Usagi Drop + No.6 – Episode 02

So let’s try to get back on track since I’m a little behind. Now we’re back to the week two blogs after the one last week one blog from yesterday and in a day or so the Third and Final week of the initial blogs will be complete. So let’s get cracking before we get lazy and forget and do something else like play EVE Online.

Usagi Drop – Week Two

Now this episode does not give me the want or desire to go on with my day and do a whole crap-ton of work that I have to get done. But the main gist of the episode is just questioning whether Daikichi can actually take care of little Rin, or if his life is just not suited for it (or at least not suited for it so suddenly).

The episode just reminds me how glad I am not to have to work i n the conditions that Daikichi has to deal with on a daily basis (not yet anyways, though hopefully not ever), and this is not including taking care of Rin. It reminds me of something I read once that there are companies in Japan who do not allow their workers to walk in the hallways, they are forced to run. Now for all I know, that fact is completely false, but stranger things have happened.

Honestly though, the episode’s major strength is that it shows that considering all the extra work that he has to do, Daikichi is very capable of taking care of Rin. The scene where he leaves her at the nursery is quite evident of that. Most people, having dropped off their child into the care of another adult, would immediately begin to focus on the next task at hand without a second thought, usually “Okay it’s 9:00 now, I have 15 minutes to get to work, so if I can catch the…” and so forth. Daikichi does that, BUT – and this is very important – he looks back at Rin before he leaves, then seeing her expression, walks over to reassure her that he will be back that night. He could have just left. God knows that he has enough work to do, so much so that he was unable to pick Rin up until quite a bit after dark that night, but he took the extra minute to go back and make sure that she was okay. That there was the true test of his ability as a guardian.

Where we go from here is uncertain. Daikichi has doubts about how much longer he can keep up the extra workload that he needs to do in order to spend time with Rin, and he also has become interested in one of Rin’s belongings. Specifically, a birth certificate-esk booklet that contains the contact information of Rin’s biological mother, which suggests that in the next few episodes, we’re actually going to meet her and see what kind of a mother would give up her child.

Based on the narrative quality, so far I can take a gander that it’ll be handled well, and I’m looking forward to what the show has in store for us.

No.6 – Week Two

To quote Welcome to the NHK: “CONSPIRACY! EVERYTHING IS A CONSPIRACY!”

I don’t know whether or not I like dealing with conspiracies in anime, mainly because there is usually always a piece of the puzzle missing from the whole image. Though sometimes it’s played off in a way that is still thoroughly enjoyable, for example, Ergo Proxy.

A part of me was expecting more of a Blade Runner feel to this show as the episodes continued on, and while it may still happen to some degree, Ergo Proxy has become a much better show for comparison. In both, we have a male protagonist that is currently in the grunt line of work and that, due to circumstances unknown (at least at the start), is thrown into a side of the world that remains largely unknown. Both shows have a civilization that consists of sheltered-off sections of the planet, and sections outside in the natural air that are played off as slums. I doubt No.6 will be as random and have a game show episode like Ergo Proxy did, but still, I’m liking the similarities thus far.

Characterization, however, is a place that we still need to head into. I’m finding it hard to completely peg down Shion as a character, but thus far I can deduce that he is a naively optimistic person, based on how he treated and took care of Nezumi when he was 12, and then how he has since dealt with life after the fact with his now-revoked status as an outstanding citizen. Beyond this however, there is not enough info to tell exactly how he’s going to react to various situations down the line. Hell, as a 16-17-year-old, he outright turned down sex, which I understand his reasoning for, but his reactions to being asked in the first place I have to question. It’s a lot like he’s always distant and is just going with the flow most of the time, only snapping out of h is daze when something extraordinarily out of the ordinary happens around him. I’m curious to see how he handles whatever ends up happening to his mother, now that he has most likely been labelled a traitor by the city.

I haven’t quite figured out Nezumi either, mainly because we know so little about him, but now he apparently has quite a number of resources at his disposal, which I’m looking forward to the explanation to. And he has reason now to re-contact Shion after four years. This is another explanation I’m looking forward to, though this one in particular probably has something to do with the rather large life-sucking wasps that were shown during the episode.

While I will admit that the world of No.6 is nothing completely original (I’ve seen this kind of thing before, to a degree), it is thankfully uncommon, which adds to the freshness of the whole thing. Considering this is BONES, I expect it to not trip over itself in the episodes to come, but then again, nobody is perfect. They need to have a failure sometime.