CANAAN / First Impressions

Summary:

Not knowing what Canaan went through, Maria sticks with Yunyun on her houseboat. She learns that Yunyun is a migrant worker, and she’s so comfortable on the houseboat that she doesn’t want to leave, so Yunyun gives her a key before running off to work. Unbeknownst to Maria, Yunyun works for Liang Qi, and Liang Qi assigns Yunyun today to infect a visiting Japanese vice-minister with the UA Virus. Yunyun panics upon hearing this because she’s afraid of running into Canaan, but Liang Qi doesn’t mind if Yunyun dies. Yunyun thus has no choice but to go try for a job at Santana’s cosplay karaoke bar, and she manages to get it after Hakko recognizes her. When the vice-minister shows up at the bar for some entertainment, Yunyun tries to slip something into his drink, but he rejects her in favor of Hakko. To make matters worse, Minoru and Maria return to the bar as well after Maria had gone back to their hotel room and after they had talked about the blood vessel marking.

Yunyun manages to escape without being seen by Maria, but while she’s moping around outside, she’s found by Canaan. She happens to have a gun but doesn’t know how to use it, so Canaan shows her, but Canaan ends up taking the gun from her. Canaan tries to get Yunyun to reveal what she knows about Alphard, but Yunyun doesn’t know anything, and before Canaan can really threaten her, Maria comes running to her rescue. When Maria asks Canaan not to kill Yunyun, it hurts Canaan because she realizes that Maria sees her as a murderer, so she runs off. While Maria is crying over what she did to Canaan, Yunyun gets a phone call from Liang Qi instructing her to use Maria and her own life to kill Canaan. With no other choice, Yunyun dons a cape and drags Maria onto the top of a bridge. She then starts yelling for Canaan and reveals that she’s wearing a ton of dynamite around her waist. Canaan shows up despite Maria thinking that she wouldn’t, so Yunyun lights the fuse to the dynamite and charges at her.

Canaan easily jumps out of Yunyun’s way, but when Yunyun loses her footing and falls off the bridge, Canaan grabs her arm to save her. Yunyun uses this chance to pull Canaan down with her, and the two fall into the water below. Canaan tries to get Yunyun to let go of her, and when she can’t, she considers using her knife against Yunyun. However, she then remembers Maria and decides against doing that. Moments later, a giant explosion rips through the water, but Canaan and Yunyun emerge from the water unscathed. When Yunyun questions why Canaan didn’t kill her, Canaan explains that it’s because she doesn’t want Maria to feel sad. Meanwhile, Cummings administers the UA Virus to the unknowing vice-minister via an acupuncture needle. Back at the hotel, Minoru finds the three girls together and notices the marking on Yunyun’s butt. Yunyun reveals that it’s from when she became a Borner, and it had to do with the disappearance of her village.

Connecting everything together, Minoru questions her about what ability she has, however it turns out that Yunyun just has two appendixes, so she doesn’t have any powers. Yunyun feels worthless, but Maria refuses to let her believe that and points out how hard Yunyun works and how she helped Maria and Canaan reconcile. Maria considers them friends now, and, if she intends to run away from Hebi, Minoru promises to help Yunyun with money in exchange for her acting as a correspondent for them. What they don’t realize is that Liang Qi isn’t concerned about Yunyun at all. She believes that Yunyun will be back because the Borners can’t sustain their lives without the medicine that she has control over. Not returning is the same as choosing death.

Preview

Well this was a really fun episode. Yunyun (and Tomatsu Haruka) was every bit as amusing as I’d hope she’d be in an episode that focused on her, especially with all of her great facial expressions. Her encounters with Canaan were hilarious, and I liked how she tried to act in the most villainous way she could think of with that cape. But of course we the audience knew that she wasn’t a bad girl and was just in a bad situation. In that sense, this episode was nice because it finally explained the whole Borner thing and how they’re apparently being manipulated by the Hebi organization. I was actually afraid that they’d kill off Yunyun after she failed to kill Canaan or infect the vice-minister, but it looks like they opted for a much more ominous end to the episode with what Liang Qi said about the medicine. Hopefully that means Yunyun’s role isn’t quite over just yet.

As for Maria and Canaan, they reconciled faster than I thought they would, but I’m not going to complain since that’s not something I was really looking forward to. Now that the two are on good terms though, I’m curious to see what happens next since the preview seems to indicate that Alphard could get her hands on Maria.

26 Comments

  5. Does this episode seem a bit more crisp? Iunno. It’s nice to have this Borner thing somewhat figured out, now we can get rolling in full motion.
    @Wcaster: See Haruhi, this week. <_<

    Meer
    Reply

  10. @mahaha
    It says, by line, “Please take some pity on me/I can’t move even if I want to/lost my legs in the war, even lost my sight.” That’s a very literal translation without adjusting for sentence structure, but it’s quite straight forward.

    mangaka-chan
    Reply

  11. Oh Yunyun she’s so cute XDD Favorite scene was when Canaan ended up showing her how to use a gun haha..Interesting on how they’re revealing more about the UA virus each episode~ And I wonder if Minoru went to the karaoke bar just to have a mouth-off with that guy o_o; Oh and that letter at the end…looking forward to the next ep as always~

    rin
    Reply

  24. this epi was really great ^^ I really liked Yun Yun and i want her alive ^^Alphard and Maria are too close in the preview o.ó
    Canaan is going to be really upset with that…

    lol
    Reply

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