Mekakucity Actors 07-09

Medetashi medetashi… Not.

Whoa, you mean Mekakucity Actors actually continued the same storyline between two episodes? Amazing. Anyways, as Kyo says, we were busy for a bit. But hey, we’re back now and kind of on time, so there’s something.

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Aaaah, apologies for late post but well, both of us had some marathons to deal with, that is Otoge for Kara and Game of Thrones for me. Yeah yeah, cute boys and incessant killings are something we are into and no one can do anything about it.(~>ω>)~ Anyways, back to the crazy kids who are almost nearing the point of figuring things out about the crazy world they live in. Yes, things are finally taking shape.

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Hey, they did keep in the romance subplot. Yaaay. Now we can all feel bad that Takane died just minutes after deciding that she wanted to finally tell Haruka that she loved him. They left a big part of Tateyama’s involvement in there at the time, but from what they finally revealed in episode 9, it’s probably safe to say that yes, Tateyama had a h-u-g-e part in what happened to Ene and Haruka. It’s actually kind of surprising that Ene’s body is still around, considering how I thought the plot went, but we’re long past where my knowledge of the novels goes. Maybe this happened in there too, or maybe this is the part where Jin deviates from his other works. In either case though, this definitely explains why there’s a certain image of Ene/Takane in the final PV.

…And now we can also feel bad that Haruka’s last thoughts there were about Takane, and maybe if she had gotten around to her confession, it might have worked out for the two of them. Maybe it still can, since Konoha is still around, and Ene definitely remembers him. I figured the two of them would have met back in the Kaien Panzermast episode (since the instrumental had Asumi Kana talking about wanting to meet “that person”). Plus, maybe it also wouldn’t work out (or at least at the moment) since Ene has to be careful about Shintaro’s mental state for a pretty good reason. There were some images from the Lost Time Memory PV and a certain scene in the manga shown in episode 8, but I’m not entirely sure how they’re going to tie in that part with what’s going on with the plot now.

Overall though, Takane seemed to accept her transformation a just little better than Haruka did (or maybe that was because there wasn’t really any audio to that part). I know I said that the “Headphone Actor” thing in the last episode was probably just a depiction of what Takane went through mentally, but I thought about a bit more in terms of the series as a whole, and maybe there was more meaning to it than that… In both cases though, there was the involvement of a totally new character, who’s shown briefly in the OP. While they had her talk to Haruka through his transformation, they completely cut out what she told Takane in hers. Though I can see why, since this makes this character’s alignment a bit more ambiguous. She’s important to pretty much everything going on, but if she’s going to be helpful to the other characters or not seems like it’s not going to be revealed until later. She did give Haruka a healthy body, but he wasn’t exactly pleased about it. And then there was the whole part of him now being empty and without his memories…

Though saying that she’s “new” is kind of a lie, because she’s been in the episodes all along. From the silhouettes and some of the stills from this episode, maybe you could tell that she’s the “monster” who’s story has been told at the end of the episodes. They went through her and her husband’s story pretty damn fast (which is a shame, since they’re my one of my favourite couples in this), but the important parts that will tie into the rest of the story were mentioned, so I guess I can’t complain too much. Basically, what you should have gotten out of the story was this character’s backstory (and of course, the part about some of her abilities), which explains her motivation for everything that she does/did in the future/past of the current plot. I don’t know if they’re ever going to bother explaining it anywhere else, which is why I said to pay attention. They went even further, and kind of explained the unending world too. However, story also seems to be slightly different than how the song lyrics to Shinigami Record go (mainly, the child seemed to be with the “monster” and her soon-to-be husband went away), as of the events of episode 9. There’s totally a possibility that the story will merge back to fit the lyrics again though, so maybe this is just an elaboration on how their family life went.

Let me pick the threads of the supposed monster, whose story we have been getting on weekly basis in parts and parcel basis. Kara will explain further in terms of her entity but at least now we finally have some break with clarity on what really happened with Mekakushi-dan members. Ayano seems to be the center for all our main characters because she was the light that everyone followed after their despair. Of course, we don’t know the details of what happened to each of them but now it is pretty clear that it was Tateyama and his wife who took the distraught children (Shuuya, Tsubomi and Kousuke), in. It’s still not clear if Ayano was really their daughter but these are small details because bigger things are in play here. On each of these three episodes, Ayano’s importance has been highlighted a lot. No wonder she has left a huge gap not only in Shintaro’s life but everyone who knew her.

Since I heard Ene’s disjointed story from her, the theory about another world has been going on in my head. During blogging this series, Kara and I have exchanged many emails where we traded off information about things that might happen or probable. Out of them all was the fact that there was a world shift before and after 15th August, that important date. In episode 7, it was very shafty with world almost getting destroyed as a sci-fi flick but from sharing of information between Mekakushi-dan members, it seems not everyone made through the crisis and the timing for everyone differs. The big event is the near-death experiences and then respective awakening of powers. This makes me question on when Ayano’s power came to fore but her ring-leading the motely group started as a responsibility in the beginning. I have to honest here that my perception of her was not all that great at the beginning. Why would a girl who clearly liked Shintaro say that she was not right for him? Why she had such less confidence in herself but then again gave confidence to others? To every one of her siblings, she was the rock on whom they dependent upon. From the recent episodes the air of dependency and the familial bond that they all shared bordered on almost akin to real family.

Now, I have been very curious about Tateyama since he showed up with his head-tilts. On the front, Tateyama seemed like the caring sensei, who would not care about breaking rules if it meant that his students would be happy; however, it was not surprising to find out that everything is not what it seems. And whatever transpired between the kids do point towards him being some sort of culprit (even if not on his own volition), but even then I just can’t hate him. You can call that a biasness of a seiyuufag because Keiji Fujiwara is awesome but see how friendly he is with everyone and Ayano’s mother must have seen something in him to marry him. I really do believe in life choices and even if we humans are known to be very erroneous, we still do try our best in big decisions like education, career, marriage and procreation.

Overall, I really liked how Tateyama and Ayano’s mother shaped her to be a nurturing individual. To the extent that even after her mother’s death (I have a vague feeling that it was not as easily explainable as an accident), she continued the mother role, donning those two hair-clips and continuing their everyday life as usual. For a while at least. This makes me question the events that transpired on 15th August and the repercussions that made Ayano stay back. But I have a feeling that like her mother, she wants to unravel the secret of the demon-girl as well. Though, as she is not really still around, I guess Shintaro is going to be the one to solve this one along with the help of rest of Mekakushi-dan? We shall see.

I was wondering how Arai Satomi would sound as… that one character (man, is that character’s name considered a spoiler at this point?) since she’s forever Kuroko from Railgun/Index in my head, but it works so well. Maybe that was the effects too, but I like her voice so far in this. Though seiyuu choices aside, I came to the realization this episode that there are only 3 episodes left. …Considering all of the things that they haven’t even gotten to yet, I’m kind of concerned for the rest of the plot. How on earth are they going to cover everything in time? Though in Jin we trust, I guess. They’re probably going to have to cut something out. As long as it’s not “Outer Science” (the plot’s ‘bad end’), I’ll be happy. Probably. Hell, if they end off on “Outer Science”, like Jin did with the PV releases, that would actually be pretty amusing. They could just release “Summertime Record” (the ‘good end’ ) as an OVA. Though knowing how Shaft seems to operate, they could just tell people they were going to release it as an OVA, and then keep delaying it for long periods of time. …Or maybe that only applies to the Monogatari franchise.

Ah, speaking of Outer Science, it’s interesting watching some of the particular word choices in songs gain more meaning with what the anime is revealing. In particular, there’s one line that goes something like “In this tragedy, you’re the「queen」“. I always figured that it meant that the person in reference was just important (for different reasons), but after what episode 9 went into with the snakes gathering, the statement seems even more relevant as to why the character is important. …Or actually, I might as well just say “Marry”, since the anime already flashed to her character reallllly obviously during the conversation.

Anyways, watching the story all piece together is definitely… eye opening. They’re adding a lot of new elements to the story than I wasn’t aware existed. I always figured that Tateyama purposely experimented on Takane and Haruka for the hell of it different reasons, but now it looks like it might be that snake’s fault. Kano’s involvement with  helping Ayano investigate Tateyama is new for me too. Basically, episode 9 was full of new concepts for me. The story makes more sense now though, in a few places. …Though I’m not entirely sure why SHAFT went the uncanny valley route with the CG in the beginning of the episode.

Slight spoilers ahead, I just wanted to ramble about a certain element of the story that’s kind of being ignored.

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Out of all the singles I have heard in this series, the best for me has been “Lost Time Memory”. This was one of my favourites from the actual videos; thus, I had great expectations from it and Matsuyama Kouta from BYEE the ROUND did a pretty good job on vocals. Star marks! Now finally I can say that we have some semblance of story with the unraveling of demon girl as somewhat of a medusa and the kuchinawa-san appearances connected to her. I really do pity Tateyama for becoming a blind slave to the power to the extent that he became a pawn and destroyed some of the people who were precious to him. Must be real hard but then again maybe I’m thinking about it too much.

Just for a reminder, Konoha is still at large and there has been no news about him since the whole destruction of the van. Shintaro should have remembered something but I guess, they are blaming it on the snakes showing up. I’m looking forward to know how Shuuya knew about Ene’s real body’s whereabouts. Is Tateyama around to see things to their end? And what will Shintaro do now that he has seen Ayano’s picture; will he remember their promise/ important talk? Well, let’s see how many of our questions are answered in the next episode.

Next up: Fantasy Forest

About Tag Team

We live, laugh, enjoy and strictly believe on "more the merrier". When together, we usually come up with very chatty, conversation-based episodics and interesting posts.