The stakes continue to rise and Kimimaro is shown exactly how high they can be in the real world.
What They Say:
Kimimaro learns the hard way that keeping a tight margin during a deal is quite a gamble if he doesn’t have Mashu’s trust. While deals in the Financial District continue to affect Japan, Mikuni deposits more of his wealth into the suffering economy.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the series revealing a bit more about itself in the last couple of episodes with the potential past that Kimimaro’s father may have had and what he gave up as well as this group that’s working with Mikuni in order to gain more power and influence over the Financial District, C is really starting to take an interesting shape while still working with some familiar ideas. This episode in fact opens with another of them in that we see another Deal taking place which has a pretty brutal series of visuals in how it unfolds and there’s a real sense of intensity about it because of the sound effect design and the way the visuals are laid out while using the financial terminology to tie it all together.
One of the things that Kimimaro is really having to work on is understanding the way Deals work and how much danger there really is. A good deal of it does come down to trust though, as the two battle together, they have to know that they have the right methods to deal with any attack and to know that they have each others backs in their own way. With the two of them having only worked together for a short term, that trust isn’t completely there yet and some of it comes down to the fact that Kimimaro is new to all of this and Mashu thinks she knows better. Which is a dangerous thing for an Asset to think in a lot of ways as it can lead to losses at the wrong time and cause quite a lot of trouble.
The fights do make up a good part of this episode but it’s tied into the real world as well as Kimimaro sees how those involved in the Deals find the reality being affected. When one opponent is taken down in a match, his real world side goes through significant and public changes. The scale of it becomes clearer for Kimimaro when he understands that a loss for one man can mean a large company can go under, and that means thousands of workers end up unemployed. Conversely, the episode spends some good personal time between Kimimaro and Mashu as the two get to know each other better. Since she seems to know almost nothing about the real world, the begin some basic information exchanges that helps to ease the pressures between the two. Some of it may seem odd, as others are amused that he’s having a meal with something that doesn’t even know what a meal is, but it’s good to see this kind of interaction as it humanizes both of them even more.
In Summary:
This series has had some good events happening in the past couple of episodes but this one is a bit more of a down episode, allowing things to sink in for a bit and to provide for some conversational moments. Kimimaro’s coming to grips with the reality of what’s involved and just how disastrous the effects of a loss can be on some people who play in this high stakes game. It’s an interesting premise to show how these kinds of games can affect the real world as there’s a real resonance there in a lot of ways. Seeing it through Kimimaro’s eyes is a natural thing since it provides a bit of a naïve view of the world, but it’s nicely balanced against the intensity of the matches themselves with all its creativity and the quiet moments that are used to help shore up the relationship between Kimimaro and Mashu. There’s a lot to like here, but this is a bridging episode between the bigger moments rather than a big moment itself. There’s a lot to like here, but it’s an episode that will flow better when you marathon the series as a whole as a calm moment.
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.
