「黄色の死角」 (Kiiro no Shikaku)
“Yellow Blind Spot”

I actually spent the beginning of this episode paused and staring long and hard at some strange woman who had just popped off the boat to Murder Island. Who were you supposed to be again? Surely, they aren’t going to introduce some goofy new character in episode 09? Not until I unpaused and let her open her mouth did I get that small spark of memory. Ah! You showed up in one scene all the way in episode 01! Acting extremely conspicuous yet also looking completely irrelevant! That woman!

It’s a good thing Horie Yui only has one voice. I don’t know what I’d do otherwise. (She does well with it, stop throwing those tomatoes.)

I’m still not sure what she’s doing showing up now all of a sudden, though, other than to make Moe slightly more jealous and throw slightly more tantrums than usual. Do we really need an awkward potential-love-rival-but-not-really thing going right now? It’s a bit of a rom-com development in what at otherwise been a fairly introspective relationship between Moe and Souhei. To put it positively, Subete ga F ni Naru sure isn’t letting Moe rest with this one, always finding angles to prod at her unrequited(?) love from, even when Dr Magata isn’t around. Since they’re spending so much time one it I expect it to hold some relevance, if not in the plot then thematically. We are constantly invited to draw comparisons between Magata Shiki and Moe, so I think that will be the angle from which it develops.

The thing is, while this episode was mostly a ‘reveal’ episode, with many of the tricks of the mystery being explained (which I’m sure I would have appreciated more if I knew more about programming), I don’t really feel that the mechanics of the murder were the main point of Subete ga F ni Naru. Yes, I enjoyed the expressions of shocked epiphany and I enjoyed Souhei looking more animated than I thought possible of him (too much nicotine). But while the murder mystery is what hooks us and strings us along the plot, the focus seemed more on the various twisted minds of the cast and how they live. So the main statement is less about how Magata Shiki carried a pregnancy to term, and more about how she lived in this environment where nobody noticed. It’s less about how she smuggled in the killer (or the victim?), and more about chilling horror of another generation of a daughter murdering her parents (or is it the other way around?). Notably, what we lack most of all right now is motive. For what has the blood of so many kin been shed? There’s been some discussion about Shiki’s concept of freedom, but we’re also under the impression that she interred herself in the lab willingly. All the complexities involved in pulling off the scheme just makes it seem all the madder, so I really what to know what lead to it.

We may hear it all from Dr Magata Shiki (alias Michiru) herself next week. Is she talking remotely? Is she now a ghost within the machine? For those who are more interested in the murder mystery, there are still loose ends that Detective Souhei has to confirm, like how we may have more than just a set of limbs unaccounted for. For me, the biggest mystery is certainly still the marimba. Why this marimba? What is this marimba? It just keeps showing up. That thing is going to drive me insane before the end.

As last week, if you would all keep your speculation in spoiler tags too, that would help with the spoiler issue. Thanks, folks. It shouldn’t be too long now.

22 Comments

  1. so the child-raised-in-the-closed-room theory confirmed!
    now the only things left to decode are:
    Show Spoiler ▼

    ewok40k
  2. Based on what was said in this episode:
    Show Spoiler ▼

    Also, the programming bits weren’t too complicated; I think the main point was that the “malfunction” event was hardcoded, so it was already planned by at least the time of the development of ver. 4 of Red Magic.

    As far as the marimba:
    Show Spoiler ▼

    SK
  3. I really enjoy the wide variety of eyebrows presented in this series.

    But yeah… that journalist (make-up artist?) did not ring a bell for me at all. Tells you how invested in this series I am. I do hope she serves an adequate purpose.

    Petit
  4. I like Murder Island.for a landmark ! Call up Rand-McNally and place it on the maps / GPS !!

    And Moe is one cool girl wearing those Converse Chuck Taylor Hi- Tops ! She has that non- conformity attitude and it fits perfectly !

  5. One thing I’m impressed about this anime is the depth of detail it pays attention to. The English grammar in the earlier episode was spot on, even though the voice actors may have had a hard time trying to sound natural, you cannot fault the grammar. The programming stuff in this episode was also spot on. Very cool!

    xClueless
  6. Ehhh. I think this was a disappointing solution to the the mystery. Most people figured it out since episode 3 or 4. Her being pregnant was the big theory all along. So, when it was actually revealed in this episode, it wasn’t much of a surprise. Something like this could have been an awesome twist, but not when everyone had figured it out in the first place.

    Not sure if it’s a bad thing to follow discussions when it comes to a mystery series, or if the mystery in general just wasn’t very good.

    And now, people are saying(another theory/speculation)
    Show Spoiler ▼

    I hope that theory’s not true; otherwise, the entire mystery has kind of been ruined.
    Also doesn’t help that this is an adaptation, so people already know the answer to everything. People can be pretending to speculate, but are instead just outright spoiling everything from the beginning.

    Mormegil
    1. I think one should generally be wary about following discussions about mysteries on the internet, especially for a show like Subete ga F ni Naru which has both the an original source novel and the live action adaptation. It’s easy for spoilers to leak in. The main fun of mystery stories is not really the solution of the mystery, but how the solution is achieved. To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes badly, once you know the solution the deduction is elementary, and you’d think him a very normal man after all.

  7. >] “For me, the biggest mystery is certainly still the marimba. Why this marimba? What is this marimba? It just keeps showing up. That thing is going to drive me insane before the end.

    It’s like the pineapple in HIMYM. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. It’s just there, gnawing at the back of your mind like an itch you just can’t scratch.

    https://randomc.net/image/Subete%20ga%20F%20ni%20Naru/Subete%20ga%20F%20ni%20Naru%20-%2009%20-%2016.jpg

    I’m stumped. I’ve seen things so much worse in anime than this and yet, for some inexplicable reason, there’s something about this “mystery” that just turns my stomach.

    Ryan Ashfyre
  8. I figured almost everything out by episode 4 or 5. It’s too obvious. There’s no way the people who wrote the book or made the show would let such a delicious character like Shiki die on that trolley. Too much character development devoted to her. And besides, she’s too smart to die like that.

    Once you figure that out the rest is just logic.

    MarigoldRan
  9. So it’s the pregnancy theory that turned out to be correct, makes sense indeed, i also did understand the part about the 1 minute delay used to hide that a part of the footage by overlapping files (based on the fact the system compresses the video footage in 1 min increments/files), what i don’t understand is why couldn’t the killed have gone out of the room INSIDE the trolly, i mean the white dress hid the entire trolly, the killed could have easily rolled out of it in the darkness and went to the elevator in the blackout .. i’m also not sure how would the camera see something that everyone standing there didn’t see (and it clearly doesn’t have night-vision to see in the dark) going by the missing footage theory? can someone elaborate on that part?

    Also the pregnancy being how the killed got into the room explains all the Ostriches and pregnant woman (and i think fertility ritual tribal dance) we saw in the previous episode, it’s all pregnancy related symbolism.

    I might add that i’m not surprised the daughter of Shiki killed her, i can’t even begin to imagine how twisted she would be growing with a mom like that in a closed room for 15 years, it’s almost as if she gave birth to her in order for her to punish her and her uncle for what they did 15 years ago for some twisted reason in her head (it seems almost as if the murders are a case of revenge/punishment, using the same knife from back then to stab the uncle was also very ironic and symbolic of that).

    Hunter-Wolf
  10. I thought Integer are 4 bytes?

    Update: OK I guess I heard Moe said short, so I am guessing its short integer which is 2 bytes so ok.

    And wow, the pregnancy theory really blew me. I thought there was someone in the room before Magata entered. And yea I am still thinking how the numbers 7 and 15 and the character F links to all of this…

    ornehx
    1. I also think it makes more sense that Magata is the killer that killed her own daughter.
      Cut off the limb and set it up to pretend like its herself. Without the limb and no finger prints it would take a while to figure out giving her enough time to escape.

      Also if its was her daughter, she wouldn’t know much of the outside world, the uncle, the lab layout – well of course unless Magata taught her all that…

      ornehx
  11. My guess?

    Magata Shiki had twins. If consciousness could be transferred, it means the physical death of one twin need not be her actual death. She would merely transfer herself into the other twin.

    MarigoldRan
  12. There were THREE people in the lab. Magata Shiki and her two twins. That would explain the director’s death. After Magata Shiki left the helicopter, the other twin killed the director.

    Transfer of consciousness would also explain why the first twin was ok with being sacrificed.

    MarigoldRan
  13. Now most wouldn’t care as to what I’m about to say but by this point in time, I for one, could no longer care much about the ‘hows’ of the murder but rather the ‘whys’ of it. I’m far more interested in what goes on in Shiki’s consciousness more than anything else.

    Nishizawa Mihashi

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