「ロボット研究部は、本日をもって解散します!」 (Robotto Kenkyuu-bu wa, Honjitsu wo Motte Kaisanshimasu!)
“As of Today, The Robotics Club is Disbanded!”

After last week’s shocking ending, I was not surprised to see the depressing overall tone of this episode. A lot of readers mentioned that the mood of Robotics;Notes has suddenly turned really dark and I cannot agree more. With the passing of a character, there’s always going to be a mourning period and this episode was it. Lots of tears, lots of break-ups and unfortunately, Mister Sawada Toshiyuki (Miki Shinichiro) doesn’t make things any easier.

A lot of people were focused on Mizuka’s passing last week and even I completely forgot that Subaru was hurt in the process. A giant robot fell on him and he’s still alive! That has to be miracle in it of itself, but still not enough to save him from any permanent damage. I’m not too sure what he’s suffering from, but it could be a spinal injury (those are pretty much permanent) or broken legs. I’m not going to go parading around how horrible the principal is because I think it’s her duty to ensure that her students are safe. If the club activities are endangering lives, it only makes sense that the project is shut down. If the students wish to pick it up on their own accord though, I don’t think she can stop that. With all that said, I still feel bad for Subaru and I hope he gets back up soon. I always thought his story was cut short – maybe we’ll finally get to see his relationship with his father improve. Speaking of father, doesn’t someone look familiar in this old photo?

At the same time, I feel that Aki’s arc is finally coming to light. She’s getting her own time to shine with Kai by her side and in all honesty… I didn’t love it too much. As much as I adorable Aki’s genki personality, it’s sometimes too overly optimistic and she’s very blinded by the constraints that bind her. In this case, how is she supposed to build this massive robot on her own now? I’m glad that Kai’s there to keep her grounded, but losing to her on purpose is not exactly really proving anything either. I wasn’t sure what to expect of their development and even now, I’m hoping for more. Aki seems to be very driven by her desire to prove something of herself, while Kai is just trailing along. The ending with Doc and Mitchie was a little too corny in for my taste and I wish it had less of a “friends-can-help-you-prevail-anything” feel. It would’ve appealed more to me if the scene ended with Aki and Kai’s hug.

Our mystery CEO (or I assume) of Exoskeleton finally has a name! Hurray! He confronts Kai himself on the cliff that Mizuka walked off of, and what did he say? Well… he asked a bunch of questions and walked off; only to provoke the interest of Kai even more. Toshiyuki does give me the shivers, but that’s got to be a sign of a good villain. Misa even calls Kai herself to warn him of the dangers of Kimijima Kou. Of course, no protagonist is without his rebellious moments and this is a shining example of reverse psychology when Kai downloaded Report No. 7. There’s a download, there’s the distribution of Kimijima Reports… and now I’m finally beginning to piece together who Kou was. Perhaps he’s not such a great guy after all – but then again, nothing is ever that predictable in Robotics;Notes.

Full-length images: 02, 06, 14, 18, 19.

31 Comments

      1. Lol. Wow. I was genuinely curious with Cherries late post. Didn’t mean rustle everyone’s jimmies. Cherrie you should put that in the blog post that you were going to be absent so we all know!

        Moe
      2. Don’t worry about it, you just happened to post first and everyone reads the first comment =P lol
        I don’t really care to give excuses reasons for my tardiness. I do feel bad whenever I don’t meet my deadline, but what’s done is done and I think more readers are interested in discussing the episode than what I did over the weekend ^^”

    1. Well, people have the thing called real lives, and they devote part of it VOLUNTARILY AND FOR FREE for US to get the posts here. Stop whinying about them being sometimes late!
      BTW, thank you for covering the series, Cherrie!

      ewok40k
      1. If they don’t enjoy it, they should stop. And you’re saying it like authors are expected to be paid for their work but refuse the money, that’s wrong, this website is a fanblog, not a part-time job. And they are late on Psycho-pass and Robotics Notes every week. Moe may have indeed overreacted on the delay, but you ewok40k overreacted on his overreaction.

        ps. Not dissing you Cherrie but if you’re really that busy maybe you should considering having a backup (as in assistance), there are plenty anime fans out there who would love to do it for free and love it.

        Edios
  1. After last week’s shocking ending, I was not surprised to see the depressing overall tone of this episode. A lot of readers mentioned that the mood of Robotics;Notes has suddenly turned really dark and I cannot agree more…The ending with Doc and Mitchie was a little too corny in for my taste and I wish it had less of a “friends-can-help-you-prevail-anything” feel…

    “Just dark enough…?!?” That’s one of the easiest ways to keep a tale within the (relatively) bright and sunny realms of mass appeal after a dark twist, put in some of that cheese that makes people feel warm and fuzzy- but it usually ends up doing so in a saccharine way due to being shoehorned in for the sake of effect…less artificial means of atmospheric lifting tends to work better; methods that are hardwired into the plot, like a “silver lining” approach where something good occurs as an unintended effect of the bad event usually lend themselves to better flow, and are less corny because they don’t tend to be pre-fabricated cookie-cutter events…

    Zen
  2. 1. Yes, the school principal isn’t a horrible person, but she’s still annoying.

    2. I wonder what would have happened if Kai answered “yes” to any of the CEO’s questions? A scary thought, indeed!

    NoSicko
  3. – Hey Kai, it’s me, the last boss. Are you doing anything bad?
    – Uhh, no sir, of course not.
    – Oh, okay, nevermind then.

    Yeeeah, I don’t think him asking anything was important in any way. He just sent Kai the message that he’s being watched very closely, and that he shouldn’t do anything stupid.

    The closer we are to the ending, the less sense the overall mystery makes when coupled with the show’s general premise. In Chaos;Head and Steins;Gate, the whole conspiracy was very closely connected to the theme of delusions and time machines, respectively. How is it connected to robots this time? Beyond Exoskeleton’s involvement (which doesn’t even deal with proper robots), I still have no idea. They surely raised the degree of mystery this time, but I’m afraid that they lost something important in the process.

    SingerOfW
  4. You think Kai would be a little bit more restrained after the tragic events that conspired relating to the name of Kimijima Kou. It’s exactly as Cherrie stated when talking about reverse psychology.

    It’s as if there’s a big red button with a huge sign that says DO NOT PRESS that Kai somehow feels compelled to press.

    It does make the story a bit more interesting though! Can’t wait to see how Kai will clean this up. Finally getting to the heart of the conspiracy and I sure am elated.

    kondee
  5. I see your point about Aki being always optimistic to the point of blinding herself. Was totally thrown by the way her sister put her down and just saw how Aki really wants to prove her wrong. Really messed up. But there was some growth I think when she was at least able to admit to Kai that she is not always happy or sometimes sad (or something like that, I don’t remember). Good post!

    scullycat
  6. I get the feeling that the reports is what cause the Kagome song. And remember that song was played in a redio-like machine in the Kou’s underground basement where Kai first meet Airi?

    maou
  7. SHITS GONA HIT THE FAN NEXT EPISODE!!!! >.< cant wait because from what I think of when the report started uploading was that everyone in the world will get the report and mayhem will happen when they find out its the end of the world MUAHAHAHAHA!!!

    tom
  8. Oh well, Mizuka’s death was really depressing. But brighter spots appear, Subaru survived the fall of giant robot – a small miracle in itself! – and despite formal disbandement of the club the crew with a little help of their adult friends gets to continue project.
    But real WHAM! gets entrance at the end… Kimijima report no 7 is actually a virus of some kind, apparently “distributing” the reports all over the world. We can only guess what will be the end consequences, but I guess they will be not pretty…

    ewok40k
  9. I fell the whole corny ending thing is just a red herring. It takes atention away from the fact that someone killed Mizuka for some reason. And its related to Kai. And Kai is really-really waist deep in it.

    I think instead of thinking about the Aki arc, we should look forward to the solution of who the puppet master is. I don’t think the exoskeleton guy is really the villain here. Why would he tarnish the name of his company with assassinations. Even if he is in it, he is not the top dog.

    And shame on the older Senomiya. Lots of bad things happen to our cast but the only thing she seems to care about is Kais search for the reports. I don’t know of any jobs that require you to skip the funeral of your old schoolmates. And even if yours does you could feel a bit guilty about it 😛

    raksasha
  10. I dont get whats so bad about distributing the reports around the world. I mean, now everyone knows whats going on – Kai considered doing that on his own, some episodes ago – making all that stuff public. So now there wont be a reason to threaten him anymore since everyone already knows.

    Anyways, I hated the time skip after the last episode. Really, it was getting really emotional – two accidents at the same time. But nooooo, we skip that part and now we’re already all energetic again. Not that I want to see the characters depressed all the time, but last time I was really getting into the story and now its just like Mizukas death didnt mean anything at all:( consequences? I dont see any.

    Libelula
    1. the dead is dead (RIP boobies D:) you mourn for a bit but try to rejoice on the living you still got Mr. Pleiades huzzzah! for glasses! looool of course her dying was super sad but why is subaru chopped liver to you?? true he doesnt have the boooobies and hes a dude but hes stilll Mr. Pleiades! ahhaha keep watching and well see haha

      GoodStuffs
      1. Yeah, I should have mentioned Subaru as well. Wasnt that present in my mind, cause he didnt die, and I honestly didnt get if the accident had a permanent effect on him unlike with Mizuka…Though Im of course happy that we still have our comic relief character XD

        Libelula
  11. I can’t stop thinking that Misa is a double agent of someone. They already hinted that her boss Sawada doesn’t know everything himself about The Committee’s actions about Gunvarrel etc so I don’t think he’s one of the masterminds in this.

    Her call to Kai during his discussion with Sawada doesn’t makes sense either. It was all to give Kai the final push to get the last report, while she told him to forget about them some episodes ago. I have the feeling it wasn’t actually her who made that call, or that it has something to do with her working with someone else in the shadows.

    Though by that point one could probably figure everything out if you review carefully everything that’s been exposed so far, I don’t really want to do it now that we’re so far into the show. I don’t find guessing that much fun when it’s more like deduction than guessing. I’d rather not spoil myself the surprises and just enjoy.

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