Last minute backstories and an uncertain future.
What They Say:
Episode #9: “Strong Bonds”
Episode #10: “Those Who Have Let Go”
The Review
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
We rejoin Derrida on his quest to find Mage and to undo the mistakes of the past. Except he hasn’t made any progress on either front. He has an idea of where Mage might have gone and the group sets off towards Derrida’s old university on a vague hunch.
Vidaux’s condition isn’t improving after their escape for the pursuers. His wound reopens and Derrida asks the question we’d all been thinking, why doesn’t he drop his daughter off with someone less likely to end up in the line of fire. Vidaux takes offense at the very reasonable question and lapses into a moment of self-reflection and his backstory is dropped on us.
It turns out that Vidaux has quite a lot of blood on his hands. He has a tragic past which includes the death of his wife. That was likely, but the method and means of that death were unexpected. I also guessed that Mayuka wasn’t his biological daughter, and I don’t think she knows that. Vidaux wasn’t the great cop we thought he was. The truth is a darker story than I was expecting, and it really sours me on Vidaux as a character. He doesn’t share his past with the others, which would certainly have made them think twice about their benevolent former cop protector.
Man, the action scenes in episode 9 are laughably terrible. There’s more car combat, mixed with far too many static shots of Vidaux and Derrida shooting artillery. The saving grace of the episode are the quiet moments with Vidaux and Mayuka, but I can’t help but feel the relationship has been corrupted by what we know now.
Episode 10 gives us Donna’s backstory. She was once a researcher named Angelica Klein and had been conducting experiments on AI learning. This quickly takes a dark turn where you have to wonder exactly who was being experimented on. Angelica very quickly goes from a composed researcher to a woman questioning her sanity. It happens so fast it doesn’t feel logical or realistic, but it is evocative and gets the point across in very short order. (It doesn’t explain at all how she became a killing machine.)
She remains sympathetic despite the clumsy execution, and even better, she goes after the man who told her to kill Derrida. We really have no idea why she turned around and decided to turn on her boss, but boy does it feel good to watch her exact some revenge on the company that drove her to insanity.
It feels that this information is unprompted, but we’re given a link to the present. Rejoining Derrida, we’re introduced to Dr. Marlene, Derrida’s former professor. Mage sought her out to learn more about Trout Theory and time travel. Unprompted, once again, she admits to her AI research and says that abandoning it caused another company to pick it up and the end result is Angelica/Donna. She also says a few more things about the time travel stuff which still has not been sufficiently explained, but apparently, there is a cost for using it and that cost might be the integrity of the memories themselves.
We’re two episodes away from the end of this series. For a show which began with such a rapid tempo, it certainly rushed to go absolutely nowhere fast. I honestly don’t see how this show is going to pull off a satisfying ending or explanation for any of the time travel stuff and at this point, I don’t expect it to. However, I will stick around to see how badly it’s going to attempt to stick the landing.
In Summary:
These two episodes flesh out two supporting characters, which in a longer running series would have been a practical and welcomed development. At this junction and at this point in this short series, the decision was probably still necessary but ultimately hurts rather than helps its case. In fact, it made Vidaux less likable and Donna was already probably the most interesting character in the show. The present keeps getting worse for Derrida, who remains at a loss as a protagonist. Mage is still missing, and perhaps the only one capable of fixing the past. There are just two episodes left of RErideD, and I really don’t see how they’ll be able to wrap this all up sufficiently. However, I don’t see how it could possibly keep going either.
Episode 9 Grade: C –
Episode 10 Grade: C
Streamed by: Crunchyroll & Funimation
