Active Raid

Episode 11

Logos' plan continued to unfold this week, as the surrender of Bird was revealed to just be a delaying tactic in order to buy time for Mythos' takeover of the Orochi system. With both the “o” and “chi” segments already under his control, Japan was brought to a halt, forcing the implementation of a strict curfew and shutting down virtually all complex electronics. And yet, in spite of barely being able to send a message between its agents, Unit 8 turned out to actually be somewhat liberated by this series of events. It turns out that the less the government is actually working, the less it can actively screw up.

This episode wasn't exactly thrilling, but it also wasn't dramatically inert like last week; it was a reasonable role-playing episode, moving Unit 8 and Mythos that much closer to their final confrontation. Additionally, this episode also provided a pretty cute elaboration of its general distrust of government bureaucracy.

All throughout Active Raid, the most reliable opponent facing Unit 8 hasn't been Logos; it's been their own government, constantly interfering with their investigations or demanding control of their operations or refusing to let them perform any actions that might harm one or another politician's reelection gambit. But with Mythos having taken over most of the government's technical apparatus, things actually got a lot simpler for Unit 8. Even the governor checked into a hospital to duck his own responsibility, and so Unit 8 were left with no one to complain as they followed Bird's trail of clues all the way to the hiding place of the final Orochi segment. And in the end, the final barrier between Unit 8 and the data wasn't Mythos, it was the military - too sure of their own orders, the USDF were easily duped into defending Orochi from its own potential saviors.

Funasaka and Mythos at various points both referred to this system of rigid, intersecting bureaucracies as “Japan Style,” but what that means specifically is, at least in Mythos' case, still somewhat unclear. Mythos is still a cipher, frankly - we know he likely has a dead sister, and we know he's mad at Japan, but that's about all we've got. Bird's character seems both obvious and fairly cliche - he's the bored genius kid who thinks the adult world is too slow, and so acts out in order to entertain himself. But Mythos clearly has some meaningful motivation, and the show apparently thinks it's a good idea to hide that as a reveal until the finale itself. Personally, I think this is a pretty big misstep; Mythos being a cipher doesn't make me want to learn more about him, it just makes me not care about his current actions. If this were actually framed as a battle between a variety of agents with coherent goals, as opposed to a one-sided fight against a mysterious supergenius, this rising conflict might possess a bit more dramatic tension.

But Mythos has always been one of the show's weakest elements, and so it's not surprising that he's still a problem even at the end. Overall, this was a reasonably successful episode of Active Raid; not thrilling, not tedious, just another movement towards the end.

Overall: B

Active Raid is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Nick writes about anime, storytelling, and the meaning of life at Wrong Every Time.