What They Say:
Episode 10
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
As the police and lab members gather around Saikawa-Sensei’s terminal, he speaks aloud to the person at the other end – Dr. Magata Shiki. The crowd is flabbergasted; was it not the genius’s dismembered corpse that prompted the entire murder investigation? The answers lay inside the virtual reality world of Magata’s design. Both Saikawa and Nishinosono disrobe and descend into their pods, unaware of what they are to find or who they will actually meet.
The woman they both see, in different locations and in different settings, appears to be the “classic” Magata Shiki whose image has become so familiar – long dark hair, a white dress, an unsettlingly calm demeanor. She speaks to both of them, Nishinosono becoming more and more agitated at the answers she’s getting, and Saikawa inching through the last bits of the mystery as if in a conversation. It becomes clear that the identity of the woman’s body they saw at the lab is in question – was it Dr. Magata, or was it Magata’s daughter, hidden from view and raised in secret for fifteen years.
As Saikawa-Sensei learns what he needs in order to make peace with his answers, he spends some final moments of freedom with the one woman who, in his mind, could truly understand what the concept of freedom meant to him. Returning to the waking world, it’s apparent just how truly perfect the crime was; two cases of false identity, and no one may ever see the culprit again.
This episode is a tough one. Most of the other episode have been a decent balance between plot and philosophy and provide a lot of fodder for discussion and interpretation. This episode, and rightly so considering that it constitutes what’s likely the climax of the story, is much more straightforward and not as concerned with the philosophical “why’s” as it is with the factual ones. That’s great considering that we’ve been following the mystery for weeks now and the payoff here is excellent, but it’s not quite so great in that it’s essentially saying “we’ve given you loads to think about, now it’s time to take this resolution and accept the facts while applying your own interpretive meaning to it. Have fun!” Mostly I’m just a little bit sad that the show is almost over since I’ve had such a great time watching and writing about it.
Some interesting things I noticed in spite of the big info-dumps in this episode are the different environments in which Saikawa and Nishinosono interact with Magata Shiki. Nishinosono meets her in a dark, confined interrogation room, complete with one crappy lamp and a bare table. On the other hand, Saikawa Souhei meets with her on an island underneath a comfortable roof and surrounded by the sun and the ocean. I think this is a good representation of how the two characters feel about finally interacting with Dr. Magata. Nishinosono has forever been asking questions of Magata, and her interactions only ever led to more. The most important question as it turns out was “who are you?” as it prompted Magata’s daughter and potential replacement to finally begin to question her identity and purpose. Saikawa-Sensei, however, was always more fascinated than horrified by this mysterious genius, one whose existence both made him loathe the realities of his hum-drum life and caused him to dream about a perfect world of the mind in which he could retreat into a certain kind of freedom. It seems fitting that he and Dr. Magata spoke surrounded by inhospitable water; to us, they appeared trapped within a tiny parcel of land, threatened by an ocean full of jellyfish. But much like Magata’s lab, it was not the physical restriction that defined the space, it was the environment that provided for complete freedom of thought, isolated from noise and other people and every worldly concern.
I continue to be fascinated by Magata’s propensity to kill; normally a character who appeared so emotionless about murder would be completely loathsome, and I don’t doubt that there are other viewers out there who would characterize her as such. She is, at the very least, not in tune with the worldly concerns and emotions in the way that most of us are, and that foreignness is unsettling. But I can’t bring myself to hate her or condemn her, even learning that she killed her own daughter; I believe that she truly saw bodies as shells and that personalities or souls or however you would define our essential humanity was something that could not be destroyed entirely through physical death. Despite not really believing in an afterlife I find that line of thinking somewhat comforting.
The answer to the “Everything becomes F” riddle is really just icing on the cake that rounds out this episode well. The little lesson on hexadecimal notation is kind of fun in an episode that otherwise really is not much fun in the traditional sense though the aside feels somewhat out of place. One other standout this episode, though, is the music, which does a great job contributing to the tension and adds some melancholy to Sensei’s final moments with Dr. Magata. The animation quality was also noticeably better throughout this episode, which helped to add to the sense of how important it was to the story.
In Summary:
This episode, a climax in many different ways and an answer to several unsettling questions, hit me in exactly the way I was hoping. Many of the revelations are bound to make the viewer extremely uncomfortable; throughout I could feel a knot forming in my stomach as the characters implied various truths that I dreaded hearing. Whether others will find it as satisfying as I did will vary depending on how much they feel as though the mystery should have been solvable on revealed clues or not, and how high a tolerance they have of Saikawa’s boundless admiration and respect for the now free Magata Shiki. I found the resolution of the crime to be what I didn’t know I wanted, and that to me speaks highly of this series to provide something for very seasoned viewers like myself who aren’t necessarily looking for things concrete. As for the upcoming final episode, I wonder whether the denouement will have any loose ends to tie-up, or if there might still be a surprise in store for all of us.
Grade: A
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Samsung Galaxy S5 running the Crunchyroll Android app.
