Darker than BLACK / First Impressions / OVA/Movie

Summary:

After having a dream where she’s being pulled on by a glowing child-like figure, Yin wakes up to Hei watching over her, and he promises to protect her. The two soon arrive in Hong Kong, and Hei finds a man named Chen to make some fake passports for them so that they can keep running. Yin, however, speaks out because she feels that it’s pointless and suggests attacking their enemies instead. She proposes spreading the rumor that he wants to sell her in order to lure their enemies in, and she believes that they can’t run away while there’s a Doll watching her. All of this plus Yin’s attitude worries Hei, but he decides to have Chen set everything up. While Chen is away, Hei questions why Yin didn’t tell him about the enemy Doll, but she seems not to remember what she said before. She does tell him though that she wants to be with him like this forever. Chen then comes running back because he encountered a dangerous group while spreading the rumors, but Hei is undeterred.

On their way to the meeting place, the three are stopped by the same group – a Contractor lady and her twin Contractor brothers. The lady offers a large sum of money for Yin, but when she wants to confirm if Yin truly has a humanoid observation spirit, Yin actively refuses because she knows that the lady was planning on killing them. This leads to the lady attacking with her swords and Contractor power, but Hei manages to knock out the lights and escape. He uses himself as a decoy so that Chen and Yin can get away, and he finds himself fighting one of the brothers. Chen and Yin meanwhile nearly get discovered by the other brother, but that brother is then killed by Claude, the master of disguise who had previously looked like Amber. As Chen and Yin go on the run again, Hei stumbles into a room where the Contractor lady is waiting. She uses her power over gravity to force Hei onto the ground and stabs his hand with a sword. While taking off her clothes as part of her remuneration, she reveals that she’s heard all about Hei and Yin, but shortly thereafter, she’s hit with her own power.

This frees Hei, and when he realizes what’s going on, he notices that Yin has appeared in the room. Yin finishes off the Contractor lady with her own power and then holds Hei’s injured hand as she gets up close to him. She claims that Yin isn’t human anymore and that Hei should tell her to come to this Yin’s side. Yin then dissolves into an observation spirit and disappears, and moments later, Chen arrives with Yin in tow. When Hei then loses consciousness, Chen notices that the wound on Hei’s hand isn’t bleeding anymore, however before they can take Hei and escape again, the surviving brother shows up. Seeing what happened, he decides to kill Yin, but before he can, he himself is killed, and three different people appear and surround her. Sometime later, Claude calls Madame Oreille to report that Yin is the true Izanami, but he opts to part ways with her because he disagrees about killing it. Back in Japan, Youko meets with Schröder about some new weapons and then gets a phone call from Kobayashi. He’s sending her to Hong Kong after Izanami and has assigned Hazuki Mina to fill her in on the details.

Preview

This episode was worth it just to hear Fukuen Misato voice Yin in such a delightfully evil manner. Maybe I should be calling her Izanami though because it’s clear that they’re trying to show there’s two parts of Yin now, her physical self and her observation spirit self, and this might be the beginnings of why we saw two Yins in the Ryuusei no Gemini finale. That, along with the Youko, Hazuki, and Madame Oreille parts, made me wish even more that they had animated and distributed these extra bridging episodes prior to airing the second series.

Of course Yin wasn’t the only great thing about the episode. I laughed at the Contractor lady’s remuneration of having to take off her clothes because it was fanservice right after a serious battle scene. The action in general was quite fun to watch, and things seemed much bloodier this time around than last time. I certainly didn’t expect Claude to show up and start helping Yin by killing off one of the brothers the way he did, and it’s not quite clear what his ultimate goals are. It would also appear that the guy who saved Yin at the end was none other than Amagiri from the first series (I guess he survived being burned), and the preview indicated that there are still some remnants of EPR around.

Unfortunately, as you may have heard, I am retiring from anime blogging at the end of this season, and this will be the last episode of this Gaiden series that I will be covering since the third episode won’t be released until May 26th and the final one until July 21st.

28 Comments

  12. its not an april fools joke. The guys been doing it for a long time. So he earns some respect from all of us who have been following his works. We should all respect his decisions, and just hope that one day he returns.

    kuuyaROCK
    Reply

  14. Wait, wait wait, Claude’s ability is changing into other people, isn’t it!? So how’d he control that telekinetic guy? Or was that just Yin with her observation ghost?
    Omni, good luck with your job! Though of course I respect your decision, you must promise to pop up some times on the other RC and give us a wave, ok? Have fun and make lotsa money!

    Kit Kat
    Reply

  16. Kit Kat:
    As seen in the previous episode of gaiden, Claude can both create illusions and control people. Yin’s observational ghost has the ability to use the powers of contractors against themselves if she so wishes.

    Thats how she made Claude shoot himself in episode 1, too bad he was using an illusion at that time.

    and this time she made that girl contractor use her power of gravity against herself.

    Meowminator
    Reply

  21. The EPR eh, I’m guessing they’re affiliated with Madame Oreille although Claude turning her down says otherwise, hmm…

    I hope these Gaiden episodes clears us a lot of things, because DtB2 just didn’t have that same vibe to it.

    invAZN
    Reply

  23. Damn it 2 more episodes and it’s over SHIT!!!!! The lady was fucking awesome the hottest and strongest female contractor fuck why did she had to die early why couldn’t it be in the last episode the ova makes the manga and season 2 looks like shit I’m liking evil Yin way better than the old yin!

    CZ
    Reply

  24. While these gaiden episodes are no doubt explaining crucial events about the second season making it seem more complete, I can’t help but wish that the sequel had lived up to the first season and these OVAs’ quality in both narrative and pacing. Here’s to hoping there’s a season 3 that can.

    LongTimeLurker
    Reply

  25. why is every chinese character in DTB besides hei a walking stereotype? first there’s wei in season 1 with the chinese robes and shirt and connection with the triads. now there’s the buck toothed sidekick, the 2 brothers with chinese robes and hats, and the promiscuously dressed sister. i mean come on.

    darkman3177
    Reply

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