Darker than BLACK – 10

Summary:

When they were all going to school together, Misaki, Alice, and Kanami had been out one day eating fast food when Alice had commented on Misaki’s love of greasy food. Misaki claimed she wasn’t getting fat because she was getting exercise every day, and her attention had then turned to Kanami filling out a form about her future plans. Kanami revealed to Alice that Misaki already had everything planned out, from going to the University of Tokyo to joining the police force. The reason for this, as Misaki explained, was that there were a lot of people in this world trying to satisfy their own desires and a lot of people crying in the shadows. Misaki could not permit this, which Kanami took to mean that she wanted to be an ally of the weak. Alice meanwhile had stayed silent through most of the conversation. Back in the present, Misaki is hiding from the gun-toting Alice and finds out that Hei supposedly came up here to bring Wang Shao Tang a drink. As she fires in their direction, Alice reveals that Wei is helping her with all this and that he is someone who understands her. Right after she tells Misaki to die so that she can be set free, Alice fires off the last of the five bullets in her revolver, so Misaki uses the chance to pull Hei to safety in the elevator.

On the ride down, Misaki reveals to a surprised Hei that she’s a police officer. Their goal now is to get out of this building, but once they reach the floor with the other guests, they find that everyone is being blocked from leaving. Hei tries to suggest the emergency stairwell, but Misaki is sure that it’s already been blocked too. It seems that Alice has given the order that no one is to be allowed to leave, and she also contacts Wei after he’s finished off all the other leaders. With nowhere else to go, Misaki and Hei head to the restroom to plan out their next move. Misaki would like a cell phone, but Hei doesn’t carry one because of the rules of this waiter job. When the power and lights suddenly go out, Hei reassures Misaki that this hotel has its own power generator, and the lights do indeed come back on. However, Misaki realizes that the power lines were cut most likely to prevent Doll powers from looking into the building. As she then starts to wonder why Alice is trying to kill her, Hei manages to get Misaki angry by pitying her for being betrayed. After apologizing, he comments on how getting betrayed by a friend is painful, causing Misaki to see his forlorn face for a second. The two eventually laugh about it and then laugh again when Hei formally introduces himself and Misaki realizes that this is the first time she’s ever gone through introductions in the restroom.

At this time, Kanami is questioning the police as to why Misaki is at the hotel where VI-952 is. Misaki’s fellow officers suspect that something has happened, but without a complaint and a warrant, they can’t go in. Back inside the hotel, Alice is asking Wei to capture Misaki because otherwise she can’t be free. Wei doesn’t think it’ll be a problem since Misaki is alone, though Alice reveals that Misaki is actually with a guy. Hei meanwhile brings Saitou to the bathroom stall where Misaki is waiting, and the three decide to hide Misaki in a food cart while Saitou and Hei use their waiter jobs as cover to move through the hotel. Saitou’s plan is to escape through the underground laundry area, though Hei soon disappears when Saitou isn’t looking. Wearing his black coat and white mask, Hei heads back to the top of the building to the greenhouse with the stone flowers. When he pulls out the single tall flower in the middle, all of the flowers suddenly turn dust, leaving behind only a single crystal shard. However, Wei then appears behind him and wants that shard back. Once he explains that the price of his contract is his own bleeding, Wei starts the fight by throwing blood in Hei’s direction. Although Hei tries to get out of the way, some of it still hits him in the arm and causes him to drop the shard.

Wei then slits his wrist again and starts machine-gunning his blood at Hei. It is with his power that he is able to break the steel beam that Hei jumps onto, causing Hei to fall onto the greenhouse below. When Hei then runs outside along the edge of the rooftop, Wei chases him and uses his blood to blow up one of Hei’s blades. In one circular movement, Hei almost cuts Wei’s throat with his other blade, but Wei manages to dodge it. Wei then reveals that he had heard about Hei – the Contractor who manipulates the flow of electricity: BK-201. Unfortunately, Wei had managed to get blood on Hei’s mask in their last exchange of attacks, and he now snaps his fingers, causing Hei to fall off the building. Back downstairs, Saitou and Misaki get lured into a room where Alice is waiting, though Misaki manages to get out of the food cart right as Alice shoots it. When Misaki questions what she’s doing, Alice explains that today is the day that she loses everything holding her down. What the Qinglongtan prized the most was blood ties, and Alice had been Wang Shao Tang’s strongest blood successor. She had been forced to take the burden of the Qinglongtan organization, and this hadn’t changed when the gate appeared and the rest of the world fell into confusion. However, Wang Shao Tang is dead now and the organization is gone thanks to Wei, who at this point enters the room with the crystal shard.

Alice asks Wei to set her free, implying that he should kill Misaki, but Wei instead places a bloody handprint on Alice’s dress and uses his power on her instead. Wei feels that Alice didn’t want to become free and instead just wanted to depend on someone. That someone was sometimes Misaki and sometimes him. Thus, Wei thinks that Alice didn’t want to be liberated from her father and had wanted to be bound. As Alice dies with tears streaming down her face, Misaki rushes to her side. Not quite done yet, Wei declares that Misaki is guilty too because of how she had led to Alice’s first experience of being liberated from depending on her father back. This occurred back when Misaki took away Alice’s cigarettes and said it had nothing to do with her father. Alice had started to depend on Misaki instead, but Misaki joined the police force, so Alice became a person incompatible with this world. Wei then throws some blood toward Misaki to finish her off, but fortunately Saitou tackles her to safety before the blood can hit her. Saitou himself gets blood on his back, and things are looking bad for him when suddenly a window explodes and Hei bursts into the room. Hei quickly uses his power combined with all the blood on the floor to electrocute Wei from a distance. In his final dying breaths, Wei realizes that Hei survived earlier because he had used his own blood on the mask, meaning that Wei wasn’t responsible for knocking him off the building. Seeing Hei about to leave with the shard, Misaki tries to stop Hei by grabbing Alice’s gun, but he ignores her and jumps out the window.

In the aftermath, Huang explains that Wei had wanted to gain control of the Qinglongtan organization by killing its leaders, including Alice. The strange thing about all this is that Wei’s body disappeared from the morgue, and Mao notes that a star didn’t fall that night. Hei, however, considers the mission complete. Misaki is meanwhile wondering to Kanami about she would have been able to save Alice if she hadn’t joined the police force. Kanami feels that there isn’t anyone who can understand people’s minds and the future, but she asks if Misaki can even imagine herself not as a policewoman. She then surprises Misaki by pulling out and smoking a cigarette, explaining that despite her appearance, she’s a weak woman who has to depend on something. She feels that there are a lot of people depending on Misaki, but she also thinks that it’s Misaki’s bad habit to burden herself with everything. Misaki seems to understand, though she still asks Kanami not to smoke around her because it stinks up her clothes. Afterwards, she returns to headquarters and tells her father that she’s turning down her promotion. Because of the events with Alice, Misaki had realized her own inadequacies, and she doesn’t feel that she should move up yet. She had not been able to save the one person that only she could have saved. In the car later, even though he doesn’t hear her clearly, Misaki tells Saitou that she’ll be depending on him from now on.

Preview

I have to say first, Hei and Wei’s fight was very impressively animated and was accompanied by some fantastic music. That was easily my favorite scene of the episode. Overall, Alice’s story didn’t have any huge surprises (I certainly didn’t expect her to survive after she started shooting at Misaki), but it provided some quality development for Misaki’s character. What ended up interesting me most were all the things that they didn’t explain. We know that Hei works for the Organization and his mission there was likely to retrieve that crystal shard. However, they don’t really explain what that shard is or why its important. Hei leaves it with Mao and Huang, but the question remains as to what they or the Organization plans to do with it. Then there is the disappearance of Wei’s corpse and the lack of a falling star to go with his supposed death. I don’t know if we’re going to see Wei again, but at the very least, there are insidious forces at work here which we probably haven’t been introduced to yet. It looks like next episode may very well lead to some answers though since Hei appears to be paying a visit to PANDORA in the preview.
And finally, a random question: if Pizza Hut is a sponsor for the show, then why don’t they just have the girls eat at Pizza Hut instead of the McDonald’s rip-off?