CHAOS;HEAD – 07

Summary:

When Takumi regains consciousness, he finds that an hour has already passed, and his computer appears broken. He panics because he thinks his game data is gone, but once he gets everything running again, he’s relieved that it was all saved on the game servers. As for what happened, the news services report it as an earthquake accompanied by a mysterious white light, but Takumi thinks that it might have been an electromagnetic attack by Shogun. He tries to contact Rimi, but since he can’t reach her by phone, he decides to try to find her at school. However, when he arrives there, he finds a crowd gathered outside watching Ayase standing on the edge of the roof as if she’s about to jump. Before she does, she recites a lot of mysterious things about wanting to return to the other world where the Great Will resides, the container for chaos, and the legend of the Black Knights. Meanwhile, in a NOZOMI room somewhere, two men are discussing with a third about how they didn’t think the Second Melt would cause hundreds of casualties. The third claims that it was within the range of his predictions, and he tries calms the other two by stating that soon they won’t have to have a hard time gathering votes or need to fear prosecution for coercive persuasion. He believes that they are close to the day when they change Japan and the world, but the other two make it clear to him that his duty is only to proceed as planned – no more and no less. The three then start talking about the second generation and Noah II.

By now, Takumi has fled to the park, but he is found there by Sena who has figured out that he was the one created a flowerbed underneath where Ayase jumped and thus saved her. She questions if he’s connected to a certain church as well as who taught him that power, but Takumi has no idea what she’s talking about, so she lets him go. Takumi takes the chance to ask her about everything, so Sena explains that the flowerbed became reality. She claims that errors can be recognized as reality and that everything about the structure of the world can be explained through 0, 1, and -1. Di-Swords are shortcuts to create -1, but she observes that what Takumi did was without a Di-Sword. Takumi comes out of this conversation feeling that Sena knows something. He returns home only to have Nanami visit him, and she tells him about Ayase and the earthquake. Nanami feels that something’s strange with the city, but Takumi tells himself that it has nothing to do with him. The next day in class, Takumi finds all of his classmates thinking that Ayase was in love with him, and Rimi is nowhere to be found. He doesn’t like being the center of attention because he feels like he’s not worth looking at, but to his surprise, a girl tells him telepathically that he does have worth. That voice belongs to Kozue – who calls herself Kozu-pii – but Takumi makes her stop talking telepathically and feels that he’s gone crazy.

After school, Takumi is heading home when he bumps into a group of thugs who take him out into an alley for a beating. The thugs were paid off by an older man to rough Takumi up, and Takumi feels a desire to kill while he’s getting kicked. A Di-Sword appears in his hand, but when Takumi regains his senses a little later, all he sees in front of him is Kozue. The thugs are all knocked out, and Kozue leads him away from the alley. She once again talks to him through telepathy, and this time he accepts it and responds back using his own thoughts. He happens to mention that he’s recently encountered more eccentric people – specifically referring to Sena and how she has a sword – and that causes Kozue to reveal that she has a Di-Sword as well. She claims to use it against bad people, like the ones who were beating Takumi up. By coincidence, the two then run into Sena, and it turns out that the two girls are already friends. In subsequently talking about Takumi, Sena notes that he’s a Gigalomaniac – someone who can see Di-Swords.

Back in the dark NOZOMI room, the third man is explaining to the other two that their company’s second generation Noah II makes it possible to show people artificial images. He then shows the other two video of people running from a berserk digger that was created by Noah II and explains the technical details of how it works. He calls Noah II a mechanical Gigalomaniac for what it’s able to do, and to address the range issue, he reveals that they’ve deployed a group of people called Porters who are wearing special backpacks that work as transceivers for the pulses from Noah II. Meanwhile, Takumi, Kozue, and Sena are enjoying popsicles together and talking about the Di-Swords. Sena doesn’t want Kozue doing foolish things, and Takumi ends up wondering if Kozue was the one who beat up those guys or if it was himself. Their conversation is interrupted by the sudden appearance of a berserk digger, and this leads to Sena noticing all the people nearby who are wearing special backpacks. As she attacks these people, Sena explains to Takumi that Gigalomaniacs are those who are able to interfere with something called the Dirac Sea. She goes into much more technical detail about the particles created and how errors can become reality by sending those particles to someone else’s head.

After Sena and Kozue succeed in destroying all of the backpacks, the berserk digger disappears, and everyone around goes back to what they were doing as if nothing had happened. When she returns to where Takumi is standing, Sena points out that he can’t prove that the popsicle he’s carrying is real because his brain could be lying. It’s not until other people see the same thing that this becomes a common recognition and no longer a delusion. Takumi realizes that this means that if he forcefully shows others a delusion using the particles produced by the Di-Sword, then the delusion becomes reality. Kozue then demonstrates that the Di-Swords are delusional swords that people can’t see until the swords are real-booted – the act of sending particles to surrounding people. Takumi has this power, and for him to obtain his Di-Sword, Sena explains that the rise of his biorhythm leads to excessive dopamine secretion and the appearance of a Di-Sword. This could happen with any number of situations from excitement to sadness to laughter. Takumi, however, was able to do a real-boot without a Di-Sword, so Sena knows that he’s not normal. She suspects that the people who want to misuse the power of Giglomanics – mainly NOZOMI Technology – would have their eye on him. These people are trying to produce the power of Gigalomaniacs artificially with a device called Noah II, and the previous earthquake was caused by Noah II experimenting.

Sena and Kozue intend to attack NOZOMI, and Sena vows to foil their plans. Kozue wants Takumi to come with them, and she proposes the three of them taking a photo together first, so the they squeeze into a photo booth.

Preview

Well, technobabble notwithstanding, some of the confusing stuff is finally starting to make sense now, at least concerning the delusions and the Di-Swords. The revelations about NOZOMI being the bad guys and what they’re up to wasn’t an unexpected turn of events, though I admit I thought it wouldn’t happen till a little later. The main problem I have is that the series has shifted from what was an intriguing psychological/bloody thriller into what appears to be a battle of good vs. evil with a side of science fiction to explain all the strange stuff. The latter is interesting in its own right, but I found the series more exciting when we were trying to figure out all the New Generation mysteries, even after considering the fact that this episode had a fair amount of sword action for a change of pace. Technically most of that mystery is still up in the air – particularly who Shogun is and what Rimi’s involvement is – so, since there are still five episodes left, I guess either there’s more to NOZOMI than Sena knows or is letting on, or NOZOMI isn’t the final conflict and there’s something even more sinister going on. Whatever it is, it looks like they’re going to attack NOZOMI next week, and Sena gets to fight the old guy. Maybe Takumi will be put in a situation where he can finally materialize his own Di-Sword and be awake for it.