Short Synopsis: Aoki tries to catch the culprit of this arc’s crime red-handed.
Highlights: A solid conclusion.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
This arc really took its time to tell its story, and it worked out pretty well. The thing I liked about this arc wasn’t the characterizations or the intensity that some of the other arcs of Himitsu showed, but rather the complexity of its storyline. The previous episodes showed lots of question-marks, and this episode answered them very nicely, even though I had trouble as usual, trying to understand those elaborate dialogues. ^^;

So in the end, it was indeed the bald guy with the hat. The first incident on the train wasn’t because of him, but a girl he really liked was assaulted by a knife. When he tried to stop it, the girl got stabbed, and a bottle that contained the disease got slashed open, spreading the disease through the various people on the train. The following murderers were him, trying to erase the evidence. I didn’t like it when the characters started talking Chinese, though. It was already hard enough for me to grasp what that dialogue was about without some Japanized Chinese translated in Kanji…

I also liked how this episode addressed the sardine-can syndrome of the Japanese trains and subways. They are notorious for how nobody ever seems to talk there, and when such a major incident happens as someone getting threatened with a knife or something, most of them try to ignore it, instead of trying to do something to resolve it.

Then there’s that idiot Aoki. As it turns out, he never kissed and got himself infected, but he just made his fingernails look like they were infected. He did jump right in front of a train in order to save the culprit, though, in a desperate attempt to save Miyoshi from her disease. In the end, there was a romantic tension between the two, but Aoki reminded Miyoshi too much of Suzuki. That doesn’t really work when he wants to get a relation with her to make her forget about the guy.

I think I also finally get why this series feels weird at times, and I can’t seem to fully enjoy it like I did when it first started. I first thought that it was because of bad characterization, but that’s not quite right: even in the first half, this show has seen some great cases. The thing with this series is that it’s incredibly inconsistent: one episode focuses at characterization, while the next focuses on mystery, then the next one is all about horror, then there’s one that aims to disturb, then there’s a thought-provoking one, et cetera. The things that made a previous episode great aren’t the focus of the following. The best example of it is episode eight: possibly the best episode of the entire series because it was so bloody disturbing, but it also caused me to expect the same of the rest of the series.

In other words: this series is incredibly unpredictable: you’ll never know what an episode will be about. It’s both so in the good ways and the bad ways. On one hand, those bloody expectations don’t always cooperate you expect tension but instead get a fairly quiet episode that aims to be more thought-provoking, et cetera. On the other hand, it does show great writing to be so incredibly versatile with this series. It’s a bit of a double-edged sword, that’ll probably cause Himitsu to never really make it to my favourites, but it’s a great series nonetheless.

Short Synopsis: The scale is upped as 724 reveals an army’s worth of allies.
Highlights: Mostly building up… and still no Luka?
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
Ooh, it really looks like this series is planning to go all out for its finale. This is the second building-up episode in a row, with just four episodes remaining. In this episode, 724 reveals that much more clones and numbers have followed him to that distant planet, and that he’s regarded as their hero. This episode also gave some more background to Daxus II, and if I say so myself, it was an episode well spent.

724 is really a person who attracts others. He not only did that with his clone comrades, but also the people who work in his mine greatly look up to him, to the point where they were actually willing to fight to the death. It was interesting how didn’t even give them the chance to bury their comrades. 044 didn’t do much in this episode (this episode was really meant to flesh out the side-characters), but that one fight scene of hers was pretty impressive; she actually wants to be stopped.

Also, I really wonder when Luka’s going to pop up. It’s surprising that there hasn’t been any sign of him for the past two episodes. He’s probably frantically looking for Ultraviolet, but as long as there’s no news about her, he obviously can’t do much. It would perhaps have been better to show a bit of footage of him, looking for 044, but on the other hand, this does add to the mystery of it all.

Short Synopsis: To synopsis this episode would be a bit too spoilerific, but let’s just say that it sheds more light on the concept of cyberbrains.
Highlights: Ooh, the character-development!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
You have to wonder: what the heck are the creators planning for the finale of this series? There’s no bad guy, no approaching apocalypse, there no cast member that’s in danger of losing his/her life, there’s no evil plot to take over the world/organization/town, there’s no goal to overcome, there’s been NOTHING that hinted at a standard conclusion whatsoever. The only thing I can think of is that Souta’s sleeping with his boss, and I can imagine how that would go wrong, but it feels nothing like any other conclusion of a story I’ve seen so far.

This episode too: it was all about Minamo’s and Haru’s character-development, while the next episode seems to go back Souta (whose bracelet was that!?). But then again, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. I really like Real Drive’s episodic nature, and this episode really showed that this series is evolving, now that Haru’s got the power in his legs back. He spends the entire episodes, trying to learn to walk again (which obviously takes A LOT of effort after fifty years without walking). He sure does it in an unorthodox way: no crutches, he doesn’t try to hold any solid object around him, nothing. In medical terms, that’s obviously not advisable, but I can imagine how after fifty years, he really wanted to try and walk without any help from other people or things.

Minamo meanwhile also surprised me when she decided to get a cyber-brain in this episode. And oh my god, the transition to a cyber-brain is much more complicated than I expected. I originally thought that they were just going to plant some chips into your brain and stuff, but it looks like your entire brain is getting replaced by a device. I can imagine that Kushima’s adjustments to his body are even bigger, to prevent him from aging and all. Through the entire series, this “cyberbrain” had seemed like some sort of magic, but when this episode showed what’s inside a person’s head, it suddenly got a whole new dimension.

I also loved the random chatter Minamo made with one of the other people who wanted to get a cyber-brain, although it also was a bit disturbing to learn that Minamo has actually fallen for Haru. Now that he’s about to learn to walk again, and might not need Minamo anymore, Minamo seriously started thinking about him, and realized that she felt for him. I really hope that she meant “as a friend”, rather than the other thing. ^^;

Also, I do wonder what’s up with that guy that Minamo talked to. He lied to her about getting a cyberbrain (he already had one), he used a fake name and he looks like Haru when he was younger. Could this be the first hint as to what the creators are planning for that ending?

Short Synopsis: It’s back to travel-arcs as Porfy runs into a bunch of streetpunks.
Highlights: A travel-arc it may be, but there’s plenty of development for Porfy.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Okay, so the inevitable happened: this series returned to the travel-arcs. Still, this episode was definitely among the better travel-stories of Porfy’s journey. It’s interesting: the smaller the arcs are, the more impact they make. This episode was excellent, and let’s hope that the next arcs will be so as well.

Porfy walks around a bit, and meets a guy who has trouble with his car. The guy acts very annoyed, but when Porfy fixes it he suddenly becomes very nice. It seems that he mistook Porfy for a bunch of street punks. He offers Porfy to come by for dinner, but Porfy needs to continue on and ask for Mina. A guy, a few years older than Porfy then offers Porfy a bit of bread, and he offers to help Porfy search for his sister. The two spend some time together, and they get some ice cream together (Porfy obviously notes that his mother’s ice cream was better).

As it turns out, Guido (the guy)’s parents are gone. He lives together with other guys who like him lost his parents. He offers Porfy to spend the night there. The guys all seem scary at first, but they greet Porfy nicely, apart from one of them, who keeps glaring at him. They turn out to be travelling, just like Porfy.

That night, they eat bread and soup (which of course doesn’t taste that well). Later, when everyone’s asleep, Porfy thinks how nice it must be to be together with everyone. Guido offers Porfy to join them, but Porfy declines. He needs to search for his sister. He also reveals that when he’s found Mina, he plans to return to Greece and restart the gasoline stand (foreshadowing?).

Georgio (the angry guy) then also, when nobody watches, threatens Porfy to leave as soon as possible the next day, saying that this isn’t the place for him to be. Porfy shrugs it off, but he does intend to leave the next morning. Guido is up early enough to accompany Porfy for a bit. He then tells Porfy a story about how his parents used to love cars before they died, but that car was taken away from them. They finally managed to track down the people who stole away that car. Porfy then says that he’ll help them retrieve that car.

Guido then gives him his purple jacket to wear, while Georgio looks at him very angrily. Later, Porfy and Guido arrive at a rich-looking house and Porfy manages to break into it, and they drive away. They split up later, where Guido says that he’ll hide the car, and Porfy tells him to take care. When he returns at the hideout, everyone’s suddenly gone. After a while, a couple of angry people (among the man from before) come looking for he car. They confuse Porfy for the leader of the pack due to the purple jumper that he’s wearing.

They chase him, until Porfy reaches a dead end, but Georgio manages to save him by distracting the men with a bunch of firecrackers, and they manage to escape. Porfy asks whether Guido has betrayed him, and why he did it, but Georgio just tells him to go away as soon as possible. He then gets beaten up by Guido for being so soft on Porfy. He was the idiot that let himself get betrayed. Guido meanwhile has already forgotten Porfy’s name and the episode ends.

Trust and betrayal is really a HUGE theme of the travel-arcs in this series. They lacked in the Sicily-arc and the Maximilian-arc, which probably is another reason why they felt dull. In this episode, everything comes together, though. Porfy gives his entire trust to the street punks, and never once critically thinks of why they’re so nice to him. Why would they give him bread if they have to feed so many mouths? And I guess that that was the purpose of the Sicily-arc and the Maximilian-arc: they meant to show the niceness of people: people are willing to take care of others, but there are just as many people who take advantage of this.

Porfy’s really going to emerge as a stronger person after this. This episode and episode 31 were a real example of his naivety ending him up in trouble. It’s also awesome to see that the background artists could flex their creative muscles again for this episode. Some of the shots looked absolutely gorgeous, and amongst the best that this series has shown.

Oh, and on a side-note, I got rather disturbed when I checked on my google-hits a few days ago. For the past seven and a half months, the term “Porfy Sucks” has generated 1487 friggin’ hits! Fouteen hundred! I mean, I can understand why someone would want to search for the term once or twice, but what are fourteen hundred people doing searching for a show that sucks? That’s likely even more than the people who are watching it, for christ’s sake! I’d love to hear from one of these people who entered the search term what made them search for it, because I’m baffled right now. I mean, I can understand that not many people are interested in this series, but this is getting ridiculous.