Summary:

Shiratori has brought Oosugi to her hotel room and has him restrained in a chair. She starts to threaten his Johnny with her cigar cutter, but she gets interrupted by a call and is forced to leave for a while. Unaware of this, Saki meanwhile has Akira bring her back to Micchon’s place, and she calls her sister to tell her that she’s not coming home because she doesn’t want to face Ryousuke. Her sister isn’t happy with this, but Ryousuke thinks that they should leave Saki alone for a while. Saki then tries to contact Oosugi, however she gets interrupted by Micchon, and she ends up asking for a change of clothes. The next day, Saki fills in her friends in the Eden of the East group about Akira and how he wants to support them. Hirasawa is very suspicious, but Micchon finds it interesting, and they decide to go visit Akira to see what kind of person he is.

As the others are leaving, Kasuga tells Hirasawa of the meal he had with Oosugi the previous night that he thinks was meant for Saki. He suspects that Oosugi saw Akira and Saki together, and he’s worried because Oosugi disappeared drunk after dinner. They don’t want to exclude Oosugi from all this since he was a founding member, so Hirasawa has Kasuga try to find him. At the shopping mall, Saki’s friends are impressed by the place and the merchandise still sitting around, but Hirasawa’s attention is drawn towards an off-limits area. He doesn’t get the chance to check it out though, and the group moves on to Akira’s room. Hirasawa gets freaked out when music suddenly starts playing throughout the mall, and Akira ends up riding in on a large mechanical bear to welcome them.

Once they get settled down, Hirasawa questions why Akira wants to support them and what he wants with Saki. Akira’s answer to the second part is that he feels that she doesn’t need to work for older guys who dump gyuudon on her. He also reveals that he’s seen the Eden of the East program that can be accessed with any cell phone. It works as a sort of image search engine that displays notes wherever the phone’s camera is pointed, and it turns out that Micchon wrote the program. When Akira asks about them starting a business, Hirasawa explains that they had a little trouble. In the beginning, they were a small recycling community, and by developing the image recognition engine, stuff that was junk could be changed into valuable commodities. This was thanks to how Saki labeled images with new values, and the others soon followed suit. That in turn led to the tool being used to find lovers when students themselves started to register with it, and this was trouble.

Hirasawa doesn’t want Akira’s help though because he sees Eden of the East as a paradise of NEETs, and there’s envy towards those who are able from those who are not. Akira presents this in a different way however by asking for their help in accomplishing his supposed duty as someone who is able. Saki wanting to participate as well pushes Hirasawa towards agreeing. Afterward, Akira picks out a change of clothes for Saki from one of the stores, and he and Micchon place fireworks in the shape of a happy animal face to light up the courtyard. During the festivities though, Hirasawa gets a phone call from Kasuga concerning Oosugi. Kasuga thinks that Oosugi might have gotten involved with someone who’s been hunting Johnnys, all based on a posting on a message board by a guy who claims to have been confined by a woman and has been asking for help. Rumor has it that there have already been as many as 20,000 victims of this hunter, and Hirasawa asks Kasuga to send the URL of the message board.

Preview

Despite all the explanation about the Eden of the East group, the very nifty program, Micchon being very cute, and even more emphasis on NEETs and the current generation of young people in Japan, the most interesting part of this episode for me was probably the Shiratori stuff. Now all that blood and that cigar cutter from last week’s episode make a lot more sense: she simply cuts off penises and bleeds men to death. I think the key is that 20,000 number because it might signify that both Akira before the memory wipe and Shiratori were aiming for a certain minimum amount for the competition, and Shiratori’s idea might be some sort of twisted world for women. Regardless, it sucks even more for Oosugi than I thought, though I’m half-inclined to think the fact that he isn’t dead already means that he’ll find a way to survive through it, especially since his friends now know about his situation. It makes me wonder if Akira can get Juiz to interfere with another Selecao. On the other hand, if that apple is to have significance (after all, it’s the centerpiece of the beginning of the ED and a part of the Eden myth), then maybe it would be more important for him to die.

54 Comments

  1. That doesn’t look like Oosugi. Oosugi had a red tie on, the guy in the street next to him however had what looked like a green one.

    I have not watched the show yet though so don’t know of the masked man talked and that verifies it’s Oosugi. But given that he has a mask on, Oosuhi is prob passed out in a ditch somewhere or in jail.

    mikeon
  2. You’re right… there’s another guy standing in front of Shiratori from last episode (one standing w/ an umbrella). And Akira had a red tie, while the guy in mas has a green one….I wonder what Akira’s doing then?

    onigiri
  3. So, things continue to suck for Osugi huh? Considering that that last guy was naked, I wouldn’t be surprised if Shiratori was in the habit of dressing up (or down) her victims, which would expalin away the tie color. She is the president of a fashion firm, after all.

    Anyway, good to see the two sides of the story, Akira’s and Saki’s, coming together. Eden of the East sounds like one hell of a neat program.

    Crossword
  4. I said the same thing about the Akira/L comparison on episode 1, and people on Youtube we’re like “pssh, he doesn’t look like L! you’re stupid.” …really? Now people and finally agreeing.

    Noelle
  5. People actually feel sorry of Osougi? I found him to be hella annoying right from the start. Best part of episode 5 was his “priceless” look as he sees Saki ride off with someone else. He should have gotten a clue sooner and saved himself the heartache.

    GP
  6. So I must admit I am having some troubles following these talks about NEETs. I mean… it seems like they have a great business idea and a nice pool of talents in the group. And yet they all act like there was some kind of social stigma against starting a new business. Am I missing some important facet of Japanese culture here?

    steelman
  7. So..uh, what is “Eden of the East”? Is it just some image database or something? Plus I kind of shat bricks when she was threatening his…”Johnny”…0.o

    SomethingLeft
  8. I was so confused watching this episode. I think I understand that NEETs are outcasts or anti-social or something. But what is a Johnny? I don’t think it’s a penis because Akira mentioned them in his dream. And what is up with their college club? So they were a recycling club? With plastic and cardboard and all that? Then one of their members creates an amazing image scanning program and then they try to market this to some companies, but get turned down because they’re NEETs? And now it seems like their program is already out there anyway since Akira had it, so what is financial support from Akira going to do? And somehow their club is supposed to help NEETs? How exactly are they doing that? I’m not super in tune with Japanese culture so forgive me if some of this is flying over my head.

    arsalan
  9. @arsalan:

    Eden of the East was a recycle club, yes, and yes, one of them did create the Eden image-recognition programme. But they didn’t try to market it, nor they were turned down because they’re NEETs. They used the programme as a tool for the club activities.

    It was Saki who found a way to use the image-recognition application in a way that was useful to the club. She used it to show people that there’s more than meets the eyes about the recycled objects they were selling. The value they couldn’t see.

    That’s why Saki’s involvement in Hirasawa’s project seems to be the most important to him right now. He believes she has the creativity and leadership he lacks (or so he claims).

    What Akira is funding is Hirasawa’s project, which doesn’t necessarily revolves around the Eden image-recognition programme. If that was the case, there would no need for him to be so intent on having Saki working with them. Call me simplistic, but I think Hirasawa’s idea is still revolving around recycle. After all, that was the activity of the club he set up.

    Kazu-kun
  10. lol the penis thng wa obvious from last episode im suprised it took you that long to get it! but yeh am gonna have to rewatch to get the jist of everything else

    WingZerozxt
  11. If I read this episode properly, the group “Eden” has created something that can potentially help Akira in his quest to make Japan a better place.

    Whether or not letting people exit from dependence on capitalism is good or bad is essentially up to what the outside man dictates.

    Oz
  12. Could Jonny be a code of something. If I memba correctly those Alien thing kept yelling out jonny.

    And what does NEETs have to do with Takizawa it said he collected 20,000 and I presume that dude from last eps where they where sent dubai know something about all the NEETs. and if their is memory erase program shouldnt there be a memory recovry program lol.

    Thanks omni for updating hope u get better.

    Dragonite88
  13. I got a kick out of seeing Kasuya hiding inside the desk shutters. Like he’s the geeky kid everyone picks on in those highschool movies.

    I must admit that this animes obsession with penises to be getting a bit creepy. We’ve gone past amusing and into complete weirdness…

    .44 magnum. Hee hee.

    Crossword
  14. Speaking of Juiz, was it just me, or did she seem to show a little favoritism to Shiratori after receiving her order? Her response was different from the usual “Please continue to be a messiah”. Has it ever been made clear whether Juiz is a real person, or some sort of computer program?

    rustydove
  15. @rustydove

    That “little favoritism” was probably because this time Shiratori’s order was related to her company, which is part of her plan to “save Japan” (her duty as a Selecao). Taking Johnnies, on the other hand, seems to be just a hobby she’s doing on the side (something personal).

    Kazu-kun

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