I really liked Haseo in this episode, as usual. He actually spends most of the episode on the bridge (he seems to be favouring that place), along with the little furry animal. Both of them don’t say too much, and especially Haseo’s thinking about what happened last episode. He tries to talk him out of things, by providing some examples .Hack//Sign also used. Then, we get our first sign of an event outside of the World: a meteor-shower’s supposed to pass by in the real world that evening. Haseo isn’t very interested in meteors, so he declines.
At around the end of the episode, we get to see a neat little technique, performed the creators. Sakisaka and Tabby are about to become toast. They keep sending e-mails to the other members of the Twillight Brigade, but nobody responds. We see a small shot of the bridge, without Haseo. This gives you the illusion that Haseo already logged off, while in fact, he was rushing towards them, managing to save them in time. Even though I absolutely dislike this concept (after seeing Star Ocean Ex, who wouldn’t?), it’s a good thing that the creators actually managed to pull off this trick. It’s definately an improvement. Anyway, we also get another hint about the supernatural events which are to happen in this series. Apparently, certain kinds of glowing thingies cause all of the data they touch to be completely messed up, resulting in them to lose all of their graphic form. Haseo, apparently has the power to undo these.
Tabby also was very interesting. Not in terms of her own character (I still don’t really like it), thought he effect she has on all of the other characters. As she’s still young, and naive, she’s the easiest to suspect people. After all, at the beginning of the episode, she was saying to Sakisaka how Haseo could’t be trusted anymore. That’s pretty blunt, isn’t it?
Sakisaka still had his doubts at the beginning of the episode, though I think that the conflict will have to be delayed for a while. I’m guessing that Tawaraya made a small mistake when stating his opinion about the meteor shower. The effect that this statement has on Sakisaka really was noticable, as he takes his distance away from him. He still has doubts, though, as he keeps clenching to his virus core. I think that this’ll be important for the rest of the episode.
I loved the conversation between Tawaraya and Ender this time, as it exactly had my kind of humor. The two of them are indeed viewing Sakisaka as the weakest link in the Twillight Brigade. I’m surprised that they didn’t select Tabby for this. But still, we have absolutely no information about his activities in the Twillight Brigade before Tabby joined. An interesting fact about Tawaraya is also that he doesn’t notice that Sakisaka’s beginning to lean more towards the Twillight Brigade. Or did this meeting have a deeper meaning?
Ender seems to know about the shiny thingies, as she gives a recognizing confirmation when she sees these. The then charges to Tabby and Sakisaka, cleverly avoiding them. I guess that these really have something to do with Ovan. Though she didn’t really count for Haseo to show up, and do the things he did. Also, why did she wait a while before attacking the both of them? In fact, why is she even bothering to PK them? The cliffhanger’s a very interesting one. She attacks both Haseo and Sakisaka, while they attack back, the screen pans up, we see a couple of flashes and Sakisaka screams. Tabby, however, doesn’t yell, but she sarcastically questions him. What’s up with that?
And where was Ovan during this episode? He just talked for a bit with Shino, said thanks, and never showed up for the rest of the episode. What has he been doing at that time? His conversation with Shino also triggers a lot of questions. For starters, Shino mentions hospitalized people. I might be mistaking, though could it be that these people are data-drained? But then, what did “it might be a long road ahead” mean?
Shino also mentioned Haseo being a bit too hard to please at the moment. I guess that she realizes that Haseo’s having trouble, though she doesn’t understand him perfectly. I’d like to see more of her brilliance of episode 3. Later this episode, she is the one who guides Sakisaka and Tabby to the place with the shiny thingies. This, however, is just a normal dungeon. How did she know that the shiny thingies were to be there? And even if she knew it, why did she even bother sending Sakisaka and Tabby there in the first place? And yes, she had to log out for some kind of reason. I also get the feeling that she didn’t want to tell Ovan what she was going to do afterwards, though Tabby’s questioning made me realize that there indeed was something that she was doing at that time. What could it be?
This certainly was an episode meant to trigger a lot of questions. Like, what are these shiny thingies anyway? And why do they appear where they appear? Why does Haseo, of all people have the ability to dispel them? I also loved the fact that some of the scenes in this episode were incredibly slow. Most people might not like it, though I think it’s brilliant. The music combines it really to a masterpiece.
