Cruel Angel Theses

Ah, the first of three arcs that develop the regulars, namely Mao, Yin, and Huang–in that order, each one greater than the last. You’ve certainly got to hand it to BONES for attempting understated development of what is essentially a talking cat, although I wouldn’t exactly call this filler as much as I would the careful laying down of a precedent for a later arc.

Hindsight? What’s that? Is it edible?

“In a May Shower, What Went Unsaid Gave Off a Scent”

Horrible, horrible pun in the title. クチナシ is intentionally ambiguous as it’s not written in kanji, could very well be referring to either a type of Gardenia or something unspoken, and in light of all of that happens during the episode, I can’t help but lean instinctively towards this rendition.

The only thing you really need to take away from this arc is that yes, Contractors do have the same types of powers. Hell’s Gate is like an MMORPG of a very tricky sort that’s free to play but levies extremely heavy fees whenever you need to do something like cast a spell.

I find it amusing, though, that there would be symmetry this way: Contractors who share the same powers tend to share the same personality, more or less.

Unless they’re in an animal’s body, of course.

One thing that struck me was how much the entire first half of the episode was steeped in dialogue about smell. Gai’s hamming it up in his office (almost breaking the fourth wall in the process) that reeks of tobacco, and he smells of Athlete’s Foot, on top of his B.O. The Contractor in the opening scene obtains a vial of we are told is perfume before taking a whiff from a sock.

Kapoor/Norio is obviously meant to mirror Mao in some way, but what?

Funny how that question quickly answers itself.

This also begs the question: Are we any less or more of ourselves if we lose our bodies and have to reside in another, but retain our souls? How much is ‘Self’ related to the physical and how much mental? The problem with Kapoor, of course, is that he’s obsessed with what he’s lost. Through the act of sniffing we can clearly see that he’s never gotten used to being in another’s body, regardless of how many times the act of possession is performed, and truly longs for nothing else other than his body back.

There’s a whole lot of irony in how he still seems to be mechanically performing an obeisance after losing his body (which also frees him, and, coincidentally, answers what seemed like a rhetorical question in the previous arc, but- SPOILERS!) despite not being required to any longer.

Compare this then to Mao, who seems to be at ease with his cat self enough to do cat-like things like napping all day (and articulating this pleasure of his), or even eating cat food from the sweet girl at the ramen store–evidently he seems to have embraced the trappings of his new life enough to adapt to it.

Alternately, could it be that his being driven into an animal’s body led him to lose his humanity, in a sense? He’s tethered to some piece of Hell’s Gate-based technology that allows him to retain his personality over the cat’s, since souls are apparently portable enough to be digitised–but hey, if souls can be forcefully implanted from one body to another, and if two souls can somehow reside in one body…

Unfortunately for Mao, this arrangement leads to him occasionally going nuts, as he notes much later. Neither did this really occur to me–that the cat personality momentarily took over in this short “Meow!”, which resultd in Mao ending up in the garbage-filled mansion all by accident.

All of this relates to the main story of the arc in a rather straightforward manner–I mean, the two episodes practically beat you over the head with its theme if it wasn’t already obvious enough, considering that they mirror each other quite well.

All of this comes to a head in when the widow decides to spill the beans to Gai while Kapoor meets his downfall atop a building in a scene that parallels the opening scene from the first half of the arc, and it was nice to see Mao express something approaching human emotions: regret.

There was something irreverently humorous about Kiko, as though she were articulating what all the female fans of this series (and I’ve been told that there are quite a number of them) were thinking but couldn’t say, and I swear I didn’t notice her semi-sentient hair fashioning itself into a heart the first time.

This screenshot also wins for most-inappropriate-out-of-context:

And this for best human-expression-on-an-animal:

~

Hige says:

I suppose you could say these two episodes herald the start of Darker than Black’s frequent dips into ‘filler’ – story arcs that don’t relate to the core plot or push it forward in any notable way. They do serve a less obvious purpose, however. Comic relief after some pretty hard-hitting episodes would be the first to note. Gai’s noir-fail at the beginning of episode sets the tone of goofy japery and it’s worth recognising how well BONES handle the transition of tone.

Secondly, we have the opportunity to learn about Mao, the otherwise archetypal cute animal character of the series. He obviously plays an important role in the Syndicate team but, until now, never had much exposition to elevate him of the obvious, ‘oh, he’s a talking cat . . . with a ridiculously mature voice. Lawls.’ He introduces some interesting concepts regarding Contractors and how their contract is connected to their physical body. Both he and the other possessor character no longer have to fulfil obeisance because they don’t inhabit their original bodies; equally, these possessor types keep their Contractor power regardless of whether they possess another Contractor’s body. Without spoiling the eff out of future events, it’s going to be useful to remember that minor detail when certain Hei-related revelations happen. In a more immediate sense it wasn’t much but still interesting to learn a little more about the mythos of the show.

I want to give BONES credit for their ability to satirise anime tropes (embodied by Mao and particularly Kiko, as much as she deeply annoyed me) while simultaneously giving the otaku audience exactly what they want. It’s something GAINAX build entire series around and it was enjoyable to see the otherwise-sensible BONES getting in on the action. I had fun with this arc – much more so than when I originally saw it, finding the comic relief characters horrendously grating – but I’ve probably grown up enough to appreciate the light reprieve the studio was giving us before we get back on track with the hard-hitting subject matter. I had fun.