Dennou Coil – A Circle of Children – 04

Episode four continues to introduce new things, most importantly a few new side-characters and Dennou-style warfare. The newly introduced characters are basically classmates of Yasako and Fumie. We’ve got the henchmen of Daichi, who consist out of a few geeks and one wimpy boy who follows them everywhere, but basically is too scared to do anything. There’s also this girl that lunches along with the two of Yasako and Fumie. We also get our first clues on Yasako’s past as well. She tries to befriend Isako, but the latter declines. When Yasako keeps asking, Isako reveals that she knows that caused some kind of trouble in her old school. What she actually caused is either never said, or I didn’t pick this up. But the fact remains that this can become very interesting for the future. I could have sworn that Yasako also said that she likes to be friends with everyone, perhaps she acts like this because of her past experience. She also seemed troubled when “Michiko-san” was mentioned. Most of the episode focuses on Daiichi&co trying to attack Isako, Isako getting back at them, and Fumie taking advantage of the situation to launch a surprise attack on Isako. The boys use another new kind of weapon to attack: teleportation holes, by lack of better names. The shoot cyber-bullets in them and these teleportation holes then shoot these bullets to wherever they’re pointing at. In this case: Isako. The latter, though, proves to be way too skilled for Daichi to handle. By the way, you have to love the visuals. Certain scenes in particular looked really beautiful, despite the simple character-designs. While Daichi and his friends tried to attack Isako, Fumie meanwhile hasn’t been standing still herself, and once the former have been knocked out, it’s Fumie’s turn to take action, and she actually provides a challenge to Isako, collecting a small piece of information. I’m not sure what kind of information that was, but neither has Fumie, since Fumie, since it turned out unreadable. Yasako, however, notices one word which rather startles her: Michiko. Who is Michiko-san, and could she be related to the boy that called out Yasako, a few episodes ago? She’s in an interesting position in this anime, by the way. I mean, she’s surrounded by people who are extremely good with the cyber-world, and compared to them, she knows nearly nothing about this, yet she is the main character. Will she get some special role in the future? This episode also showed how dangerous the virtual world can actually be. It seems that if you overload the glasses, you get hurt yourself as well. Is this some kind of weak point in the whole cyber-world? It’s kind-of freaky that these “toys” can actually become dangerous when used in the wrong hands. Ah well, this episode was mostly meant to show some stunning visuals and flesh out the characters a bit. It’ll be interesting to see how the characters will react to each other after this episode, and there’s also this matter of why Isako came to the school in the first place. Is the case just as simple as “parent moved”, or is there something in the school she’s looking for?]]>