Bokura no – 21

First, the good stuff: The episode immediately begins with Kanji’s fight. There’s only one thing he did between his selection and his time to pilot: ask Tamotsu to kill his mother. Kanji’s case is similar to Kirie’s in a way: they both didn’t have any friends outside of the group of twelve, and they both had problems with their mothers. They were both struggling with a reason to fight. Kanji resolves this quite differently from Kirie, though, when the fight happens right besides the building his mother is currently in. Yet again, this episode was totally different from the previous episodes and fights somehow. Kanji is one of the few members of the cast who doesn’t like doubting (by lack of better description). This time, the enemy also is an inexperienced one. They probably haven’t figured out yet that the other side is being piloted by real people as well. They go all out, but Kanji manages to easily beat them, protecting his mother in the process. He’s given quite an interesting reason for it: his mother may be an idiot, her research is top-notch. He’s actually fighting, so that he can give Seki and Jun a chance to survive! He probably knew that Tamotsu would never kill his mother, but he did want to make her aware that he’s fighting for her, and Tamotsu is of couse, the perfect person for this. Then, when Kanji destroyed the enemy’s control-chamber, something strange happens. The enemy robot uses Kanji’s mother’s research to pull power from the entire city to get back to life. If this continues, it could suck up the energy of the entire planet, at least that’s what I understood. What follows was a part I didn’t quite understand. From what I could get, along with an online-translator, it seems that even though the enemy’s children had been killed, Kanji still needed to immobalize the enemy robot to prevent the earth from being destroyed. The scene we see in the OP also reappears, and it turns out to be the links to the pilots of the enemy earth. Either that, or I just missed a huge plot-twist. Kanji’s life-force is meanwhile depleting, but he manages to finish off the enemy robot, and places the power-source on top of the building where his mother works, in order to restore the power. I think that Zearth’s program really is linked with the earth itself, and when the enemy robot made contact with the research that Kanji’s mother had been conducting, it managed to pull out every bit of energy from the planet itself. All in all, it’s been quite an interesting explanation, and this really strengthens the theory behind the different Zearths and how they work. Seriously, other anime should really take an example from this series, and the way it so carefully explains its dynamics. That was the good stuff. Now comes the GREAT stuff. 🙂 After the battle, Jun and Koemushi remain in the cockpit and have a little talk, and it’s indeed exactly like I feared: Koemushi plans to turn Jun into the next Kokopelli by making KANA the next pilot. If I understood things correctly, there will be two pilots left on the current earth: Kana and Seki. Jun will then go to yet another earth to get members, and he’ll stay alive. I’m not sure if this was in the Kokopelli-way, as in do it once and you’re fine, or in the Koemushi way, making him destined to become Koemushi’s successor. Koemushi really believes that Jun is willing to throw his sister’s life away in order to live. What follows is the most amazing scene between Jun and Kana, where it becomes clear that Kana is indeed willing to die for her brother, if it was only because she didn’t want to live without him. Jun then makes a phone-call to his father, asking him to pick up Kana. In other words, he’s going to beg Koemushi to switch places with Kana, so that she can live, after she probably rounded up fourteen new pilots on a different earth. And I think he’s actually going to pull this through, unlike Kokopelli, who at the last moment became afraid for his own life. I think the biggest difference between the two was that Kokopelli only seemed to care about his daughter. It’s just a guess, but I don’t think that the different pilots on Kokopelli’s world formed such a unity as in the current world. Every world has different pilots, some have the entire planet backing them (Takami’s opponents), others are afraid (Moji’s opponent), and others want to save the people from different earths instead (Kirie’s opponent). Because the group here was more closely knit than with Kokopelli, who probably never cared about the other children, Jun, who started out like a jackass slowly came to understand why his different opponents fought. He probably understood this when Kirie started living with him, and he suddenly had to take care of him and became involved with his problems. Still, the thing is: is Koemushi just going to let Kana and Jun swap places? He’s proved himself to be sneaky and a total idiot, and he loves to see others suffering. Is he really going to be content with such a happy ending? Also, with this episode, I became convinced: Bokura no is THE most thought-provoking anime of 2007. At this point, this series goes much further than Seirei no Moribito, Jigoku Shoujo, Death Note and all the others combined. Also, in terms of realism it’s one of the best of this year. I really love this series because of this, and I just hope that the creators saved the best for last. :)]]>