As it turns out, supermodels are truly the most dangerous people in society.
— As a bit of a recap, Snowdrop is causing mayhem downtown, so Arato wants Lacia to put a stop to this. Unfortunately, his buddy Ryo wants to muck everything up.
— Some military AI claims that none of the Red Box beings can truly be considered a super-intelligent AI, but I dunno about that…
— Erica reveals her colors: she hates her new world. She also hates that everything she used to know and love are gone. As a result, she wants to see this society crumble around her. She wants to destroy the world. Ironically, her hIE’s unique talent is the ability to create all sorts of objects out of seemingly nothing. Think Momo from My Hero Academia. Obviously, she can’t literally create something out of nothing, ’cause we have to obey the first law of thermodynamics.
— I probably said this in the past, but this adaptation needs at least twice as many episodes in order to tell its story. Unfortunately, it seems like long-running anime series are almost all but dead unless they’re shounens.
— Meanwhile, Arato and Lacia want to stop Snowdrop, but Methode decides to put a huge dent into their plans.
— The guy claims that Lacia is far more dangerous than Snowdrop. Um, okay? If she is so dangerous, why hasn’t Ryo done everything he can to capture her until now? If she is so dangerous, why has Lacia been allowed to run around in the shadows for this long? Why is he only deciding to act now? He and his company should’ve been hounding her a long time ago.
— It’s like with the military men from moments ago. Thanks to Snowdrop, they’ve decided to postpone their plans to capture both Arato and Lacia. But when was the decision to capture these two even made in the first place? And if these two are such a problem, why now are they only giving a shit?
— According to Ryo, Lacia has been manipulating several companies to put political pressure on both the police and Memeframe. And we’re just hearing about this now? I mean, I get why Arato is in the dark, but it wouldn’t have hurt the show to give us more of a build-up to such a huge revelation.
— Apparently, Ryo’s company is gonna be in big trouble thanks to Snowdrop, so he wants to make sure he can do something about Lacia before it’s too late.
— According to Erica, Snowdrop’s purpose is to guide humanity to the next step in its evolution. Unfortunately, the hIE has also decided that humanity is impeding its own progress. That’s great. But I hate how so many crucial plot details are relayed to the audience in this fashion. Saturnus asks Erica a question, which then allows the girl to pontificate. Rinse and repeat. It’s maddening. At no point do we approach a narrative that unfolds organically.
— Erica claims that the truth behind these hIEs will soon be revealed. Soon. But why the hell does she know so much? Why the hell does she have so much power just she woke up one day as the young head of an advertising company? Like, sure, image is everything. The media’s ability to influence our perception of the world is huuuuuge. But the idea that Erica knows this much about these hIEs and Memeframe is also kinda hard to swallow.
— Lacia tries to retrieve her Black Monolith, but a mercenary group starts shooting at both her and Arato. Yep, bullets will do that to ya. You don’t need a Red Box to tell you that.
— Arato is frustrated because he is useless. He is useless because he truly isn’t anything special. All he ever gets to do is give out orders. Lacia ends up taking care of everything that is needed to carry out her mission. But it’s not even clear anymore whether or not she even needs his orders. It’s not even clear anymore if she ever really needed an owner in the first place. If Lacia has been manipulating Arato right from the start, then none of his orders have ever really been his. She probably influenced him into giving her the exact orders that she wanted. Maybe this is why she has picked Arato in the first place. He’s just a kid, but unlike his best friends, he’s also uncorrupted. Other than the fact that he’s nice to hIEs, he doesn’t have any discerning ideology. Arato’s a blank slate with teenage hormones, and this combination makes him the perfect target for a sexy robot waifu. That’s the biggest twist here. He has no ability to create a special future. She just wants him to think that. He’s not some special protagonist boy destined to save the day. She just wants him to think that. Only now do we finally get to see the true extent of Lacia’s manipulation.
— Lacia listens to Arato’s vent and doesn’t even respond to it. But look at that outfit, though. It shows the perfect amount of cleavage, doesn’t it? He’ll always follow her like a puppy dog so long as he wants to bang her. Maybe Lacia even allowed herself to take just the right amount of damage from her enemies in order to help her manipulate Arato even further. ‘Cause I mean, he’s all but brushed his insecurities aside for now.
— Okay, this looks goddamn terrible.
— Ryo intercepts Lacia, but she probably already predicted that he would.
— All of the action here is embarrassing to look at.
— Yep, Lacia did predict Ryo’s movements. Before they even got up to this rooftop, she had already bought out other PMCs. With their help, the hIE launches a missile attack directly at Ryo. A missile attack. Methode had no choice but to let Arato go in order to protect her owner.
— But look, Lacia didn’t even hesitate to attack another human being. Is she capable of taking a life? Or was she just that confident that Methode would’ve protected Ryo?
— Plus, this is all happening in the middle of a city. Won’t this freak the entire populate out? Nope. Lacia has the police on her side. No analogue hacking even needed. She just straight up bribed them. There’s even a fake film crew around the building, so people just think that a movie is being filmed. That is nuts. How fucking advanced is this hIE?
— Lacia wants to design a future, but that’s still so vague. So I guess it’s Ryo’s turn to try and fill in the blanks. He comes to the realization that Lacia is truly the 40th’s super-intelligent AI. Higgins wasn’t allowed to study and influence human behavior, so it created a Red Box that could do just that. All this time, Lacia has been using her time with Arato in order to study humanity. But for what purpose? Ryo assumes that both Lacia and Higgins must have something nefarious in mind. He assumes that she wants to control humanity. This same fear is shared by multiple human characters, so it’s no surprise that Ryo would jump to such a conclusion. We have to keep in mind, however, that this is only what he believes. We still don’t know what Lacia is truly after. And since most of the humans on this show are all chucklefucks — including Arato — it’s hard to not root for Lacia.
— Anyways, Arato is just freaking the fuck out.
— Oooh, Lacia is truly in control of every single detail. HOO never managed to take her Black Monolith at all. It was just a decoy.
— Plus, Ryo thinks he’s pulled back the curtain on Lacia. He thinks he’s revealed all of her ugly truths to Arato. But think about it… if Lacia has everything else on lockdown, she probably predicted this conversation too. Arato isn’t learning anything she doesn’t want him to learn.
— And for her last trick, she will create… a human wall? Well, humans really are stupid. By simply hacking the “street signs,” she can direct people to go wherever she wants them to go… even if they have no goddamn clue where they’re going.
— Arato claims he won’t go with Lacia… but she just smiles at him. Maybe she can still convince him otherwise. Or maybe she’s just looking for an opportunity to ditch him. Either way, that’s the end of explosive episode, so we’ll have to wait a week to see what happens next.
— But yeah, considering how powerful Lacia is, there’s no way she’s surviving this show. Not this incarnation of her, anyways. Either she rules the world or she disappears from it. I can’t envision an ending in which she enslaves mankind, so…