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I actually liked how they just kind of shrugged off more complex time travel issues. The world doesn't bother to make sense of paradoxes and just leaves them be.

The highlight of this week is...

Kikko's transformation. As strange as this show can be, I wasn't entirely expecting that. Also, this show got confirmed for split cour so we'll get more episodes for Spring 2016!

Really dark episode. I mean people have died before, but it's been never been this bloody. That revelation at the end was also very interesting. spoiler[Has Kikko been lying to them all this time, or is she really loyalty to the bureau? I'm also wondering why Claude called her "The future demon queen". Could he be Jirou from some other timeline?]

episode eleven

The details have finally been tied together in regards to Kikko. Ullr already mentioned she was the future queen of another place and Emi had said she sounds an awful lot like a demon (in conversation with Ullr). I was waiting for a reveal like this to happen. I suspect that the details of this whole future queen of the demon realm thing is the significance behind Kikko saying she was 20 now in the first episode - I think Kikko makes the decision to miss some proverbial boat she was "meant" to catch.

I'm kind of curious who all those people Claude killed were, exactly. I feel like that information has already been put out there somewhere along the line and I've just misplaced it.

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I'm kind of curious who all those people Claude killed were, exactly. I feel like that information has already been put out there somewhere along the line and I've just misplaced it.

In regards to Claude's in episode actions, it is clearly a case of "pay evil unto evil" type of "justice" at least from his own perspective, while later killing scientists that are assumabley connected to the superhuman war sub project even if they are powerless against Claude's rampage.

It is amusing that Kikko has always called out that she is in fact a Witch, but this will be the first time for the audience has been presented that the fluffy magical girl form is not her "true" powered up self.

I am pretty sure the implication is that Claude is Jirou. Current Jirou is focusing on the fact that Claude did something evil, and Kikko was getting frustrated that Jirou did this only to reveal a greater evil that was done. Also frustrated that with the reveal of all the information that Jirou was so quick to go to violence rather than try to talk things out. And as we saw, Kikko might be capable of as much ruthless power when faced by what she sees as senseless slaughter in front of her, but even then she was quick to want to communicate.

We have not really got much of an answer, but one can guess that those scientists were involved in some sort of (super)human experimentation. Possibly along the lines of what was seen in the submarine. And yet the government are trying to play off that they got stuck with their pants down by focusing on what was done to get that information.

And looks we know the policy of the other group, they look like they are for freedom and such, but their kindness of giving rights only goes so far as they are xenophobic. They don't want to give rights to nonhuman super humans. May not even be intentional, but this feels like it falls back into political parties who say they are for the country, but are also hate groups against certain races. Having watched news this is a very current topic in my own country at the moment.

Episode 12:

Good episode overall but slightly confusing especially with Kikko's intentions (although I have to say, her transformation made her look quite appealing).

Claude is also such a mysterious character...
I feel like overall, the episode sets up well for the finale, which I hope will be memorable for the first cour.

episode twelve

So many details, some long coming, dropping.

Kikko's demonic form, now that we get a better look at it, is pretty cool. For a while, I was considering that she might be the show's moral center, but with her latest actions I think the show is just forgoing having any particular character embody its ideals, at least for the time being. It also rounds out the shows theme of having none of the characters be what they immediately appear to be.

From the previews, and given the size of the potential revelations involved, it seems pretty likely that the season finale will be the point where we cross over into Jirou's post-bureau days. I figured that would be the timing from the start, so no surprise if this is the case.

Stark700 wrote:

Good episode overall but slightly confusing especially with Kikko's intentions (although I have to say, her transformation made her look quite appealing).

Kikko seems to have been slightly hypnotised that Claude is Jirou. She holds Jirou as a high example of moral integrity in protecting super humans, she has seen that Claude is standing up for them too in how she believes he should. To make it easier he has kind of lied to Kikko so that she is doing what she believes is right, although ironically it is a lie not too unlike what the Bureau's origins are. Lying that a man was a criminal when he was actually trying to help them.

In the end the origins of the Bureau came with the sacrifice of Jrou's hero, and ultimately the failure of the protecting those children by blaming deaths on him, while instead becoming experiments. This is probably the cross road where Jirou loses all faith in it, of how could it be good when it is built on such a horrible foundation. By the fact that Kikko will eventually remain with the bureau we could see it that there is also the side of still doing something good based on tragedy, or perhaps the aliens removed memory of the events.

As a viewer, totally lost all respect for Jirou's adoptive father, maybe he thinks he is doing right, but he stepped on innocent children on his way up. Trying to pull pieces together, we saw in Hyouma's future that super humans are not a thing, and the preview seems to imply that the aliens want there to be more like them (from the super humans) possibly because lonely, and the scientist believes it would be better.

This will be mostly a crazy thought, but looking for symbolism I think that it could be representative of outside forces (aliens) like USA and UK trying to turn a country into an ally (like them). Followed by support within the country by people who see a negative future otherwise, and perhaps academic concerned with rights. Answers are not cut and dry because there are sacrifices on the way, people get hurt, and freedoms are taken away. Much of things in existence a built on bloody and horrible things, the truth behind such origins can make you lose faith, but you also should look forward to stop more horrible things from happening.

Episode 13 (finale):

Well it was a fun ride, a colorful one with superheroes.

In the finale, we got rioting, mecha, and all kind of action going on. For some reason, I think Hyouma has became one of my favorite characters from this show. Kikko was also quite awesome, I hope she gets a prominent role in the next season. And anyways, rating this good. The show was quite fun even though it had its a fair amount of crazy moments.

Whoever it was that theorized that spoiler[Superhumans are nuclear bombs]... Congratulations.

Episode 13 (finale)

With everything that happened, it is really kind of blurry of who is right and wrong. As a simple answer I just felt like Claude was on the right side, the government needed to answer for what they took part in. It was an interesting point when the immortal kid explained the situation as the younger generation hearing an older generation talking about need of peace and such, and it becomes the basis for a difference of morals.

The police detective himself seemed to show a little concern that method of pursing justice does not entirely match up to his goal, but he has to be single minded. It really looks like everyone has their own reasons for seeing things a certain way. Kikko apparently has alternative benefits from making people happy, breaking down the benefits makes her look cold hearted. Although that is from her familiar who seems to have his own weird motives. Emi seems to be very selfish, she is kind of very attached to Jirou, but it does not stop her from doing things he would not like. Jirou is a bit of a mess, he is trying to pursue justice and the right thing, but what the hell is justice. So he seems to largely boil it down to what is right in front of him, and this seems to be where the problem of people trying to pursue justice really comes down to. There is no simple answer to right and wrong, the truth of right and wrong is complicated, and even what is right in front of them can be perverted by people who see the right thing as one certain complicated thing.

The series jumped around so much and had so much different topics that it is really hard to have finished watching this in the last 13 weeks and try and summarise my thoughts. What happens next is going to be big in how much of a payout is gained from all these events. Am I confused, but did their director realise that he was doing something wrong with the new law and decided to stop it? Which would make Jirou saying the director would hate him kind of ironic? And Jirou... is the bomb used on Hiroshima (Little Boy)? Kaiju are often a representative of nuclear weapons. And it would be interesting if he was a literal representative of something that was used to force peace through incredible destruction.

So far I give a rating of Good, so far it is worth seeing, but as of now it is not quite coherent, probably would require some in depth analysis, and or waiting for the next half to come later.

CONCRETE REVOLUTIO -- intermediate thoughts on this project (13 episodes is only half of it):

1) concept of some bureau that manages/tracks some paranormal phenomenons and activities was beaten to death since forever, so this show does not get any originality points in this regard at all;

2) the project is one of the best ways to show how the world and what happens in it are are not simplistic, not binary, not "black or white". Each side has their truth and reason behind what they do, and not necessary cynical and sinister. And yet those sides collide and fight each other. For many viewers it is not easy concept to accept, since most of people have binary thought process and get quickly confused and give-up on matters that can not be easily resolved with "good" and "bad" adjectives ascribed (there are people who have trinary thought process, but they are minority);

3) The storytelling is not really confusing to those who try to pay attention very carefully, but it is unnecessarily confusing for average viewer. There is from little to no actual artistic benefit in jumping back-and-forth in the timeline, it just annoys many viewers that otherwise would rate this show much higher;

4) the law of drama works in this anime: heroes are not equal to themselves at different points of the story; they evolve, they change. This is indication of work of a higher class than usual, where characters are always cardboard cliche, always one-note;

5) this show has couple of the cutest characters ever -- little spirit boy and robotic superhero girl;

6) visually, this project can be called post-modern, because in parts it reminds of 1970s in terms of graphic style, but it is not uni-formal, it incorporates different styles and colour palettes. Some great monster/mecha designs;

7) there is also small bit of the show that indicates the strength of long-term propaganda in societies, and further discussion of it will connect to one of main themes of this project, described in point #2:

Soviet Superhuman "Golubaya Laika" is said to disobeyed to attack a country from space -- as if attacking countries is what USSR did as usual routine.

In reality, there was no such practice. For example, what is called in the West "USSR's invasion of Afghanistan" was official request from secular non-sectarian government of Afghanistan against USA-armed/trained Islamic fundamentalists, attacking from Pakistan -- they are known as Taliban now. Additionally, USA (by decision of Ronald Reagan) armed Wahhabi/Salafist jihadists, headed by Osama Bin Laden -- they are known as Al-Qaeda now.

USSR knew that if it will enter it will be quagmire, so it declined to come to Afghanistan for multiple times before actually agreeing; Afghanistan government sent about dozen of demands to USSR to comply with intergovernmental treaty where USSR was obligated to help in case of attacks against Afghanistan.

Another known case was Caribbean crisis. Western media usually tell the story how evil USSR wanted to install nuclear missiles in Cuba, but the part where USA installed nuclear missiles in Turkey few years before that is never told. So who is "good" and who is "bad" is always turned upside-down in the most Orwellian way.

USSR in general was opposite to USA's neocolonial policies. USA have overthrown about 50 governments worldwide to install those who would go with economic policies that are beneficial to USA's oligarchy (google term "banana republic", what stands by it). As result, affected countries lived in poverty and most of their money and resources being sucked up by multinational corporations. USSR, on the other hand, had no multinational corporations and provided enormous financial and material help to its partners to degree that people in middle of the country lived poorer than USSR's partners in Socialistic Block/Warsaw pact. After USSR fell apart, Russia forgave most of $150 billion debt of countries USSR had helped, not forced austerity measures on them like happened in Greece and others by mercy of Western creditors.

But, of course, Western media -- as per StateDep narrative -- since late 1940s portrayed USSR as "evil empire", even though it was order of magnitude less "evil" than USA were. So much for "free and democratic" media. The infamous Soviet "Pravda" newspaper was never even remotely close to levels of Orwellian distortions Western media achieve regularly -- most famously, with Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction, as well as his ties to terroristic act of 9/11.

(Of course, this is not to say that USSR was anything close to paradise either: personal freedoms were limited, and there were couple of cases of use of force by USSR that were controversial -- like Budapest and Prague: even though local governments requested help to suppress instigated revolts, those cases were acts of oppression that contemporary Russia, let alone Hungary and Czech Republic, officially condemned. As this anime shows, and as how real life is, there is barely anything that either black or white. USA, for example, is also not totally bad. Huge advancements like Internet and many other technologies appeared in this country -- and, by the way, mostly from "evil" industrial defence complex. Dialectics in the works, so to speak.)

MaxSouth wrote:

Soviet Superhuman "Golubaya Laika" is said to disobeyed to attack a country from space -- as if attacking countries is what USSR did as usual routine.

As I mentioned in the other thread, I took it less as a portrayal of the USSR as inherently belligerent (if anything, I believe the show does more to portray the US that way), and more as a composite reference to the stories of several specific events and individuals, where their opposition or lack of blind obedience to Soviet authorities may have averted the start of a nuclear war. To me it seemed like the most even-handed portrayal the show could have possibly made in the little screen time it dedicated to the Soviet Union. But then I do realize that, as a Russian who's both a bit of a Soviet history buff and, um, not particularly nostalgic for the Soviet regime, my perspective isn't terribly common among the show's target audience, so other viewers' impressions may vary. Few of the references I read into the scene would be obvious to people who don't have a nerdy interest in the Cold War era, space exploration or even the Russian language (the subtle reference to the Soviet police state is only immediately accessible if you can read Russian, not to mention the trivia about the word "goluboy"), so I can't even be sure if all of them were intentional, let alone what they were meant to signal to an audience of Japanese otaku.

Season 2, episode 1:

Yay, the show is back. New OP song is nice too, I like it just as much as the previous one.

A joint investigation, Jirou's back, and trouble already running lose. A bit of a chaotic but entertaining episode imo. I'm glad this series returned with all the characters. Washizu, the space sheriff is also a somewhat interesting character imo with his idea about justice. Shiba's mind is going a bit twisted imo with the whole justice thing. Looking forward to how the rest of the season will develop.

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