Black Bullet, Ep 7: Cyborg man vs. cyborg loli

I’ll be more on time with these blog posts next week, when I don’t have finals to worry about. I swear!

• After Rentarou first finds out that Tina has done something to Enju (repeating the final scene of the last episode,) the OP starts playing and after that we cut to Rentarou and Kisara visiting a hospitalized Enju. That’s pretty odd timing, since it feels like they’re visiting Enju just after she was harmed by Tina; it might have been better to have another scene in between to better indicate the passing of time. It’s also a wonder why Tina didn’t kill Enju or anything. Perhaps she couldn’t bring herself to kill a friend of her husbando Rentarou. Either way, it would have been nice to have just a little better of an idea why Enju is hospitalized instead of dead.

• Then after being informed that Enju will be anesthetized for another two days, Rentarou asks Kisara “Is everything over now?” To which she replies “There will be a third meeting held between Seitenshi-sama and President Saitake.” Okay, it made sense for Seitenshi to visit Saitake a second time, since like I said there was no evidence that Saitake had anything to do with it. But now this is just dumb. Being attacked not once, but twice in a row while visiting Saitake is definitely reason enough to suspect the guy, or at least stop holding meetings with him until they figure out who hired the assassin.

• “She could have easily killed Enju if she wanted to…the police officer from last time, too…is Tina trying to avoid killing people as much as possible?” Well, I guess I was right with my speculations a minute ago, though that was just pointing out the obvious. This bathing scene of Rentarou and the flashback with him at the scene of the crime sort of gives me what I wanted, which is give us an idea of what went down with Tina and Enju.

• As Rentarou broods and punches walls over how powerless he and Enju are against Tina in some dark alleyway, Yasuwaki (i.e. Glasses-kun) drives up out of nowhere. He explains about how they’ve set up a protection plan for Seitenshi’s third attempt to talk with Saitake, and gloats about how Rentarou lost his Initiator. Now that’s just be incredibly dickish with that latter point. I mean, he’s rubbing it in that Rentarou’s partner is hospitalized, and a little girl at that. Even if he’s got a grudge against Rentarou, that’s just cruel and inappropriate.

Though Rentarou retaliates in some inappropiate behavior himself, and points a gun at Yasuwaki; ordering him to set up a fake plan, message it to him, and he’ll figure the rest for how to protect Seitenshi. Those are some pretty vague instructions there, and pointing a gun at your superior might not be the most convincing mode of negotiation here. What exactly does he expect from a “fake plan”?

• Next Rentarou pays a visit to Sumire, who explains to him about the three “Shenfield” tracking device bomb things that Tina uses. Heh, it sounds like Seinfield.

• Sumire asks Rentarou if he knows why Varanium is black, and explains to him that it’s because her hatred materialized. I’m confused at what exactly she’s trying to say her. Maybe she’s just saying random stuff to sound cool. She then tells him, “You’re as no-nonsense as I’ve come to expect. When I realized that, I learned that…that my soul is being saved by your growth.” Don’t tell me she’s part of Rentarou’s harem too! Though really, it’s interesting that she’s “connected” to this world through him, meaning monitoring his growth as a monster-hunting cyborg civil officer is the only reason she even cares about living, or at least that’s the vibe I’m getting from this scene. I wonder why she’s otherwise given up on life?

• I have to wonder, why weren’t any of these civil officers ranked in the top 100 employed to take on Kagetane? I mean, I never really got the impression any of the civil officers hired were any stronger than Shougen.

• “I’ll protect Seitenshi-sama, defeat Tina, rise up in the ranks, and solve the mystery of this world.” Is it just me, or has “solve the mystery of this world” become a cliche anime saying too?

• So thanks to yet more psuedo-science mumbo jumbo, Rentarou’s left Varanium eye allows him to see the world more slowly. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t seeing the world slowly have more to do with how your brain itself perceives and processes the world, whereas your eyes are simply just what you see?

• As Rentarou trains in a VR simulator owned by Miori, a bullet scratches his cheeck; he then just stands right out in the open for a few seconds before shooting and taking out the CPU enemy. I get the feeling that this VR simulator is set to “Easy.”

• According to Miori, Rentarou has a power level of 2200%, and Enju 8600%. And since Tina beat Enju, she’s at least 1.5 times stronger, which would put her at a power level of at least 12900%. But what exactly are all these numbers based off of? The average strength of a human? But even then I dunno if you could really measure human strength in terms of “power levels” and percentages; it’s just an arbitrary number to make Tina seem more intimidating.

• Haha, so Tina’s Promoter (or “master” at least,) is the character named after Ayn Rand, who also happens to be a guy. Kind of funny given that the real life Rand as a woman. Though putting aside Ayn Rand jokes, interesting that one of the four great scientists behind the Super Soldier Whatever It’s Called plan is trying to assassinate Seitenshi.

• Rentarou approached a set of three abandoned buildings, where he has tricked Tina into going thanks to the fake plan he had Yasuwaki set up. I don’t know how anyone could be fooled into thinking that some abandoned buildings in the middle of nowhere could be part of Seitenshi’s protection plan.

• I like how Rentarou’s robotic arm and leg shreds off his sleeve and pants leg out of nowhere. Seems like a perfectly good waste of a school uniform. His fake skin gets shredded too, apparently. Gee, that must be costly to replace. Don’t know why any of this shredding is necessary except to make him look cool.

• Ha! And he can glide across the ground thanks to single jet in his right foot. The wonders of varanium prosthetics.

• After some dumb acrobatic moves, Rentarou dives into one of the buildings, and tracks down one of the Shenfield’s and shoots it down. Then as he recieves a call from Miori, he once again stands up in plain site; only for a Shenfield to find him shortly afterward. I don’t know what Rentarou would have expected, as I would imagine it’d be smarter to trying hiding somewhere while he talks to Miori. What’s with this guy and just standing when others are shooting at him?

• What follows for the next four or five minutes is Rentarou working his way up the large building, taking down a couple more Shenfields, and having some ridicolous battle with Tina. Eventually Tina gets him corned, but luckily for Rentarou a flash bomb of his goes off and blinds our little night owl; allowing Rentarou to kick Tina through half a dozen floors, and giving him the opportunity to kill her…

• And as expected, Rentarou ends up sparing Tina. His reason being: “You saved Enju. I’ve wanted to say this to you…Thank you, Tina.” That’s some backwards logic there. Tina “saved” Enju by seriously injuring her instead of outright killing her. I get that Tina sparing Enju is reason enough for a thanks in a melodramatic sort of way, but saying she saved Enju is pushing it.

• Rentarou walks out of the building carrying Tina, and assuring her that he’ll do what he can to reduce her prison sentence. But then all of the sudden, Tina is shot, and the camera pans over to none other then motherfucking Yasuwaki. Just looking at his evil smirk all of the sudden made me burst into laughter. Then upon observing that Tina won’t die so easily from a non-Varanium bullet, he asks his cohorts “how many lead bullets do you think it’d take to kill her?”, clearly enjoying himself here. Seriously, the villains in this show are so cartoony.

• Seitenshi arrives just before Yasuwaki can shoot Tina in the head and stops him, having come out of her meeting early. She then raises Rentarou’s rank to 300, which I’m not sure how that works since I thought the ranking system was based off of some weird point system? Eh, whatever.

What happens next is just bananas: Seitenshi also raises Rentarou’s access to top secret information to “level 5,” which somehow makes him Yasuwaki’s superior. And what does Rentarou do to his new subordinate? He shoots his finger off. I, uh, really don’t think a promotion gives you permission to seriously injure your subordinates like that, even if they were just doing something heinous like shooting a loli. “And don’t ever come near Tina again! If you disobey, I will shoot you for treason!” Rentarou shouts. This just seems like an outright abuse of power; the fact that Yasuwaki is a scumbag himself doesn’t really change this. I guess it’s just a cartoony way to deal with a cartoony villain.

• One week passes. According to Rentarou’s monologue as he walks to Kisara’s office, Saitake went back to Osaka “pissed off” after Seitenshi left their third meeting prematurely, and Tina is currently under the custody of Seitenshi and undergoing interrogation. I guess we’re not going to find out yet if Saitake had anything to do with Professor Rand or the assassination attempts.

• Yay, Enju’s all better! Yaaaaaay and Tina’s all better and is now working for Tendo Civil Security Agency! Such a happy ending. Rentarou doesn’t seem too enthusiastic about this though. I guess the whole annoyed tsukkomi act trumps any relief or joy he would have over his loli friend being healthy and not sent to jail.