Short Synopsis: It’s back to action and fanservice as this episode focuses at Souta.
Highlights: But what great action it is.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
The next episode previews are getting less and less helpful… they still give an indication of what’s to expect in the next episode, but they’re getting more and more cryptic with every episode. Still, that’s what I like about them. The reason why I don’t often look at these previews is that you’ll never know when they’re too spoilery for their own good. The worst offender that I ran into was Naruto, which once revealed the plot of an entire spoilerific episode in its preview. Still, RD knows exactly what it should give away, to keep its viewer wondering and not reveal any obvious spoilers. The preview for this episode, for example, considered of Souta and Holon fighting. And it was indeed an episode about Souta and Holon, but at the same time it also symbolized the romantic tension between the two, which was the main point about this episode. At the same time, the preview for the next episode features the entire same scene, with just Souta realizing why he keeps losing to Holon in training fights. It should be in the same vein as the current one, but we can only guess what it’ll really be about.
In any case, the current episode rocked. Souta, the guy who sleeps with the boss of his boss is actually secretly in love with Holon. This episode addresses the fact of falling in love with an android a bit differently than Chobits, though. This episode didn’t necessarily end with a happy ending, but rather with all the characters (except Minamo, perhaps) understanding what’s going on. There’s no cheesy confession scene, but instead a much more subtle approach was chosen.
There was one particular scene that caught my attention in this episode: it was where the evil android in this episode had just beaten Holon “unconscious” and threw her body away. That was the only time so far where Holon looked (and sounded) like an object, rather than a human being.
I love love love LOVED this episode, even without having enough Japanese to follow the specific plot. Souta
Whoops, my comment got cut off. I was saying…
I’m not usually interested in fight scenes, but the fights in this series are amazingly cool. Well-thought out ‘choreography’ to them, and a refreshing lack of any gravity-defying superpowers or l33t ninja skillz.
I also got a kick out of the android’s protocols stopping her from drowning Souta, but then she happily goes back to pummelling him senseless once he’s up. 🙂
I did sense an attraction from Souta towards Holon. So this does not suprise me 🙂 Am a bit happy with this though.
Am a bit worried about your ending line… I do hope this isnt the last time we see Holon. I do like her – she is one cool andriod. In any case, I do hope the subs come out sooner for this series. It is very interesting, but Im finding the break between episodes breaking the flow of the series for me 🙁
Oh, don’t worry, she didn’t die, she just lost “consciousness” for a bit, which is the point where she looked like a machine to me. I agree with the lack of subs, yeah. I’m still surprised at how little popularity this series is getting.
It is indeed another impressive episode. Sadly, too many people has overlooked this gem. Thank you for blogging this series.
Being in love is a bit of an overstatement. The main “problem” is that he respects just like a human and beyond that as a female. You don’t need to be in love to be irritated by the thought that one of your friends was a prostitutes. In fact, it can be very annoying to be turned on by someone when you are rationally not interested at all.
I think point of the episode was to show that it is very difficult for humans to fight their subjective sense of reality. Rationally, Souta knows and understands that Holon is not a woman and not even human. Her gender could be switched any time and it only takes a minor customization to activate the “love” program. Apparently, she isn’t even special and just a standard model. However, emotionally Souta can’t fully accept this. She looks and behaves a human woman most of the time. It’s a bit like the equivalent of an optical delusion where you see – very clearly – things that are – very clearly – not there. You have to use rational thinking to transcend the limits of your senses.
This was similar to the ELIZA episode except that this time it was more about emotions and it didn’t explicitely any scientist or scientific works as far as I noticed. There are of course AI-related projects that try to understand emotions and conscience through simulations.
Souta can’t crush Holon because he has a crush on her. I’m convinced that Holon only cried because she’s excellent at analyzing situations and supporting her master. She had already revealed that she (as an android) understood why Souta couldn’t beat her. Which was kind of funny because Souta hadn’t even realized this yet – or was fighting to accept this idea. Thus, Holon cried because she knew that Souta needed this emotional support to get ouf of his lock and win the fight.