After what happened the previous episode, Haseo needs some time to be able to process what happened in the previous episode. He’s not very good in this, as he keeps getting gloomier as the episode progresses. His main support is Phyllo. The latter also goes to the place in which Shino and Ovan met for the first time, after which Tri-Edge ambushes him. For some strange reason, Phyllo is spared. You’d wonder why Tri-Edge took the time to visit him in the first place. In any case, when Haseo found out about this, he went berserk. He ran to the church and kept beating up the chains on the table. I think that he really snapped when he found out that each of Tri-Edge’s attacks have got something to do with Shino.
While that may have been too bad for Haseo, that part of the episode was just boring. Haseo was a bit too gloomy in my opinion. The good stuff came from the former TaN. It seems that Ender and Naobi not only swapped PC’s, they also swapped usernames. Naobi now is known as Yata, and Ender is Pai. A thing that really shocked me is that Ovan appears to be perfectly fine. After his arm exploded in episode twelve, he managed to escape, and now roams around The World. Either data-drained or just perfectly fine. Still, there has to be some kind of reason why he hasn’t contacted Haseo or Tabby yet.
In any case, Yata and Pai are up to something else, after their failure. They are probably busy analyzing what caused Ovan to escape. They’ve also run into some problems when they try to analyze the waterfall-field. It appears to be a dump for save-data. Much like the Net-Slum from .Hack//Sign. In any case, something is providing an error when they try to analyze it. It’s good to see that things aren’t going perfectly for Yata and Pai as well. I’m still wondering whether these hackers will be responsible for the greatest threat in the game.
Pai also talks about something called an SF. No idea what that means, though. Later in the episode, Pai makes contact with a new character, a former TaN-member: Savurou. It seems that the two of them knew each other, though it isn’t clear from where they do. In any case, she managed to swap PC’s as well. (On a side-note: I sortof like Pai’s character design. It’s a lot better than her Ender-version, in any case).
Overall, this episode was kindof boring. Haseo needs to accept that Shino’s gone. Still, TaN brought some nice material.
I still miss Shino, it’s shame that she isn’t there anymore. While rest of the cast didn’t manage to amaze me Shino felt a lot interesting and likeable. Can’t really blame Haseo for being gloomy.
Well, when Tsukasa got data-drained, he returned in the game. When Sora got data-drained, he returned in the game. Shino still has to be somewhere. I just know it.
I’ll agree Haseo was a bit of a downer this episode, but he seems to be blaming himself (despite trying to bluff a bit with Tabby) for what happened to Shino. When Phyllo told Haseo that he wouldn’t have stood a chance against Tri-Edge Haseo kinda snapped as he was probably holding onto that “if only I’d gotten there sooner” thing as solace that maybe, just maybe he could have saved her. To find out there was nothing he could have done was just too much for him to handle. It’s nice to finally hear some news from the real world though and to know what happened to Shino in real life. I wondered if the glimpse we saw of the real world in Ep. 13 was Ovan or Shino, since Shino’s in a coma it very well may have been Ovan since they woke up at least temporarily.
I have a new theory about Aura though, Naobi/Yata and Ender/Pai commented he escaped and they don’t know how. We saw the lock disolve and Ovan’s arm cannon appear to explode and Shino knew of Aura, saying she wasn’t going to run away like Aura did. Also the amount of data in Ovan’s PC was as much as an entire area. Perhaps his arm cannon is where Aura is. She could have come to him to hide, and Ovan hid her away. That would explain the lock on it, and would explain how he got away. Also he would have known that eventually he would escape if this was the case, that’d explain why he went willingly into TaN’s trap.
Savurou made an interesting observation to Ender/Pai when they talked in town with that metaphor that Ender/Pai didn’t understand. I got it, it sounded to me like Savurou was implying that Naobi/Yata is just a hacker, but that Ender/Pai is something greater, which would pretty much have to be an admin.
Oh yeah, was it the waterfalls area they couldn’t analyze or Haseo. It seemed to me it was Haseo’s PC they couldn’t analyze. I guess we’ll find out in future episodes as they’ll probably try to kidnap Haseo as well if it was him.
Tri-Edge does seem to be going after people who’ve had contact with Shino (or perhaps it’s people who’ve had contact with Ovan). When he encountered Phyllo his eye changed, it was like he was… scanning him or something. Perhaps he’s looking for corruption in the PCs and when he finds it he attacks to remove that corrupted PC. That would explain somewhat why he attacked Shino (her PC was corrupted) and not Phyllo (his wasn’t). Also it might explain why he left Haseo alone back when he attacked Shino. (Of course this might also be that he can use the data drain attack only so often and wasn’t able to attack Haseo with it at that time.)
And finally, is it just me or has anyone else started getting the feeling that Phyllo may be an admin? He seems to know things he wouldn’t otherwise.
I like the theory about Aura. She could quite possibly be hiding in Ovan’s arm. She ran in the past for some reason, and Ovan managed to run into her. It does explain why Ovan managed to escape, with his arm perfectly fine.
“The old man that lives next to the girl that dreams constantly of song lyrics is a surprisingly famous composer.” It does seem like Ender’s something greater, especially when Savurou combines this with the events held by CC corporation. But if Ender was an admin, she would have been forced to do something to investigate the signs and the corrupt data she ran into earlier in the show. Unless she made a deal with Naobi in which she wouldn’t tell these things to the officials.
I still think it’s the Waterfall place they couldn’t analyze, though I’m not sure whether Haseo had something to do with it. Yata and Pai did keep talking about a “place”, and not a “person”. They also called it a save dump, which suggests that it was indeed the area, instead of Haseo. Unless Haseo’s just like Ovan in the fact that he’s got character data as big as an entire area.
The fact also remains that Haseo’s special in some way. It’s got something to do with the Signs. Maybe Tri-Edge is doing this in order to get something from Haseo. I have no idea why he has to do it so sneaky, though.
Yeah, Phyllo is probably one of the strongest players in The World. He’s had quite some history, I guess. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to level that high, and sit on his spot on the bridge for all this time. When you’re in the game for that long, you might indeed pick up quite a few rumours. I don’t think he’s an admin, though. If he was, he’d be going after Tri-Edge right now, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Episode thirteen also seemed to suggest that Tri-Edge indeed was meant to clean up corrupt data. Still, I wonder why he chose Shino to clean up first.