Episode 6 – Touring After the Apocalypse

Who or what is Yoko? We already know Airi is a synthetic being, especially considering that in this episode, she suddenly shuts down completely and we see her irises are mechanical before she reboots back to normal. In the first episode, we saw her fire a powerful plasma cannon hidden in her arm. She cannot swim in the sea because she is too heavy. Yoko receives a suspiciously timed text message from her “big sister” on her cell phone with no signal, which reveals that Airi’s true identity is AI-Re06. I suspect Ellie could act as a local cell phone transmitter if needed, and the phone messages could originate inside her body, or use her body as a relay, possibly from a satellite source. In this devastated world, it’s impossible for cell phone networks and cell towers to continue functioning.

Yoko, but…of course she seem Be organic. Cut her and she bleeds. However, as we see in this episode, minor injuries heal almost instantly. She survives severe physical trauma with very few scratches on her body (which I think is probably more intentional than just lazy writing), and she claims to have “never been sick.” That’s hard to believe, considering she lives in a post-apocalyptic world, surviving on whatever food she can find (in this episode, that means roasted rats—delicious), and transmissible gastroenteritis is surely all it takes is one dangerous meal. She’s also apparently a school-age girl who lived decades, if not centuries, after the end of human civilization. Additionally, she seems to retain apocalyptic memories that can only be accessed in dreams.

So Yoko was in cold sleep until recently? Is she a clone implanted with memories of her past life? Is she an android, a robot, or a robot that happens to be better at floating than Airi? When she and Airi decided to travel to Tsukuba, to a laboratory facility where Airi could receive maintenance, Airi suggested that Yoko “check it out too.” Now, unless this facility has super-advanced AI medical diagnostics (which it probably does), I wonder if this is Airi’s subtle hint that she and Yoko aren’t all that different at heart?

Speculation aside, this was a more dramatic episode than usual post-apocalyptic tour It feels very…apocalyptic. The seemingly unnatural storm continued to rage outside, with multiple tornadoes and so much lightning lighting up the distant Tokyo skyline. The atmosphere is tense and disturbing as the girls face off against a horde of very aggressive, very hungry rats. Aside from the rampaging autonomous tanks in the first episode, I think this is the first time we’ve seen them in any real danger, and it’s only thanks to an extremely explosive mishap with fossil fuels that they’re able to escape (and subsequently bite off some of their small, tusked pursuers.)

It’s a reminder that their hitherto (mostly) enjoyable journey has the potential to be fraught with profound personal risk, as the remnants of human civilization crumble around them and nature takes over, sometimes in strange new forms. Take, for example, the giant sea turtles and overgrown crabs that appear in the waters around Umi Hotaru. The drama’s dramatic turn bodes well for the future. As much as I enjoyed the fairly low-stakes journey of these two mysterious girls in a broken and beautiful world, I longed for something more substantial to keep me invested in. Probably not roasted rat, though.

grade:

post-apocalyptic tour Currently live broadcast
Crunchy roll.

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