The series takes a mild breather as pasts and motivations are explored for Mikuni and Kimimaro.
What They Say:
A look into Mikuni’s past reveals his introduction to the cold world of business, money and power. Later, the ever-curious Mashu analyzes her Entrepreneur’s behavior, calculating what makes him different from everyone else in the Financial District.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The cast of this series continues to be an intriguing lot with quite a few issues to them, though they all come down to their single defining issue. Seeing how they operate between both worlds can be fascinating, especially as the actions inside the Financial District have such significant impact on the real world as we saw in the previous episode. While Kimimaro is a decent lead character that we can see the world through his eyes and understand it right, the one that’s truly engaging is that of Mikuni as a power player that has a goal in mind, has been exposed to this world for awhile and has a strong background in all of this due to his father.
So spending some time with background material on him, showing him at his early days in the world of business with his father and the corporation is very engaging as we see how it all defined him. There are predictable moments in here as we learn how he gave up his music in order to be a part of the family business, but there’s some emotional context as well as he talks about it with his little sister who is in the hospital for some unknown disease that is working its way through her. Mikuni’s life in the business world has a lot going for it as we see how he dealt with being there because of his lineage and then to deal the way the corporation as it was under attack and falling apart. The words of a father can have an incredible impact on how you view the world and Mikuni takes a lot from him, but there are things that are done that shows him just how far his father has gone with the business when it comes to his sisters life.
The exploration of what lead up to the way Mikuni became involved in the Financial District is well handled here as it show the emotional impact of it and how it’s formed his way of thinking as an adult after the treatment by his father towards him and his sister. This takes up most of the first half and is definitely a very solid segment that spends the right amount of time on the character without overdoing it or over dramatizing it. The second half shifts gears a bit but maintains a similar feel as it serves as a mild recap for part of it as Mashu looks at what’s happened since becoming tied to Kimimaro and the Deals that they’ve worked through. Her lack of understanding him is obvious, since it doesn’t seem like she served anyone prior with her lack of knowledge of the world, but she’s become an Asset that’s drawn to the real world now and understanding it. Much like the viewer, she understands things through his eyes and you can see how they’re bonding because of it, but she still has a distance to her. It’s a nice segment that reaffirms things and summarizes it well, but feels like an unnecessary piece in a series that’s pretty short to begin with.
In Summary:
While a chunk of this is recap from the series to date when it comes to Kimimaro, there are other elements that are brought into it as he spends more time in the Financial District. It’s simple and relaxed for the most part and fairly welcome as it gives us a few insights into his personality, not that Mashu understands it. The better section, at least for me, involves exploring what it is that has made Mikuni the man he is now as it works very well even as it runs through some fairly predictable plot points. It condenses a lot into the ten minutes or so that it runs, but it helps to make the character even more accessible than he was and to me is the real star of the show, the character I want to follow and see what he does rather than Kimimaro. I like Kimimaro, but when a show focuses on older and more established leads, people who have lived lives and understands things, they provide for more intriguing stories, especially in a setting like this. C – Control has a good episode here overall and is positioning itself well for the next few episodes here.
Grade: B+
Simulcast By: FUNimation
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
