Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Lycoris Recoil
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dm
 Subscriber Posts: 1351 |
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[quote="Beltane70"]
Thanks for the correction. |
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Ruhrpottpatriot
Posts: 61 |
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No, they are right on that one. It's not the first time I too have noticed that. The sentence just doesn't belong in a review that is written for international audience and my Swiss friend and I had some serious raised eyebrows on that. Here in Europe the populace having access to guns, with no background check whatsoever, is a big no-no. The reviewer also assumes that Mika and Chisato are "head[ing] out for a final round-up against the very populace they've been working to protect the smiles of," which is a far stretch to say the least; no -- a far more likely scenario would be to get to Majima and Shinji. As another commenter said, the two don't know about the guns yet and there's still police and other law enforcement agencies out there. In the grand scheme of things 1000 guns are a drop in the bucket. Japan has 296,700 police officers (235 per capita), enough to deal with the situation. A (somewhat) wild guess, because apparently nobody has noticed it: The suitcase Shinji had in the car before he was abducted by Majima contains a replacement heart (it can't be the same suitcase from the end of 8/start of 9; that was left behind). I'm pretty sure that Shinji, as deluded as he is, planned to change out the heart at some point, because -- why wouldn't he? He did it once, he can do it again. This way he could have "Chisato's gift" longer in this world. The reason why he would disable the recharging feature is in my eyes pretty straightforward: Put Chisato in a situation where she either gives up her "no killing" believes and gets a new heart or dies. After all he said, that people who don't fulfil the task that Alan has for them should die. He said so about himself in front of Majima, but it's pretty clear he meant Chisato as well. LycoReco has some darker themes in it, but in the end it has very standard formula and at this point the only question mark that would make a happy-end to a bitter-sweet is: Will Chisato get a new heart/her current one repaired and survive Episode 13. |
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Thesarum
Posts: 401 |
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But that wasn't the point the reviewer was making? Surely we can all, American or otherwise (and I'm not), appreciate the dark irony of how Majima's plan would look to both ends of their seriously polarized political spectrum? It was a wry aside and it certainly doesn't pull down a good and thoughtful review.
That was me! /dance. Admittedly, this is a bit of a miss from Christopher. Not one he deserves shooting for (with Paprika bullets of course. Non-lethal magic bullets only around here please).
I noticed! I already said this too! (admittedly, some of my posts are pretty long and forgettable). I don't think I can roll out the /smug just yet, as it's all wild speculation. Maybe next week if any of it turns out to be true. Or a full on /dogeza in the name of balance if I'm massively wrong. But where is the briefcase now? It wasn't obviously hanging about at Majima's hidehout, but presumably that's where it is. And presumably that's where Chisato is heading. I don't really see Shinji deviating from his ideals and installing it for her just because she rescues him though. Maybe Mika can get through to him, though Mika being the tragic death from the group feels more likely. They (probably) can't kill Chisato or Takina, but Mika's part in raising Chisato is largely done at this point. It's as cliche as a mentor and/or redemption arc could be, but that doesn't mean they won't. Another thought: d'ya reckon we'll see the guys hired to kill Walnut back to help out? Chisato made a comment at the time, something along the lines of "just because they were our enemies today...", so that'd be a fun little callback. |
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Covnam
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They storm the ship, find no one there, then just hang around and have the commander come on board (though considering the timing, it seemed like she wasn't far behind, which is odd)? Wouldn't the first thought be that it's a trap and the whole place could go up just like the train?
Guy shooting himself in the head aside (wtf was up with that extreme btw O_o), a thousand guns in Tokyo with a population of nearly 14 million (going by todays numbers) or 125 million if this is country wide, wouldn't really have much of an impact. You'd expect the average person would either not touch it and/or alert the authorities, not start waving it around. |
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Yttrbio
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I don't think he shot himself in the head, I think the cop shot him when the gun pointed in his direction. It's a thing that comes up a lot in the United States, though again, I find it hard to reconcile because that's highly dependent on the police's general fear/training that any random guy is capable of shooting them, and there's no reason for that fear in the world-building they've shown here.
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Ruhrpottpatriot
Posts: 61 |
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As @Yttrbio said: He didn't shoot himself in the head, he accidentally pointed the gun towards the police officer, which in turn shot the man. This is a well known problem with pistols, since they are so short, the slightest move can point the muzzle towards a completely different target. While in basic training we had a sergeant uppercut a recruit exactly because of that. He turned his head to ask something and while doing so slightly turned his upper body and the pistol pointed at the recruit to the right.
This is actually a believable story point. It's implied that Japan, through the DA and the Lycoris, is a safe country to such an extend, that the police themselves doesn't have to do much anymore when it comes to cases that are not tickets or speeding. Here in Germany we had a (rare) case a few weeks where the police shot a 16 year old because he approached them with a knife and wouldn't drop it, even after being ordered to. And our police officers are trained for such situations, so they usually go without a death, but sadly not always. However, if your officers aren't in these situations and they aren't trained for it (because why would they, there's the Lycoris), this can lead to kneejerk reactions.
Actually and in all seriousness: I can't and I don't see any irony in there. Sure, I get that in the US pro gun advocates would reflexively push for more guns in the populace, because that would make everything safer. However, in the scene shown this isn't even the main point. Majima's plan is to distribute weapons in the populace so they start killing each other and the police. With that, he shows that society isn't as peaceful as they were made to believe. It doesn't matter to him where the guns come from, they just need to be there. And here's the gun control fallacy: It wouldn't work in this situation at all. The guns were smuggled into the country, therefore no amount of gun control would keep them away. This is no gun control argument, it's more of a customs and surveillance argument.
Not because she saved him. He would give her another heart if she started killing because that's what his goal is.
The most cliché ending would be for Mika to die and Chisato getting his heart (which presents some medical problems, but hey, this is anime and there's an emotinal point to be made). Although with LycoReco going as it did, I don't see this coming. It plays it's tropes usually straight and certainly is a bit formulaic, but when it comes to the ending we're getting some interesting twists, especially when it comes to Majima, who first was introduced as your run of the mill crazy terrorist, but then progressively got deeper with his connection to Alan. See: Majima is thinking about how to get back at Shinji. Killing him doesn't work because he's ready to die since he couldn't give Chisato's gift to the world. I assume it's the same for his secretary Himegama. However: He can foil Shinji's plan by preventing Chisato from killing AND giving her a new heart.
I don't think we'll see anybody, except Majima, Mika and/or Shinji, die. Certainly not one of the two/three main protagonists. They subverted the "anybody can die" trope with Walnut/Kurumi and I'm pretty sure they'll keep it that way. Takina is the great question mark going forward. She kills and would be the the person that kills, so Chisato can keep her convictions. |
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Thesarum
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Sure, that was his plan. But I don't see Chisato resorting to killing just to save herself any more than I see Shinji giving up the heart for anything less than that, which was my point. Chisato intends to save Shinji. I think it's likely she'll achieve that. I don't think she'll resort to lethal force to achieve it. Therefore, I don't think that gets us any closer to a path to her survival. So, the question is, what does? There's always wildcard Majima as you say.
For herself, Takina absolutely would kill Shinji to take the heart, yes. Chisato wouldn't want that though, and I think Takina is likely to honor that wish, as she did when coming to Chisato's rescue earlier. Shinji may get a karmic death of course, and Takina would shed no tears over that. And finally, Mika. I think the relationship with Shinji was genuine for them both, if short lived due to the rules of the Alan Institute which Shinji puts above all else. There's a remote chance he can get through. And of course, there's still the possibility it was just misdirection and it really is a regular briefcase with Shinji's lunch (carefully prepared by Himegama of course) and paperwork in it. |
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Thesarum
Posts: 401 |
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We get a bunch of our theories confirmed this week. There is indeed another heart. One that, by the sounds of things, doesn't have the same limited lifespan (the old one was expected to last what, around 10 years?). Chisato was prioritizing Shinji... though as it turns out, that's also prioritizing Majima, because he was never in Enkuboku in the first place. It turns out the briefcase is just with Shinji.. Majima has to know what's in it, right? He's left that there deliberately.
The DA really got played. Again. Majima (because I find it hard to believe Robota is capable) is always a couple of steps in front isn't he? They're arrogant, and believe Raidata both makes them omniscient and gives them perfect information control. It somehow doesn't even occur to them that they might be the targets, that something might be a trap. And it is a proper trap. It turns out Majima didn't broadcast the conversation with Kusunoki last week like I suggested he should have because he had something else in mind - action shots on a stage he's carefully set. Much the same end goal though. The Lycoris' "perfect camouflage" is over. Takina is one devoted partner. Chisato is never not on her mind this episode. I loved the little callback to the 3 rings, 1 ring code they set up a few episodes ago (presumably Shinji's phone?). And what an entrance! That makes the 4th time (I think?) she's come to save Chisato. Shinji has done a runner, but Mika is quite possibly still outside (he's not going back to the cafe is he). Everything seems to be coming up team LycoReco, but there are a few hurdles yet. And Shinji has been shot. It'd be the most Chisato thing to give up the 2nd heart for him wouldn't it? |
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Beltane70
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Looks like I have to correct one of my own corrections about the old tower. I originally thought that it was based only off of Tokyo Skytree, but after seeing this episode, the old tower features design cues from both Tokyo Skytree and Tokyo tower! So, my apologies, dm, you weren't completely wrong!
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michizure
Posts: 177 |
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Yeah, about that "perfect camouflage"... Do I remember correctly that the reason the Lycoris wear a specific school uniform (rather than, say, a melange of different school uniforms) is so that Japanese officialdom can recognize that they are Licensed to Kill and not just some random school-age terrorists themselves? If so, it raises the question of how secret the DA can really be, given the number of people who would have to be privy to that information to make it work. (I remember an academic paper that showed an inverse relationship between the number of people read in on a secret and the length of time it could actually remain secret.) Another case for Bellisario's Maxim: "Don't examine this too closely." |
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kotomikun
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This episode kinda transcended your usual anime/hollywood jazzed-up l33t haxxoring and made her a literal wizard, using magic. I don't even know what she was supposedly hacking with that VR headset. The fabric of reality itself? The tower scene sure was some strange dark comedy, with the corpses of the crew being ineffectively cleaned up by a horde of roombas, which then turn out to be kamikaze drones. Majima has a weird sense of humor, unsurprisingly. Chisato did better than the previous time Majima exploited her weakness (if it could be called that) to being unable to see, though it still mostly gave him the upper hand against someone who had parkour'd her way through numerous gunners moments before. Him having super-hearing wasn't really a surprise, since in the battle from 10 years ago, he was somehow doing combat blindfolded. Seems likely they'll try to eliminate his own superpower to turn the tables, now that they finally know what it is. |
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Ruhrpottpatriot
Posts: 61 |
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That reminded me very much of the 2012 Dredd movie, where almost the exact same thing happened. Only that there nobody cared, and the cleaning vehicle had a trailer with multiple corpses on it.
Give them a different school uniform and be done with it? It's not like this incident will make everyone in Japan see all school girls suddenly as killers, human psychology doesn't work that way. In general there's a big flaw in Majima's theory. People usually choose security over morals, especially if said morals don't affect them very much. Just look at how the KGB, Stasi and Gestapo had almost free reign (and people knew full well how they worked and what happened to people that "left for vacation"). "3000 people are vanishing every year and many of them are most likely criminals? So what? I'm not a criminal, so this won't affect me! This is making my life more secure. Go Lycoris!" And then there's the this other thing: DA's still controlling most of the information. Who's going to say that the government won't publish a few statements and does an "inquiry" where it "comes out" that this whole thing was staged by Majima? This would fit into most people's current knowledge and carefully play their confirmation bias. This is one of the big flaws of the story -- if you think too much about it. In any other case it's a nice plot point that ups the stakes.
That's the paper by David Robert Grimes, where they calculated how long it takes for a conspiracy to get out based on the number of people. And it wasn't long, even if everybody is totally committed to the idea, which is never the case. People slip up and make the wrong comment and then the cat's out of the bag. With the size of the whole program, there should've been at least some rumours floating around. We know that the Lycoris program is around fore more than a decade, let's assume 20 with sufficient infrastructure preparations, etc. Going by the paper, this means you could have only around 600 people in the whole program, which for the entirety of Japan is absolutely impossible, and even if we change the scope to "Tokyo" it most likely wouldn't fly.
As I have written previously: She's the big wildcard in the game. If she had chosen to "get" Majima and not go to Chisato, then Majima's plan would've worked. With this episode I think we can almost safely assume we're getting a book standard "happily ever after" ending or at least something very close to it. Shinji and Mika are not out of the woods yet, but Chisato getting a new heart is almost a given. There could still be a "shocker" where the briefcase gets destroyed, but Kuromi gets the person who actually built the heart, but hey. |
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Philmister978
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Notice that we don't see Himegama anywhere with Shinji, so suppose she wasn't killed offscreen by Majima's men or simply locked away somewhere else, someone had to have untie Shinji's ropes as the bullet didn't go through them from what I saw. Either she managed to find a way out of her predicament that we never see, or maybe Mika never did go home. I'm more curious as to how the whole thing with the Japanese populace will work out. We've seen both the existence of Lycrois and the police's incompetence regarding terrorist and weapons-based situations both laid out in front of their very eyes. I get the feeling we may start seeing a larger public revolt against the law, DA and perhaps even the government itself over these revelations next episode. Ditto the artificial heart subplot with Kurumi and Mizuki, the biggest question being the whole "How are we going to find it" scenario they have to work out. |
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HandofBobb
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Seems to me like 'Super-Hearing' would be just about the worst power to have in an enclosed steel and concrete box filled with gunfire...
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Thesarum
Posts: 401 |
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Yeah, the mechanism by which he doesn't just overwhelm his hearing with his crazy revolver isn't at all clear. In the flashback to the original tower incident he's using his hearing to locate Lycoris while the guy next to him is firing an assult rifle or similar.. Another thing for the list of "cool things it's best not to think about too much". (Much as I am a fan of over thinking... Fortunately I'm also an idiot so it kinda nets out) |
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