Okay, let’s review. What exactly happened?
- Fukami is busy with police interrogations, so he tells Sakon that he’ll speak with him later.
- The next day, Fukami finally gives Ukon back to Sakon. It seems that he really liked Ukon’s design, so he decided to work on it on his own at the final minute. Therefore, Ukon was kept safe for the flames.
- Sakon equips Ukon, and turns back to normal.
- Keiko lost her husband and daughter to a fire ten years ago.
- Ririsu died in the fire as well.
- Ririsu gets blamed for the murder, as a fireman reckons that it was he who snapped off the hose of the gas cooker.
- Ririsu hated Hayami.
- Ukon reckons that the hose was too firm for a cat to remove.
- Keiko behaves entirely different, and warns Sakon not to get involved.
- After Keiko brought Hayase to his building, nobody was there. Afterwards, the doors were locked.
- Inside the gas cooker, there’s a bit of cheese left.
- The windows of the building were very high so a cat couldn’t have climbed in on its own. They’re too small and equipped with bars to prevent humans from sneaking in.
- On the ground in front of the window, marks of a ladder or a chair are visible.
- Sakon reckons that the following must’ve happened: the culprit stuffed the open end with cheese, Ririsu’s favourite food. Then, when Hayase was asleep, Ririsu smelled the cheese, toyed with it and ate it, allowing the gas to escape. The murderer did this in order to make things look like an accident.
- Aoki seems to have lost his daughter in a fire as well. He also seems very friendly with Sayoko.
- Kishikawa is seen, burning Hayase’s paperwork.
- Kishikawa is seen talking to Yoshida. They both suspect each other.
- Hayase suggests to Keiko to leave the place. Keiko declines, as leaving would make other people think they’re weird.
- Hayase tells Aoki that he plans to quit. He also tells him that Aoki’s the only person he told it to.
- Hayase is packing. A person in diciple-clothes walks in, Hayase looks happy.
- Keiko enters Hayase’s room, sees his body hanging on a rope and screams.
- Sakon spots a note. “To resolve this wicked deed, requires this fateful body to become a wretched wisp of smoke.”
- Kishikawa reckons that this must mean that Hayase actually was the one who killed Hayami.

Okay, there are two possibilities:
- There’s one killer. This killer killed both Hayami and Hayase, though the killer used Hayase to make it look like the murder on Hayami was meant in order for him to repent. This, however, would make no sense at all, as the killer would still be the major suspect for the murder on Hayase.
- Hayase did kill Hayami. There’s someone who didn’t like this and went to the extreme measures to kill Hayase because of it.

There are two possible people who could have entered Hayase’s room:
- Aoki. Hayase smiles when he first sees him. However, Aoki is seen in a tuxedo when the murder is discovered.
- Kishikawa. Aoki is seen in a tuxedo when the murder is discovered, while the intruder wore brown pants. However, Hayase smiles when he first sees him, and the two hate each other.

If Aoki was the one, he quickly changed clothes afterwards. If Kishikawa was the one, the two of them were plotting something sinister. The fact that one of these two entered his room right before the murder also isn’t 100% guarantee that the murder happened afterwards. Something else could have happened, after which the person left and another person arrived and killed the guy. Also, why did a glass and a bottle lie on the floor at the scene of the crime?

I don’t think Keiko was the murderer. More like an important side-character. If you just murdered the guy you love, you won’t be telling other people to go away. Not only would this make sure that they’d do the exact opposite, though as a murderer, you’d be more like, scared instead of certain and cocky like she was. She’s got her own problems, definitely. And her warning to Sakon definitely had something to do with these problems.

If Aoki was the murderer, Sayoko probably involves the reason why he did it. I don’t think Kishikawa was the one, otherwise, he’d not be this confident. I do suspect that Fukumi knew what was going on. The fact remains that he’s very enthusiastic about Ukon. He knew that the storehouse would be in flames, which would mean that Ukon would also be destroyed if Hayami would work on him. His inner puppet-love eventually got the best of him, and he decided to save Ukon.

God… this episode was incredibly creative. And incredibly fun as well. Yuuko invites Watanuki, Domeki, Himawari, the Rain Sprite, the Vestal Sprite and Mokona to a playground in order for them to have a snowball fight. Though it’s not a normal snowball fight. Each of the contestants has to create some kind of snowman. These snowmen then get miraculously animated and have to battle against each other. Some of these fights were extremely interesting to see. The ultimate prize is a Pandora’s box, which gives the one who opens it anything he desires.

First of all, everyone’s snowman is unique in some kind of way. And some were freaky as well. Very freaky, if you consider that they’re just snowmen. But that made things just better. These are the snowmen everyone managed to produce:
- Watanuki: a small bunny, made of snow. Cute, though a bit powerless.
- Domeki: a steel can, with a snowball on top of it and arms and legs attached to its sides. It looked kindof creepy. And strange.
- Himawari: the standard base for a normal snowman, turned upside down, and given the ears and arms which makes it look like some strange kind of teddy-bear.
- the Rain Sprite: two ice statues of Fuujin and Raijin, the storm and thunder gods who have made more appearances in different anime. Surprisingly life-like, but what else do you expect from a rain-sprite? ^^
- the Vestal Sprite: a large, chibi Pegasus.
- Mokona: a huge white Mokona. And when I say huge, I mean HUGE.
- Yuuko: some kind of sci-fi jedi-robot-thingy, which shoots snowballs, prepared by Maru and Moro.

Fight one: Watanuki vs Domeki
Domeki tests out the system, makes his snowman walk, make a snowball and throw this at Watanuki’s bunny. The bunny seems a goner, though it digs itself in right before it gets hit, preventing his own demise.
Winner: tie.

Fight two: Mokona vs Watanuki
Mokona’s huge monster starts chasing Watanuki, with surprising speed as well. Mokona then breaks the control of the monster and then it loses control. It trips over a slide and falls apart. It also takes out Domeki’s snowman in its fall.
Winner: Watanuki. Loser: Mokona. Unlucky bystander: Domeki.

Fight three: Watanuki vs Vestal Sprite’s henchmen
The Vestal Sprite’s henchmen see the Vestal Sprite crying, because she’s glad that Watanuki’s bunny managed to survive. They, however, misinterpret this and think that Watanuki purposely made her cry. They start attacking him, though the Vestal Sprite tells them to stop. In the end, she sacrifices her Pegasus in order to protect him.
Winner: Watanuki. Loser: Vestal Sprite’s henchmen. Unlucky bystander: Vestal Sprite

Fight four: Watanuki vs bunny
Watanuki gets hit by a snowball, thrown by his own bunny. He begins to chase it.
Winner: tie.

Fight five: Yuuko vs Rain Sprite
The episode takes a very strange turn when these behemoths duke it out. Especially when Fuujin and Raijin suddenly start out creating tornadoes, rain and lightning in order to launch it at Yuuko’s robot. If there ever was a king of snowball fights, this has to be it.
Winner: Yuuko. Loser: Rain Sprite.

Fight six: Yuuko vs Himawari
Himawari’s snowball possesses the strange ability to absorb all of the snowballs Yuuko’s snowman shoots at it. In the end, it pops right before all of the snowballs run out (Maru and Moro got bored and stopped providing the snowballs).
Winner: Yuuko. Loser: Himawari

Fight seven: Watanuki vs Yuuko
Yuuko isn’t happy when she finds out that she’s run out of ammo. Watanuki’s bunny isn’t doing much either. Then she realizes that she’s been standing on the hose transporting the snowballs for a while. One snowball is left over. However, right at the moment that the snow was supposed to arrive, her snowman looked into the hose, attempting to find out the problem. He then gets shot because of his own stupidity.
Winner: Watanuki. Loser: Yuuko.

So far, fight two remains my favourite, though all of the others also were great to see. Yuuko, however, asks Watanuki, right before he opens Pandora’s Box, what they’re having for dinner. The box then contains the things he planned for the next dinner. The rest of the episode is made of everyone having food, while Watanuki has to work as a slave. He doesn’t quite like that.

On a more serious note, I’ve noticed quite some changes in both Watanuki, Yuuko and Mokona during this episode. Both Yuuko and Mokona were much more demanding of Watanuki than they were usually. They just kept ordering and ordering him. Even though they normally do this as well, it’s never been this extreme.

I’m not sure whether it is because of this in particular, or rather the whole picture, but Watanuki was rather blunt this episode. He insulted people more than he usually does. He was more keen on not participating in the snowball fight. He acted like a sore loser when he won from Yuuko and he actually insulted Himawari. He really sounded like a jerk in this episode. This most definitely is because of Yuuko’s influence on him. He just can’t seem to understand to have fun.

Yuuko also was a bit different this episode. She actually was a bit competitive, and wanted to win no matter what. When she lost, she really didn’t like the fact that she did. Only then, she came with plan B, and started acting. Maru and Moro also were interesting. They actually defied their master’s order, at one point, they didn’t want to shovel snow all the time. Could it be a design flaw of Yuuko, or is it something that they wanted to on their own accord?

On a more unserious note, Yuuko really has some kind of prophetic ability. Or she uses a special kind of paper which can change its text at will. Watanuki also was very funny when he found this piece of paper in his locker, thinking that a girl wrote a love-letter for him. Mokona also was very cute when Watanuki insulted him for a “pet thing”.

Finally, we have a normal episode of Ergo Proxy again. It’s mostly focused around Raul, while Real, Vincent and Pino meanwhile run into a very interesting city.

First Raul. As Director-General of the Citizen Security Bureau, he has a lot of privileges. And he’s one of the few who can get access to information not meant for normal citizens. Because of this, he’s able to tell the difference between truth and lies. Real was another example of this. Now he as well, has given up on Romdeau.

We also see him having a little discussion with Daedalus. Daedalus seems to blame Raul for Vincent escaping. After all, if Vincent hadn’t been chased out, he would just be leading a normal life. Raul gets angry about this, with a good reason. After all, it was Monad who caused this. Not Raul. Daedalus also isn’t getting worried about whether or not Real betrayed him. He reckons that as long as Real is alive, she won’t betray him, and he can be himself.

Right after Raul put down his trust in the city council, he’s labelled as traitor and his once faithful assistant Krysteva gets put in charge to hunt him down. Krysteva thinks that he’s planning to escape, so the heads for the same place we saw in episode 2, where Vincent landed. In the meantime, she orders to erase all of Raul’s data from the city-databank. This takes about ten minutes. Before that time, Raul can still use his privileges. When she arrives, however, he appears to be in a total different place: his house. In the end, his goal was to get his data erased (on a side-note: does anyone find it ironic that his ID ends with the numbers 666?).

Daedalus, meanwhile, calls himself calm. One of his autoraves also refers to him as the prince of Romdeau. We also see Daedalus talking to a picture of Real, pretending it’s the real thing. And what happened to Monad? Raul, meanwhile is in his apartment, playing piano. The ending of the episode was quite confusing, and I didn’t manage to really understand this at all. For some reason, a hug rocket gets fired. Raul, meanwhile, has visions of Vincent. He reckons that Vincent was the cause for everything (it was quite shocking to see Pino in normal clothes. I nearly forgot that she used to belong to a rich family). Vincent, Real and Pino, meanwhile have almost arrived at Moscow, when they see the same rocket head for their destination. I suppose that that thing is going to blow up the city, though I’m not sure.

Next, Real, Vincent and Pino. They’ve made another pitstop, and they’re making quite some progress. One day, they managed to travel 140 miles, which makes a journey of 2000 miles take about two weeks. Shorter than I expected. In any case, when Vincent and Real decide to leave again, it seems that Pino is gone. She seems to have wandered off somewhere. Vincent also tells Real that if he ever stopped being himself, that he wants her to kill him with her own hands.

Searching for Pino takes a while, in the end, the two of them find a cave, and head in. It consists of some long tunnels. At one point, they find a number of dead bodies, belonging to misshapen humans. When they walk deeper in the cave, they hear sounds coming from a piano. Pino seems to be playing it. She’s accompanied by a live version of these creatures found earlier. It’s quite shy, and doesn’t look healthy.

After a bit of investigation, the main nest of these creatures is found. All they do is walk around, and sitting miserably. Real then discovers that there’s a small amount of poisonous gas inside the caves, so she decides to head out, before the problem becomes worse. Pino is also taken along, against her will. Apparently, the road is very long, as she becomes bored fast, and Vincent has to carry her. She’s very much like a little girl at this point.

Then, they pass the dead bodies of these creatures again. It then seems that the creature Pino was with has followed them, and now collapsed. Then Real realizes what’s going on. When the environment of the Earth changed, they were just normal humans, who dug the tunnels in order to protect themselves. The tunnels, however, then began filling with poisonous gas. This turned their bodies to their disfigured current state. In the meantime, however, it also made them dependant of the poison, up to the point that they won’t be able to live in a normal atmosphere.

Real meanwhile discovers some primitive wall drawings, and a rather cute scene occurs. The creature who collapsed stands up again, and gets carried away by his mother. Pino says goodbye to him. The wall drawings show a family with a pregnant mother, father and child, and Real realizes something again. We never know what it was, though.

Overall, I’m not sure what will happen to Raul afterwards. Will he be caught, or does he manage to escape? And I really need to rewatch the first two episodes at one time. Is it me, or did Pino use to be Raul’s autorave? In any case, the music was great again. It was a very nice episode. Nothing special, but I really enjoyed watching it. Every single time, Real, Vincent and Pino run into something unique in their journey to Moscow.

I’m really getting worried about where .Hack//Roots is going to. The previous episode showed Haseo’s new form. Well, I guess that that’s gotta mean that this episode would have featued a lot of plot progression. What do we get? A friggin’ filler!

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing against fillers. But seriously, this was just horribly timed. Because of this, the creators had to find a way to keep Haseo busy for an entire episode. Their plan: don’t make him move for the entire episode. He just stands there, doing nothing. Well, if that isn’t anticlimactic, I don’t know anymore.

The episode basically features Tawaraya who’s come back, two newly introduced characters (a couple of merchants) and the two newbies from episode sixteen having some problems with the merchant-side of The World. It ends with them witnessing a couple of real-money traders being caught by the administrators. Why the heck are the creators only introducing these aspect now, at this stage of the anime? Such trivial aspects would have been better to be explained at the beginning of the anime. Including the fact that TaN was a guild that would buy every single item from other players, and sell them again. It’s nice to see these kinds of information this late in the show.

.Hack//Sign chose to handle subjects like these a bit more subtle. They had just one major crime, and they kept using this as an example. Subaru and her knights were fighting to counter PK-ers throughout the entire anime. .Hack//Roots starts with PK-ing as well, then it moved to hackers and now suddenly real money traders come out of nowhere. A bit more introduction abut this would have been better. The anime had lots of chances for this.

The interesting part of the anime mainly focused around Yata and Pai. Yata displays that he still has influence on the system administrators. Tawaraya also reveals that both Yata and Pai weren’t banned. They just chose to close their Ender and Naobi-accounts along with TaN. That’s why Yata still has his contacts with the administrators. But I wonder. Why do the administrators just let Yata do what he wants, even though he’s a hacker, he kidnapped Ovan, data-drained him and caused him to explode?

Speaking of the devil… what the heck happened to Ovan? There hasn’t been a shot of him for two whole episodes, despite the fact that he’s an important character. I think he also just stood motionless for an entire episode, just like Haseo.

In any case, I don’t think I like the new Tawaraya, or Touta. He’s just your overall, powerful nice-guy. Tawaraya was much more interesting.

Overall, .Hack//Roots is beginning to turn into a horrible mess. That isn’t good at this point of the show. At the next episode, we’ll probably get a bit more clues about what this show will do, in order to create a climax.

The first half of the episode was not very special. It just featured a very long recap of the previous episode, and basically the same thing in the next-episode preview of the previous episode. Naoya still wasn’t doing well, though it wasn’t as disturbing as in the previous episode. He sees the future of the girl, and Shouko explains that he’s having visions of the future. Then, at the beginning of the second half of the episode, we basically see the same vision Naoya had, though this time, in real-tie. Naota and Naoya meanwhile rush to the hotel, in order to save them.

That doesn’t mean, however, that the end of the episode wasn’t awesome. The victim gets dropped off a billboard at a high building, though Naota manages to save her with his power. That’s another thing he can do, apart from destroying things. This takes a huge toll of his brains, though. By seeing this, the woman gets more paranoid by the minute. She’s defeating “them”, though they keep coming back. Then she realizes that both Naota and Naoya aren’t one of “them”. Upon realizing this, her body relaxes. As she stands on a billboard, it makes her lose her balance, and she falls. Naota tries to save her, but he actually fails. She then falls, and dies.

Jiro breaks by seeing this. He claims that she was always running. She was always running from a certain “Ark”, but they kept coming after her. Naoya meanwhile is incredibly happy that the girl managed to get saved. Guards arrive, and the two brothers flee. Back in their car, Naoya is still happy. Naota, meanwhile wonders what “Ark” might be.

Shouko also still remains shrouded in mysteries. Especially her reasons for acting the way she does. What’s her original mission? Did she help Naoya because she conveniently found out that Naoya was tracking a couple of mass-murderers and wanted to safe the final girl as well, or did she plan for this to happen from the beginning?

In the end, Jiro’s reaction after seeing Reiko die was awesome. He’s always been a shy, uncertain guy. Now that his raison d’être is gone, I wonder what he’ll be doing afterwards. The fact that we also saw Reiko fall, and hit the ground was quite shocking as well. Most times when such a thing happens, you don’t see the character hitting the ground. All you see is some kind of high place, along with a big sound. Seeing a character actually hit the ground really proved to be a pleasant surprise.

Whoa… this was actually quite interesting. Quite interesting indeed. It’s most definitely the best of the three films I saw so far. I’m impressed.

The art this time looks totally different once more. It seems like the overall picture had to endure a filter which darkened all of the colours, making it a grey world. Not quite like Matriculated, though. The backgrounds are a bit more simple than before. The faces of the characters aren’t pointy like in Matriculated, though neither as round as in Kid’s Story. It’s more like they’ve turned square. The animation is a combination of the smoothness in Marticulated and the distorted anatomy of Kid’s Story. The art remains fluid and crisp at all times, though.

The story’s another awakening. In Matriculated, an enemy machine got converted to join the human’s side by own will. In Kid’s Story, Neo sends messages to a kid, who awakens afterwards after seeing the truth. This time, we’ve got a case in which the main character awakens on his own strength. In mere eight minutes, the creators managed to deliver something extremely fascinating.

We see an athlete, getting for the world championships 100 metres while a narrator voice explains the background of the story. The runners stand ready, and the start shot is given. We then see a flashback, in which the same guy seems to have made the newspapers in breaking the world record in the preliminaries of the same contest. He managed to get right under 9 seconds (8.99 seconds, to be exact). However, gossip about him using dope are circulating around. Dan, the main character, claims that these are untrue in a phone call to his father.

Meanwhile, Dan lifts off. What follows is some scenes of him, running in slow-motion. This looked kind of creepy. Then, another flashback. This time with his coach. It seems that Dan has worked too much, causing his muscles to be at the limit of bursting. When this happens, his athlete-career is over. The coach is keen on stopping Dan, though Dan wants to run, no matter what. It seems that he wants a final chance to prove everyone wrong who’s been claiming that Dan’s old record was impossible to beat. The coach then abandons him. Or so it seems.

Back to the race, Dan begins to look more creepy by the minute as the animation keeps getting more and more distorted. We then see a journalist, looking at him. Another flashback: the night before the race. The journalist meets up with him, in an attempt for an interview. Dan claims that it releases you from your world. That you become totally free.

Back to the race, Dan’s leg is beginning to show signs that it can’t take much more. This is expressed quite graphically. While gross in one viewpoint, it did add up to the intensity of the scene at another viewpoint. Then, one of his legs gives up, and the muscles inside of it break, causing quite a graphical shock. He however, continues to run, even though his leg has given up. He actually continues running, and surpasses every other runner. This shows signs that he’s about to awaken.

Meanwhile, the men in suits have arrived yet again. They have to stop him from awakening at all costs, and some of the nearby runners also reveal to be men in suits, attempting to stop him. This however, fails. This is even more motivation for the guy to reach the finish line. In the end, right before he reaches it, he awakens in his cell. A robot sees this, and forcefully puts him back to sleep.

Back to the race, Dan crosses the finish line, falls and crashes. He managed to break the world record: 8.72 seconds. A quick shot of the matrix shows him fainting. We then switch to the hospital, in which Dan is in a wheelchair, being pushed by a nurse. He’s holding a couple of walnuts, though his face shows that he’s lost the motivation for everything.

Then, we hear the men in suits evaluate Dan’s case, as they see him in his wheelchair. It’s an interesting case, though they reckon it’s nothing to be concerned about. He’ll live in his shell for the rest of his life, not doing anything. His memory has been erased and he’s got quite a souvenir left from it, a world record nobody will be able to beat.

Dan then surprises everyone when he suddenly utters the word “free”. He then stands up, continuing to utter the word “free”. The walnuts he dropped begin to move on their own. Dan attempts to float a bit, until he collapses and the film ends.

It’s quite shocking that World Record features a guy, being treated in a way like this. His body and mind get destroyed throughout this film, though I think that that’s the reason it works. Especially when, after all the hardships his mind endured by both the machines as the men in suits, he still continues remembering what he saw. This just shows how complex a human mind is. When humans are ignorant, they’re easy to control. Though something goes wrong in this when they’ve set their minds to something. Especially the stubborn people. I guess that it isn’t easy to just forget “the truth” after you saw it with your own eyes.

I also liked the shortness of this movie. Both Kid’s Story as Matriculated dragged on a bit. World Record, however, felt like it had fully utilised every second of it. This makes Dan even more intriguing. We know almost nothing about him. Right now, I feel like I want to know more about him. And that’s actually in a good way. I think that, because the creators decided to focus on this case, and this case alone that it worked so well.

The audio-department also was a major plus. Matriculated did this below average. I can’t even remember whether they actually had sounds at this point. Kid’s Story featured interesting background music, especially during the chase. It contributed to the scenes, though it wasn’t anything special. World Record, however, made excellent use of the available background tunes. Changing from fast-beat techno for the race itself to psychedelic, apocalyptic tunes for the moments at which Dan saw the truth, they fitted perfectly.

The only point at which World Record looked clearly inferior to the other two? The background art. Especially Kid’s Story features high-quality background art, which are quite stunning to see. Matriculated also played with this in an interesting way. Not to mention the psychedelic surroundings. In World Record, however, the backgrounds are kept simple. Very simple.