This episode answers the question of just what was happening to the plane survivors during the period the government were trying to break into the cube. The answer seems to be that they were interacting with an alien lightform. This episode does feel like the series is still in its introduction stage and likely the real start will be next episode when the Alien starts taking a active position in politics. We do at least find out why he doesn’t just release the passengers out of the cube right away as it seems it will take a degree of processing time to allow each passenger to leave. This seems to suggest that the inside of the cube isn’t really a psychical space but rather some kind of database which currently has the data of the passengers stored as virtual data. The big question is that does this mean that the passengers died when the cube absorbed them and now the Alien is reconstructing them based on the data it absorbed? What’s more, was this an intentional act or an accidental one?
This series reminds me of a book I read called Childhood’s End. In that the story involved Aliens coming down to earth in order to better mankind. Though unlike those Aliens, Yaha-kui zaShunina doesn’t seem to understand anything about human society and thus needs Shindo to act as interpreter. What he hopes to gain by helping mankind is not exactly certain, even the Aliens of Childhood’s end had their own agenda. He has already made it clear that he isn’t exactly an enemy or a friend. But what I think this series will mainly focus on is on just how much he can influence society. He could give over great inventions to Japan but that would result in other countries getting nervous. Truthfully not much happened this episode, this was more the Alien adapting to human communication and working together with a negotiator. Perhaps when this series really kicks into gear we might see how good this turns out to be. I just hope we don’t get more of the ditsy science girl as in a sea of rational human beings she is an unwelcome distraction.
