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Concrete Revolutio
Episode 19

by Rose Bridges,

How would you rate episode 19 of
Concrete Revolutio: The Last Song (TV 2) ?
Community score: 4.2

Now that Concrete Revolutio has set up all its worldbuilding, it has more time to just tell psychedelic Showa-era superhero stories. I'm really beginning to like the new structure to these second-season episodes. Each of them starts with a wacky premise that you have no idea how the show will pull off, but it always manages to coalesce into something not only coherent, but also surprisingly simple by the end. This week, in the tale of the "Iron Mask," we get the show's take on how the "good old days" are not as great as we like to think they were. In this case, those "old days" go back three centuries, to Japan in the 17th-century.

The Sengoku period that the show references actually starts a little bit earlier than the labeled 17th century, lasting from the late 15th to around the turn of that century. It ended a long period of conflict and warfare, the kind that Iron Mask lived her previous life constantly fighting, with the unification of Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate ushering in the Edo period. It's not completely clear from the show if Iron Mask and the other legendary figures in her life did the actual unifying of Japan in this universe, or if they just played a part in fighting those battles. Still, by the time that she goes off to Antarctica to get frozen, koma, or Iron Mask, seemed to have finished her job fighting wars in Japan. She was free to travel the rest of the world, which resulted in her sudden arrival to the present day.

In 1973, the Superhuman Bureau unearths koma from a block of ice found in Antarctica. Imperial Ads quickly sweeps in to take control of her restoration, having "bought" the rights to it. A few months later, we find a revived koma at the Prime Minister's house. Imperial Ads appears to be on the government's side (though we later find out that's not as it seems), and all of them encourage koma to use her black-and-white morality against Jiro and his group, the "bad" superhumans.

Jiro manages to brush her off, but both his team and the Bureau unite against her when she sets her sights on a much more alarming goal: unsealing the Zeth Satan Clan, one of koma's old enemies from her past. The heroes cannot understand why she would do this, but Jaguar, who has traveled back to her time before, remembers that koma was in love with Dragongod Asahi, who sacrificed himself to bind Zeth Satan. We see flashbacks of his teary confession to the "good" koma that he's sorry he was "bad," and this is what he has to do in order for her to continue on as a hero of justice. If she saves him, then she can no longer maintain that role, and he doesn't want that future for her. It gives us a glance back at a world where heroes and villains were divided along strict lines—but that didn't mean that they could deny their more complex feelings.

The arbitrary lines between heroes and villains among superhumans reminded me of last week's episode, when Human-Man struggled with his limited options as a newly-awakened superhuman. Imperial Ads discussed casting him as a "villain" for superficial reasons, but then dismissed him for reasons that would actually lead him toward that path (his connection to his daughter). Human-Man's story showed us that someone could do something that hurt the greater good for very understandable, sympathetic, even honorable reasons. So who is to say what's good or evil in that moment?

Back to this week, Jiro and the others manage to stop koma from re-opening the seal, reminding her that Asahi is no longer alive; all she'd do is release the evil she'd worked so hard to destroy. This gives koma a crisis of faith, and Jiro gets the chance to explain his real motivations to her. koma's morality has started to crack, but that only drives her to the opposite conclusion. She returns to destroy the Prime Minister after learning what his government has done to superhumans. The PM manages to change her mind by revealing that he is related to her, being descended from her brother, and that he also has some minor superhuman powers. (It turns out that thawing her was a publicity stunt to help improve his image.) This becomes the final straw in convincing koma that good and evil is not black and white, and someone like the Prime Minister can do evil things while having redeeming qualities. I thought he was an odd choice for this—his lineage and powers just make him look like a hypocrite at best—but it leads to a satisfying conclusion for koma, since she resists returning to her past. She disagrees that she is more suited for that lost time, insisting that the black-and-white morality and constant warfare had its consequences, so she'd rather continue her travels in this time. Meanwhile, Satomi records and reveals the Prime Minister's secrets, further throwing a wrench into Imperial Ads' moves. Even that fits with the message of this episode: everyone is more complicated than they appear. There are no characters who are all good or all bad, and do we even know how to classify Satomi's actions yet?

In addition to the main "message" plot, we get a few keys in this episode to our main female characters' larger storylines. There's a curious moment, after Ullr leaves Kikko to make her own decision about whether to fight for Jiro, where he mentions that she's "lost touch with her essence" and is no longer a "queen candidate," instead becoming a normal human. It's not surprising that Kikko's love for Jiro might cause her to choose humanity, knowingly or not, but I hope we get answers about what specifically she did to cause this change. It's clearly a turning point for her character, but it comes out of nowhere. As for Emi, I think it's curious that koma resembles her so strongly, and we get a specific backstory for how she came to be the way she was: she was an ordinary village girl who merged with some type of animal god or spirit as part of a magical ritual. Emi has been suggested before to be part-yokai, part-human, even if she firmly rejects her humanity (seemingly unlike Kikko). It will be interesting to find out how she got to be the way she is and to see her developed further as a foil to Kikko. The two characters have a lot of potential, and I feel like I'm just waiting for the writers to take a stronger interest in them.

Maybe we'll get some of that next week, which will be the much-hyped Gen Urobuchi episode, but maybe we won't. A lot of the Butcher's pet themes are already part of Concrete Revolutio's fabric, so I'm curious to see what he'll pick out to make his own. It's all the better that the other writers in this second cour have helped set up a strong pattern of episodic adventures exploring important ethical dilemmas, while still maintaining strong continuity in the overall story. (This week mentions the conclusion of the previous episode.) Concrete Revolutio is finally coming together and living up to its lofty goals.

Rating: A-

Concrete Revolutio is currently streaming on Funimation.

Rose is a music Ph.D. student who loves overanalyzing anime soundtracks. Follow her on her media blog Rose's Turn, and on Twitter.


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