Dimension W / First Impressions

「八十神湖に潜む謎」 (Yasogami Mizuumi ni Hisomu Nazo)
“The Mystery Hidden in Yasogami Lake”

So, who was sure, from the very moment he was introduced, that this fool was going to be the first to die? It’s a good day for all those at home playing Horror Movie Conventions Bingo. In fact, I would actually have been offended if a redshirt like him actually survived. There are rules about these things.

Actually, while it may seem that Dimension W had genre shifted into a mystery/horror B movie, this was actually a fanservice episode. We have both Mira returning to her role as Alfred Hitchcock cheesecake (now with a Princess Leia mode) and Blondie getting punched in the face. Now, I have nothing against Blondie personally, incredibly smarmy and incredibly fabulous as he is, and I do think that Kyouma needs someone at least remotely resembling a friend so that he’s not completely sociopathic. He simply has an incredibly punch-able face. Watching it get caved in is a therapeutic experience—or at least that’s how I’m going to explain it, as opposed to a simpler conclusion about how horrible of a person I am. It just goes to show that fanservice is a multifaceted enterprise, not simply having your female lead strut around in nothing but a towel in an otherwise serious scene. I enjoy the combination of Blondie’s face and someone’s fist. Give the people what they want.

…If I was Catholic, I would have to camp out full time in the confessional.

The other thing that separates Dimension W‘s first multi-episode arc from your average ghost story is, of course, the sci-fi angle. People killed in the process of dam building—by sudden flooding, especially—is nothing new, and with coils involved it’s likely that these paranormal sightings have something much more sinister to it, as opposed to a Scooby-Doo ending where the culprit would have gotten away with it too if not for those meddling kids and their talking robot. These coils are, if you remember, gateways to an unknown dimension that can go positively psychedelic, and it wouldn’t be surprising if the prototype Numbers are even trippier. Curiously, whatever weird thing is under the water seems to be powered by equally by the dreams of the current landlady or Mira’s overactive imagination. It’s an interesting angle to the question angle to the question of whether androids of incredible computing power dream of electric sheep, but I don’t know how deep they’ll get into that. For now, it seems robots dream mostly of crazy people.

Looking ahead ~ the truth exists beyond the Gate

After a bit of an intermission last week, it seems that, while it seems that we’re still operating in mostly short story arcs, the plot is pushing ahead in full gear. This is the part of Darker than BLACK where expeditions are sent into the Gate, things get weird, and they die. That is, they’re playing to the full mystique of the setting, more secrets are being seeded into the narrative, and there is none but our hero to uncover them. Woo.

On the character side, the last of the people-who-appear-in-the-OP has been introduced, one Elizabeth Greenhough-Smith (Suzuki Eri). Unlike Loser, silly (but real) name aside (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s patron was a Greenhough Smith, if I recall), we don’t really know all that much about Elizabeth or even what role she’s going to serve in the narrative. For now, she’s just another Collector with questionable fashion sense and bat-coils instead of pigeons. I’m assuming she knows the secret of Mira’s sentience thanks to spy-bats, so maybe she’ll help develop the relationship between Mira and Kyouma/. At least, I await for the day when Kyouma starts treating her with begrudging human dignity. Still, right now she’s got it better than most interns.

For the immediate future, I mostly just want explanations. I suspect that all sorts of things just flew over my head this episode. But while I want to know what’s going on, I also dread an infodump. Am I asking for too much? I guess you can add greed to my sins as well.

34 Comments

  1. this is what i surmised to be going on: there is a sort of “information channeling” (aka events between dimensions ) between the 3rd dimension and dimension w. Based on the clues we got from this ep, it appears that the numbered coil made an image of the events of 21 years ago, backed it up into dimension w and then essentially spawned a new world within that image. Robots seem to be able to see this flow of information (which was cleverly demonstrated when elizabeth sent out her surveillance bats and we were seeing images from their point of view, which kept switching from the present to 21 years ago), most likely due to the fact that they are powered by coils and where do coils get their source of power…from dimension w.

    This flow of information however seems to be affecting mira more heavily because of the way dr.yurizaki built mira’s mental and sensory parameters. He made it (and instructed her) that whenever she is acquiring information, she should create an image of said info (sort of in the same way hard ware can store an image of settings on a computer) and represent it in a 3 dimensional space; (I think the professor intentionally had mira designed this way so that he could harness the potential connection mira’s systems could have with dimension w)However, since the numbered coil has thrown reality out of wack, mira’s image of the novelist’s work has manifested itself in conjunction with the events of 21 years ago and so she has become trapped in a subspace between her original dimension and dimension w. We arent sure if the landlady is a pure human or not (im not sure it was confirmed) but if she is a human, then it seems that her thought processes have found a way to bridge a connection to dimension w in the same way coils can. I think the

    sonicsenryaku
    Reply

    1. I think there’s more to dimension w than just electrical energy as we can clearly see, which makes this series more of a blend of sci-fi and supernatural. On the note of kyoma, i think he needs mira to help him readjust after what happened to him in the war. Clearly albert adjusted just fine and loves the idea of this new coil operated world but kyoma hasnt. He shut himself away from the world and little does he know that his relationship with mira is actually therapeutic for him

      sonicsenryaku
      Reply

      1. I think Kyoma experinced something that Albert didn’t, yeah they were on the same team but i suppose Kyoma and the most of the team got caught in something really nasty related to Dimension W and that huge plant thing we keep getting flashbacks of, i raised an eyebrow wehn Albret said that Kyoma was the only one to make it back or survive … why say he is the ONLY one when he is sitting right next to him, probably becasue he wasn’t there at the time … that could be the reason why he adjusted so easily to the new coil-related job and world.

        Also we did get a glimpse of a dead (i guess from the silhouette it was a female body), if she was his love interest/girlfriend/wife and was part of the team that died on that mission Kymoa would have a personal reason to hate everything coil related that Albert doesn’t have.

        Hunter-Wolf
        Reply

      2. That and also I think that Kyoma’s coil abhorrence is related to a greater understanding of their unstable and highly destructive potential.. (not to mention their seemingly supernatural danger..)

        its nice in that way that his character is not just some ill adjusting technophobe, but a character with a true reason to be wary of this energy panacea.

        kudos Dimension W. I’m enjoying this immensely..

        defunkt_bots
        Reply

    2. I think your explanation is spot-on, that’s why Mira is seeing all that stuff much more frequently and clearly than Kyoma, and the robot did the same as well as the coil powered surveillance bats, all are linked with Dimension W, but it seems like it’s seeping into the real world too (like a dam about to break open XD), other wise the that jerk (the journalist guy) wouldn’t see the ghost and run around like an idiot until he got killed.

      The biggest questions now are why now, why did those Dimension W ghosts suddenly decide to kill the writer dude (who now appeared to Mira in her weird hallucinations, which by the way seem to real for some reason despite how weird they are), did he chose to die to travel to the Dimension W or what? also we got like ZERO information on who are those three suspicious people (the guy with the glasses, the chick and the bald dude), they seem to have a lot of high-tec equipment and a hovering drone with serious fire-power (not sure how they got all that stuff into the place without anyone noticing, but i think we saw the hover thing near the dam when Kyoma was investigating the place, there were two of them parked just outside the building).

      They also do seem to know a lot about the lady of the house for some reason, i can’t wait to see how all of that is linked together, it’s shaping out to be a very interesting mystery.

      Hunter-Wolf
      Reply

      1. I agree with your comment; kyoma most likely had it worse however these are two men that were in war. Even if Albert didn’t experience anything as traumatizing as what kyoma did, he still participated in the horrors of war. I was implying that Albert had an easier time readjusting to society than kyoma did becuz while he did experience war, he probably wasn’t involved with anything as horrific as what kyoma did. Hey, at least we understand why Albert somehow survived the explosion from ep 1

        sonicsenryaku
        Reply

  2. “Still, right now she’s got it better than most interns”.

    I have to say that line is both very funny and horribly depressing at the same time. But, hey, what’s a sci-fi story with robots without the question “What Measure Is A Non-Human?” (interns aren’t, it seems).

    Mistic
    Reply

      1. Probably because despite being a bit of a twit, Kyouma does treat Mira as a person, if his dragging along a trailer for her to live in (to make up for the fact that his house doesn’t have an extra room for her to stay) and giving her a push to go mingle with the children is of any indication.

        Mincemaker
        Reply

    3. I get the feeling that she’s not a robot.

      Or more than simply a robot.
      I think she’s either the Professor’s murdered daughter, or had a copy of his daughter’s brain-patterns uploaded into her.

      Remember back in Ep1, she kept calling out “Father!”?
      Standard sci-fi trope for a robot/android to call its creator its parent, no? (Think Star Trek:TNG’s Data and Dr Soong).
      But what if its more than just that? Deeper than that?

      Which then raises all kinds of other questions.
      I’m quite looking forward to seeing what she knows about that new coil her “father” was working on, and their plans to deal with the problem he obviously knew about with the Numbers coils…

      Kai Lord
      Reply

  3. This had a horror movie convention scenerio but the way this ep ended cemented it firmly in the lore of Dimension W and even provided a much weirder, surreal turn than I expected! Also, this is a two-parter, which surprises me.

    starss
    Reply

  5. Somewhat disappointed with how they paced and the stuff they cut out in this episode, the manga did a better job of invoking mystery and creepiness of the murders. (They cut out the police arriving and locking down the area after the the guy was found drowned in the van. Also they messed with the pacing of when the guy was found dead in the Van) and they cut out another hotel guest, that was with Elizabeth and thus they skipped the part ELizabeth and Kyouma trading info befoire the trio of collectors attacked 🙁

    Devastator001
    Reply

    1. Again, with only a single cour I think Dimension W is going to lose a lot of weight before it’s done. But I think the episode at least mostly held together, though I would have liked the extra scenes with Elizabeth; for now, she doesn’t serve much purpose. Hopefully, that will change next episode.

      Passerby
      Reply

  6. I don’t like how Kyoma treats Mira. >:(

    Definitely got chills during this episode, especially when this lovely piece of work showed up to torment our Mira.

    https://randomc.net/image/Dimension%20W/Dimension%20W%20-%2004%20-%20Large%2027.jpg

    However i think the source of my goosebumps was a frigid patch of air in my room right before the heat kicked in. The pacing was extremely fast and there wasn’t enough information to process to make you actually care what was happening on-screen. I just hope that Kyoma stops with the “you’re a robot so i don’t need to care about you because i’m a victim of the coils” soon. It’s getting very dry.

    Synic
    Reply

    1. From Kyoma’s point of view… she is a robot.. albeit a very sophisticated one.. he doesn’t get the full benefit of all the character insight that the viewer gets.

      I’d think his character weaker if he simply accepted and treated Mira with equality from the get go.. (Would you feel the same if Mira wasn’t designed as a cutie-bot [which i am totally into btw] and instead carried all the mental complexity in the body of the mizu-bot?)

      i think he is starting to come to terms with the fact that she is unique and that ultimately will lead to a true relationship of respect

      defunkt_bots
      Reply

  10. Uhm… While I love the sci-fi twist in the mystery this episode, it feels like it’s going to be a bunch of episodic offerings (the illegal/numbered coil of the week) until they reached the final boss. Ugh.

    Kyouma is so far the only main lead I know that hates cute lolis. Why the hate man? She has more personality than you. Hahaha

    samui
    Reply

  12. https://randomc.net/image/Dimension%20W/Dimension%20W%20-%2004%20-%20Large%2001.jpg
    Gate??? Not exactly. This thing here is most likely a TESSERACT of Cpt America movies fashion.

    Fanservice??? Well, maybe, but I think it’s another citation of the B movies of old. There’s always been a chick who’s gonna be killed of in some far bathroom since Norman Bates was introduced decades ago. The re-enact of those tropes in a sci-fi environment is a nice mix, and Japanese love to contaminate their anime.

    https://randomc.net/image/Dimension%20W/Dimension%20W%20-%2004%20-%20Large%2024.jpg
    As for the dreams and electric dreams too. Notice when exactly is Mira trapped in the ‘dream’ and remember what the professor said in the flashback
    Show Spoiler ▼

    Solaris
    Reply

  14. Ep 05:

    With this Episode, this Anime here joined forces with my Top anime Gundam: Orphans at Sundays.

    Lucky, i am an old Star Trek fan. And there where some episodes of Parallel Universe (in the Classic). so i begin to follow the story line

    I am curious, if Gundam as it is now, was planed from the start or did the Show undergo an “transformation”?… Well, perhaps at the end the truth will be revealed

    Sunrise, you still have your Gems. Polish them so they can sparkle again

    Worldwidedepp
    Reply

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