Mutta’s past experiences factor in huge as he deals with understanding what’s going on now.
What They Say:
The third exam inside the sealed boxes has been underway for ten days. Each team has been experiencing unexpected problems, such as broken clocks and mysterious alarms that ring in the middle of the night. However, Mutta soon realizes who is actually responsible
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the current arc dragging on in the minds of some, including those actually involved in the story itself, we’re now at the ten day mark of having them inside the sealed system where they’re being forced to really deal with problems. Everyone has different things going on, with Mutta trying to figure out why the clock was broken and Serika panicking internally over the food situation which has gotten a whole lot worse. And to make matters worse, there’s the whole beeping problem that’s now come to light in their group, something we’ve seen elsewhere, as everyone is getting really irregular sleep because of it. The near impossible to place beeping is just starting to really grate on them.
For Mutta, with what he’s dealing with, he starts to think back to his time at NASA where he was with Jennifer for awhile and some of what he went through there with her in relation to his brother is starting to sink in with the present situation. The whole use of green cards, or secret orders, makes sense for why some of them are acting strange like they are. Mutta’s ability to remember this detail at long last has him asking the question to the right person here about at least part of what’s going on. Simply asking about it to one of them has the other completely give it away by expression and body language alone, which is comical but it fits the situation and the characters. And for Mutta, it’s the moment he needs to cement things with Fukuda as well in order to move this phase of the exam forward.
This allows a lot of things to start to come together better when it comes to the tension that the group is facing. With a number of things egging them on, getting some of this settled out from Mutta’s point of view helps to ease the tensions overall because of the way he deals with all of them while still keeping the whole green card thing secret from everyone. With the exam in this phase all about causing stress and pushing everyone to see how they react, it works well and having Mutta be the unexpected one from their point of view to be able to see through part of it and ease the tensions is great. Of course, there’s still the problem of the food situation that Serika is stressing out over…
In Summary:
With the show working through the exam phase in its slow paced but very effective manner, we get to see a lot of neat things about how the crew is handling the situation that they’re involved, most of which is obviously caused by JAXA. Working through how each thing is happening is part of it but the real fun is in seeing the character interactions as it progresses. I love that Mutta continues to be the real wild card in a lot of things with what he does and how he perceives things, often through luck but also through the quirky way he looks at the world, and this episode is no exception. He’s smart in saying only so much about things like the green card, but he does it enough to get the result he needs to understand what’s going on. I’m hopeful for this phase to end soon even though I’m enjoying it simply because I want a little more forward motion.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
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.
