I loved this episode! It was another wacky one, but seriously, I kept smiling over the entire episode. Heck, I’m even smiling as I type this. Pino was SO awesome during this episode. Not to mention the huge wave of symbolism. If you ever need to smile for one reason or another, watch this episode!

The case is like this: we have a Proxy, in yet another dome. This one has created his own world: Smile World. It’s a world in which everyone keeps smiling continuously. But now, Vincent is approaching. In a last desperate attempt, he contacts Pino, in order to find out his weakness. Instead, she opens up his eyes with her smile.

Pino starts out in the local garbage dump. Smile World is full of all sorts of fun attractions, though the unpopular ones get discarded. In the garbage dump, Pino meets up with two discarded cartoons: Hanapeko and Pure. They’re incredibly happy and carefree, even though they’ve been considered trash. An interesting note is that they’re actually auto-raves. They then begin to make a wish, in order to get out of trouble: meet the creator of the world: Will B. Good, aka, the Proxy.

Something very interesting is a poster, advertising a movie about the end of the world, in which Vincent in Ergo-Proxy-mode is destroying a huge number of buildings. What if these prophecies actually have some truth into them? What if Vincent is destined to destroy the world? In any case, every Proxy seems to know Vincent, and his reputation.

Then, a strange cricket appears. He’s very serious and goal-oriented, in contrast with the care-free Hanapeko and Pure. His name is Hopper, and he tries to get Pino to dump her new-found friends and take her to Will B. Good. This doesn’t really work. The foursome escapes from the garbage dump, which gets filled with water afterwards. Hopper gets annoyed by the carefreeness of Hanapeko and Pure, as they seem to have changed their goals yet again: go to Will B. Good and find out the reason they were created. Interesting questions, coming from them. I especially like the way their personality seems to clash with that of Hopper’s. He just can’t accept that there are people who live for the moment.

Hopper then begins to ask Pino about Vince’s weaknesses, which indeed reveals that she’s with some kind of Proxy. What happens afterwards is Pino, Hanapeko and Pure discovering the surface, and they get to see the amusement park of the Smile World. As they’ve got no tickets, they’re in trouble and some dogs with very large heads appear. Pino has great fun evading them in one of the attractions. While she does this, everyone begins to notice that she has an incredibly sincere and real smile. Something everyone in Smile World is lacking. She was SO cute at that moment.

Later, the foursome has been captured after all. Pino also mentions Raul for a moment while Hanapeko and Pure change their goals yet again: become real customers and have real smiles. They then get interrogated by the same guards as before. For some reason, the reason for the dogs to have such big heads is that they were wearing masks. In any case, the interrogators are so impressed by Pino’s smile that they forget their initial reasons.

Hopper then loses his patience and sends them directly to Will B. Good. Will reveals that it’s extremely difficult to give people a constant smile. That’s why he needs total control, in order to protect this perfect smile. It’s ironic that all these smiles are fake. Each citizen of Smile World is ignorant about everything happening outside of the surface. That’s why they can remain to be “happy”.

Will then starts asking Pino about Vincent’s weaknesses, and his treasure. He does this by putting up a fake smile. His creations recognize the fakeness of his smile, after having seen Pino, and they turn against him. Will then resorts to his last option: beg Pino to stop Vincent. If Vincent and him meet, they’ll have to fight. When they fight, Will will lose, and everyone in Smile World will die. Including the friends Pino made. Pino then wakes up, and she manages to convince Vincent to stay away from Will. Especially the way the episode ended was awesome.

It’s a happy end, isn’t it? On the other side, the citizens of Smile World still have all of their freedom taken away. They still know nothing. They still keep smiling forever, with a fake smile. Unless Will has learned something from Pino. It’s interesting to wonder what he’ll be doing afterwards. I don’t think we’ll ever get to see what happens with Smile World after this episode.

Also, the fact remains that Pino is an Autorave. Just what is the Cogito-virus anyway? Why has it been released? If I remember it correctly, it was released to stop the Proxies, but it backfired. Still, Pino showed how the Cogito-virus can work effectively. She got love and care from Vincent. Iggy got ignorance from Real. That’s why they ended up the way they did. But to think that Pino would be so life-like. She’s actually making her own decisions during this episode. She doesn’t copy from anyone, like she did in the earlier episodes.

I now realize that most people don’t really know how to obtain this series. The easiest way is through the link below, in which the Ayatsuri Sakon Project has provided downloads for episodes 1-10 and fifteen. Episodes 11-14 can be downloaded through regular bittorrent.

http://asp.dryfire.org

Anyway, about the episode. It promises to be a great arc once more. This time, it’s about a man with a mask, who’s been killing random villagers with a cursed blade. Sakon’s visiting the family who plays a major part in this murder drama. Let’s get on with the characters:

Sakon. He’s been rather cute at the beginning of the episode, when he got so much appraisal by the different members of the family. He remained a bit in the background this episode, in order to let the problem fully explain itself.

Shiho plays the role for the important side-character this time. She’s innocent in any case. Why am I so sure of this? Because she appears in the OP, alongside all of the other important side-characters. She’s the only one who believes in her brother’s innocence. I think this is because he used to play with her very often. She’s got a typical big-brother complex. She’s a bit rude to Sakon in the beginning, though this changes when she sees Ukon in action.

Kyouichi is the eldest brother of the four children of the family. He stole the sword, Byakko, crafted by the famous Muramasa, from his father and ran off with it. Afterwards, three murders on random villagers occurred and he never even returned. It’s indeed easy to label him as the main suspect, but I doubt that he actually was the one. It’ll be very interesting to see his back-story, though.

Akizuki Soushirou is the father of the family. What happened to the mother, we never know. He’s an old man with an obsession for swords, old weaponry and puppets. Around the middle of the episode, the message gets in that yet another villager has been killed. He then secretly leaves the house, rather nervously, to meet up with Kyouichi. This ends up with him getting killed by the killer. At the end of the episode, we find his body at a place, other than where he was killed. Why would the killer go through so much trouble to move a body?

Miho is the third daughter of Akizuki. She’s the one who suspects her older brother with the most enthusiasm. It seems that it’s been quite a shock when she found out what she did, and somehow, she convinced herself that her brother did it, and couldn’t be trusted.

Futaba is the second daughter of Akizuki. She also believes that Kyouichi was the murderer, but she does manage to stay a bit calm when she talks about him, unlike her sisters.

Kikuchi is Futaba’s fiancé. He’s the typical innocent guy who got caught up in events, and now is scared to death. I think he decided to at least find out what’s going on, so that he doesn’t actually get killed because of his ignorance.

Fujita Zenkichi is a reporter. Probably for a local tv-station. He’s got an overall laid-back attitude. An interesting fact is that he was supposed to show up at a performance of Sakon, at the beginning of the episode, but for some reason, he couldn’t find it. During the end of the episode, when everyone travels to Akizuki’s corpse, he also somehow forgot to take his camera along with him. That isn’t really professional behaviour, is it?

We’ve also got an unnamed maid, working for Akazuki. She picks up the phone, every time a mysterious person, thought to be Kyouichi, gives a call. Apart from that, she didn’t really have a big role.

Yoshida is a police-officer. He drops by in order to deliver the message that yet another villager has been killed, in the same way as a year ago. If that’s the only part in this story he has to fulfill, I’ll eat my hat. Especially if you consider what happened in the first arc.

Our main suspect, however, is Oki Katsumi. When you look at the silhouette of the murderer, he is one of the few who could be able to meet it. We also saw Akazuki getting killed. Afterwards, Oki barged in the room. When the phone rang for the second time, Oki was the one to grab it out of the maid’s hands. It’s never certain that he actually talked with Kyouichi in the first place. He also made a small mistake. He was so keen on guiding everyone to Akazuki’s body, that he forgot that nobody knew that he went to do something other than studying. He seems too focused at carrying out his plan that it’s obvious.

Another theory is that Oki and Yoshida are working together. After all, when Oki drove to the place of Akazuki’s body, he drove so fast and missed a turn. Someone who knew the area wouldn’t have done. This could suggest that Yoshida killed the guy and dragged it to the riverbank, while Oki distracted everyone. After all, someone had to be the one to make the phone calls.

And what was up with the guy with car trouble? Anyway, overall, this arc has started very promising. I really like the different characters it features.