could separate the thing from Ruka. I’m just going to assume that it’s an Author and Instead thing and that Kanae’s explanation had a lot of BS in there for dramatic effect. Since the Authors can’t get rid of Killing Goods rule seems to be broken every other episode. Anyways, this turn of events certainly makes sense too, since Ruka has made her problems with men clear and it makes more sense if she’s the one controlling these guys as opposed to Romio (plus it’s slightly less creepy that way if you think about it).

If you’re wondering why Ruka’s brainwashed henchmen absolutely sucked (other than the fact that having Killing Goods apparently automatically gives you superhuman reflexes), it’s because she can only give them simple tasks. …I’m not entirely sure as what constitutes as a simple task, but there you go. Also, her whole motivation over hating guys (since they never really went into that and you’d think that she’d hate girls after the incident) was because she thought that all they do is follow their base instincts. So basically, she thought that she lost the popularity contest because guys don’t have much going on in their heads and are easily swayed by pretty girls.

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I’m not entirely sure that her reasoning for going after Iwai was something the audience could sympathize with as well. She has a weird inferiority complex going on, which is understandable. However, of all things, it was caused seemingly by losing one popularity contest. I guess it was a soul crushing defeat since Romio also voted for the girl, but still. It’s kind of like how Kiri’s life was ruined by professional hairdressers. These Authors seem to take the slightest setbacks in life extremely seriously. Though maybe part of that desperation was also caused by happening upon the whip at the time, which empowered her at the time. If she was left alone without it, maybe she could have gotten over it eventually. I’m sure that wasn’t the only play Ruka could have ever participated in with a princess role.

…Kiri’s speech about Iwai being a normal girl in his eyes was nice and all, but that scene with Romio calling Iwai a monster just because he hair can’t be cut seems a little extreme. Yes, Iwai has a complex about her hair and that’s why the insult kind of worked. However, it seemed like on the same level as someone calling a double jointed person a monster. Iwai’s hair being uncuttable seems more like an inconvenience than anything else and he’s completely ignoring the fact that the person he hangs out with seriously needs to pretend to murder him once in a while so as to not loose her mind. But meh, details I guess.

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In the end though, the plot effectively turned Ruka and Romio’s characters into something touching though (where their backstory failed). As fetishized their relationship was, the moment Romio called Kiri an idiot for insulting Ruka’s hair, you just knew that they had something genuine in there. Ruka was just too immersed in her own problems to notice that she was actually number one, if only to Romio. They have a pretty nice relationship. …Despite the fact that they have the roles of sadist and masochist perfected. It’s like with Kiri and Iwai (or even Houichi and Hitomi from the one episode we saw them in) though, where neither seems to mind their role too much and really, they probably wouldn’t have it any other way.

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Speaking of Kiri and Iwai, wow. Iwai switched from being rather detached to wanting to monopolize Kiri’s hair cutting skills rather quickly. It felt like kind of a selfish switch for her to suddenly getting upset after blowing Kiri off (even if she didn’t mean it as such). Plus, after that she immediately still wanted to see other people as opposed to Kiri alone. …On one hand, I still get it since a relatively short time ago, she had no friends, but just like she doesn’t exclusively belong to Kiri, he doesn’t belong to her either with that mindset. ….Even if he’s under a slap-induced state of hypnosis. The last episode was great for Iwai’s independence, but I don’t think I’d be so annoyed with this turn of events if it wasn’t Iwai’s selfishness that brought him back, and if she hadn’t gone back to how she was acting before the whole thing immediately after. She realized on some level that Kiri was special, but other than that one moment, she doesn’t seem to have given a second thought to it. Oh well, I’m just going to attribute this to her emotional immaturity. Like how she didn’t quite think about how Kiri would react to her words about him being convenient to have around, she probably hasn’t had enough human interaction to realize what this whole episode looked like. All she was thinking was that something was wrong with Kiri, something felt wrong about the thought of him cutting Ruka’s hair and there was nothing she could really do but shout her frustrations. Then Kiri saved her, all was right with the world again, and Iwai could go back to living life as normal without worries.

It looks like Seiji and Kouzakura’s relationship might have more to it as well. We knew that she was desperately trying to stop him from killing people, but I never thought that Seiji would actually listen to her if she yelled enough. I guess either the sound of her voice stopped his killing high, or somewhere deep down, he does respect Kouzakura a bit. At first, I thought Seiji’s logic seemed like it was all over the place. Apparently it doesn’t matter if it was for defending Iwai and that Kiri didn’t actually kill Romio, I guess cutting people is still cutting people to Seiji. Though after a bit of thought, cutting an unarmed person (or cutting anyone really) IS illegal, so Seiji being objective makes sense here. How is he supposed to know that Kiri isn’t being brainwashed by the scissors? And what Ruka was doing was kind of mild compared to Kiri (I mean, dumbing it down a lot, it was basically her slapping people, compared to needlessly making Romio look one cut away from the Joker), which is why I assume that Seiji went after Kiri instead. And anyways, who’s to say that Kiri might have just been rendered unconscious? It was in Iwai’s defence that he went after Romio. Though of course, that’s not really something you’d want to wait and find out about, hence the struggling.


So yeah, I’ve read the manga up to where it’s been translated and I like the extra lines and details that it has in there. …I think I’ll stay away from the raws for now though since I have a feeling it will be a kanji nightmare (if the character names and the fact that the series seems to like throwing terms everywhere is any indication). Despite the ending being kind of all over the place, I really liked this arc. …Er, mostly because of the end bit with Ruka and Romio, so I guess you can just say that I liked the ending of this arc. Things seemed to have resolved themselves rather peacefully considering that Seiji was ready to kill Kiri and Ruka could have been a target for Seiji as well, but it looks like he’ll back off for now. …For a show about murderers, there have been very few actual murders. But that’s okay since the characters are pretty interesting.

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Iwai’s haircuts of the week are interesting as well~

About

University student and the one at Metanorn who's known for wearing glasses. Likes blood, insanity and plot twists, but also plays otome games and adores cute romance anime. It balances out... somehow.
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23 Responses to “Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge – 06”

  1. Highway says:

    I didn’t care for the fact that twice in this episode, Iwai used the “I said that but I didn’t mean it that way!” walkback on the things that made Kiri upset. To me, that’s something that she needs to get a handle on, and if she doesn’t mean it that way, she shouldn’t say it that way. Even if it’s embarrassing to say it the way you mean it, that’s what you should do, because dealing with other people requires it (and dang, I wish the rest of the people in the world would learn this as well).

    I thought Seiji’s beef with Kiri this time was that Kiri enjoyed it too much. So even if he didn’t kill Romio or Ruka, he was still ‘guilty’ of something that Seiji felt was a capital offense (his standards are quite a bit lower than mine for that).

    I actually find Ruka’s power to be far more immoral than Kiri’s. The morality of Kiri’s use of Crime Edge depends on the circumstances in which it’s used. In defense of himself, his loved ones, and even other innocents, it becomes morally acceptable. If he were to go outside of those constraints it would be a lot more questionable. Ruka’s power, on the other hand, robs others of their volition, of their sovereignty, and imposes her own on top, something I find morally reprehensible and unacceptable in all cases. They physical attack is less damaging, but the overall attack is far worse.

    Thanks for the opportunity to talk about this stuff! 🙂

    • Karakuri says:

      I didn’t like that either, but they’ve made Iwai’s character pretty naive about things. There are just some parts of social interaction that she doesn’t quite have a handle on, but at least she’s getting better (or at least, I can’t think of any future misunderstandings like this from what I’ve read). I do think it works with her character being a previous shut in though.

      Eh, I wouldn’t have pinned Kiri as having liked cutting people. Though that might be because in the manga, there was an extra explanation where all of the Authors have a basic desire that they want to fulfill no matter what. For Ruka, it was ruling. For Kiri, he will do anything to cut Iwai’s hair. Romio got in his way (and Romeo was physically pinning Kiri down before he cut him), so I didn’t see it as Kiri enjoying fighting so much as trying to save Iwai.

      I have to agree with the robbing others of their wills is worse. However, from Seiji’s point of view, Ruka didn’t use the innocents to fight Kiri (other than Romio, but that was his own choice) and Kiri’s leaves way more obvious injuries. …I really don’t think Kiri was hurting anyone who didn’t deserve it, so that part of the post is me trying to figure out why Seiji ignored Ruka.

      • Highway says:

        I don’t think Kiri enjoyed it either, but then we are also talking about ‘Killing Goods’ with influence over the minds of their wielders, such that even if he doesn’t enjoy it now, it could become something that he does enjoy…

  2. Highway says:

    Mentioning the relationship between Romio and Ruka, isn’t the perfect couple the S and the M who understand each other’s limits?

    • skylion says:

      From my understanding, it takes a considerable deal of patience and tolerance. It views the ingredients to love play as the important part, rather than how the cake turns out…which is how most men see it.

  3. Liza says:

    I was not expecting the turn around with Ruka being the Author and Romio being the Instead. 0_0 Woah. Then what in the world was going on in the scene from the last episode? >_> Why was Romio using the whip?

    Iwai annoyed me a bit when she was screaming at Kiri for cutting Ruka’s hair. Like really girl…you know he is being mind controlled. You were able to not blame him for anything he did before but cutting somone’s hair under mind-control is a no-no? 0_o

    • Highway says:

      I thought that was actually pretty good. There’s a visceral level below the intellectual, and that connection between Kiri and Iwai is on that level. So while she was able to abstract his other behavior, that one is something she felt should be sacrosanct.

      I thought the description by Kiri of the mind control was good. That he knew it was ‘wrong’, but he couldn’t really fight it.

      • Sushi says:

        I feel that visceral is a good word to describe the themes of this show. I mean so much of it is about actual sensations and emotions rather than philosophical or intellectual. The reason I love this show is that it’s so absorbed in its own logic and refuses to back away from the taboo. Even though what you seem wrong, it feels oddly at home in this story.

    • Karakuri says:

      I was surprised as well! …Er, well I guess it never really showed who was handling the whip (other than Romio poking Ruka with it), so she could have been the one holding it in the end of that scene. I’m sure they were trying to throw us off.

      I think she just felt that Ruka’s hair being cut by Kiri was wrong on some level and started freaking out. Kind of like how characters in a harem anime will get jealous of the guy hanging out with other girls even before they recognize their feelings and such. ….Or basically, what Highway said.

      • skylion says:

        .Or basically, what Highway said

        This should be on one of Metanorn’s banners….

        • Highway says:

          LOL!

          Oh man, blushing again!

          • skylion says:

            blushing again!

            Nah, banner this..

            • BlackBriar says:

              Keep it up, you two. Anaaga is probably brainstorming as to how to turn this into a BL story.

            • skylion says:

              You know, I keep hearing that hammer getting cocked, waiting for the trigger to get pulled…

            • BlackBriar says:

              The question is: What are you going to do when the trigger is finally pulled?

            • skylion says:

              I’ll dance like my life depends on it…

            • Highway says:

              I’d suspect there are worse people to be shipped with. It’s also something that’s entirely fantastical.

            • skylion says:

              There is always better! And never underestimate the power of a good fantasy…

  4. sonicsenryaku says:

    yea most of these authors take the lost of their interests to the extreme, to the point that it seems silly, but remember that must of them are being driven by the killing goods. They all (well mostly Kiri) have a large case of obsessive-compulsive disorder so they take their obsessions very seriously

    • Sushi says:

      That’s where the beauty of Crime Edge lies. It wants to explore what would happen if our desire ran wild. For most Authors, their weapon is a manifestation of their darkest obsessions. The Killing Goods become a vehicle in which they can express them.

      The show makes a point to say that the Goods themselves warp the user. But upon close examination of the characters we can see this to be true. Before they found their Goods we found key aspects of their personalities suppressed. Unlocking them has cause a torrent of those pent up emotions to come spilling out.

    • Karakuri says:

      My point above, Ruka seemed like she was really desperate before she found the pet whip though. Without it, she might have gotten over things, but she found it at a bad time in her life.

  5. BlackBriar says:

    Nice curveball with Ruka turning out to be the true Author. I knew something was off the way she talked about guys yet she allowed herself to be controlled. She wanted attention from people but it’s an empty win if done by restricting the free will of others. Instead, you’d be surrounded by an army of dolls and still end up being alone so her actions contradict her desire.

    Even if it was to protect Iwai, Kiri’s volitile side is taking over with him willingly leaving the door wide open. Severing tendons on the body became a normal thing but cutting someone at their mouth is taking things another step further. The only character I know coming close to doing that was Senjougahara in Bakemonogatari. He needs to be careful from here on or he’ll fall into a trap for that hypocrite Seiji.

    Seiji is eventually going to get his in the end. My first thoughts were that Ruka and Romio acted on their own but if he has the nerve of setting them up so he can have the pleasure of killing, then he’s no different from any other Author. The way he goes about things is like a lawyer exploiting a loophole.

    • Sushi says:

      I think Kiri is aware that he is headed down a dark path, but he has Iwai to reel him back. To him she is the incorruptible force in his life that can righten his course when he is set astray. This episode even showcased that. Even though he was brainwashed by the power of Killing Goods, he was able to overcome it because of his love for Iwai. She supplements his own will to protect her and be with her. She can prevent him from becoming a monster that deserves to killed.

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