Darker than BLACK / First Impressions

Summary:

One stormy night, a Contractor attacks a man on a rooftop and uses his powers to take over the man’s body. Using this body, he takes out a vial of liquid and places it on his former body before walking over and balancing himself on the railing. He then returns himself to his own body with his power, allowing the man to plummet to his death. In the aftermath, he pulls a cloth out of his pocket and sniffs it. Sometime later, at the Kurasawa Detective Agency, Kurasawa Gai is enjoying a cigarette in a dark room when his partner Kiko comes in, smells the smoke, and opens all the windows. She then tells Gai to get serious because there are bills that need to be paid – specifically the television one because she has an anime she wants to watch. Their argument gets interrupted by the arrival of a beautiful widow who wants them to search for a cat. Gai isn’t so keen on the idea, but the woman offers to pay 500,000 yen, half of it in advance. Loving the sound of that, Kiko takes the case.

At lunch later, Gai is shocked to see a guy – Li – sitting at another table eating bowl after bowl of ramen. Kiko is thinking about the case of the missing cat, but Gai’s attention turns to a newspaper article about a former employee of a cosmetics company falling to his death. He finds it strange because there’s been a string of apparent suicides from the same Fiore company. This reminds Kiko that she smelled Fiore perfume on the widow earlier. Li soon finishes eating at his own table and heads outside where the daughter of the owner of the restaurant is feeding Mao, who she has named Hernandez. Kiko meanwhile starts her search for the missing cat by having the neighborhood children bring black cats to her. Since he’s scared of cats, Gai has instead dug up some interesting information: the widow’s dead husband was an executive at Fiore. Seeing a connection, Gai decides to pay a visit to the widow and is let in by a suspicious looking housekeeper.

While he waits, Gai notices a picture of the widow and an elderly man who appears to be her grandfather. He also sees a shelf full of perfume bottles, and the widow interrupts him as he’s inspecting them. Gai is unable to keep his eyes off her large chest, so he tries to turn the subject to the perfume collection. The widow reveals that it was her husband’s hobby and that he was sensitive to smells. Her cat Chanel then gets on Gai’s lap, freaking him out. After going to the bathroom, Gai makes his way back to talk to the widow, but accidentally enters the wrong room and finds Li arranging books in a personal library. Gai learns from the widow upon his return that Li is doing that as a part time job. With no news about her cat, Gai starts to say that he has a few things to ask her, causing her to jump to the conclusion that he wants to talk about Toshiko. She thinks that he already knows about how she’s her husband second wife after having stolen him away from his original wife Toshiko.

However, the widow feels that Toshiko got a good deal because she got compensated very well monetarily and got the mansion. What’s more, she thinks that Toshiko took the cat and wants Gai to investigate that mansion. She gets really close to Gai and starts to beg him – so close that she sees his earwax and offers to clean his ears for him. It is while she is doing this that she reveals that she wears a strong perfume that smells of gardenias. After he leaves her home, Gai runs into Li again at the bus stop, and this time he properly introduces himself. The combination of Li working there, the beautiful widow, and the suspicious housekeeper makes Gai think that something is definitely up. Back at the office, Kiko tells him that she’s taking time off because off because of an important event going on in Aoto. Unbeknownst to either of them, that night, Hei and Mao track down the Contractor who’s been killing the cosmetic company employees.

As the Contractor takes deep breaths of a cloth, Mao appears and questions if that is his contract’s price. Hei soon appears behind Mao and throws his dagger to trip the now-fleeing Contractor. However, when he gets grabbed by Hei, the Contractor activates his powers. Luckily for Hei, Mao knocks him out of the way, but this allows the Contractor to escape. Mao explains afterwards that Hei should thank him because Hei was about to be taken over. It seems that the Contractor has the same power as Mao: the ability to possess others. Mao is limited to other animals, but that Contractor can go from between person to person. The following day, Gai tries to call Toshiko on the phone but gets no answer. When the cafe waitress comes to ask him for his order, Gai gets up and leaves, though he forgets his jacket initially. He goes back to get it, but accidentally takes the similar looking jacket of the person who was sitting behind him: the Contractor. Neither of them notices the mistake yet, and so Gai walks off with the wrong jacket.

Gai then sees Li on the sidewalk and follows him into an alley. Li hides himself and, as Gai passes, Li contacts Mao to tell the cat to keep an eye on the Contractor at the cafe. However, the cat just meows and goes the other way. Gai meanwhile starts to think that Li might have something to do with Toshiko, but he continues on to Toshiko’s house anyway. It is there that he encounters her neighbor who calls the house a garbage mansion. Back at the cafe, the Contractor finally realizes that Gai got the wrong jacket. By now, Gai has climbed over the fence into Toshiko’s yard and finds garbage bags strewn all over. Inside the mansion is even more garbage, but in one of the rooms, Gai discovers a black cat. He attempts to catch it, and although he initially fails, he eventually grabs it with his jacket when the cat stops in front of a set of doors. Having succeeded in catching the cat, Gai suddenly notices that the room in front of him contains the skeleton of a woman.

Preview

I was hesitant about this episode because of last week’s preview, but it didn’t turn out so bad at all since we’re learning more about Mao (who looks to have a direct connection with all of this), and I rather like Gai and Kiko’s characters. I also thought Matsui Naoko did a great job making the widow Arisa sound seductive. Overall, this is a change of pace from what we’ve been seeing so far, but still quite enjoyable. They even had what appears to be an Ouran reference. Having said all that, I’m not sure that this relatively lighthearted episode continues the trend of every-arc-better-than-the-last that’s been true up to this point, though we’ve still got the second half of this arc to see how this develops.
Oh, and Pizza Hut made an appearance too! Perhaps they are trying to capitalize on their success with CODE GEASS by advertising on the next anime in the same timeslot.

28 Comments

  9. What’s with the kissing poll? Rain I can see…but the results of this one are just sad (so far). You should specify what a “real kiss” is — peck on cheek, peck on lips, deep kiss…

    Eleutheria
    Reply

  11. As for the episode itself, the way BONES set up the last scene was simply breathtaking. Even after I spoiled myself with your thumbnail screenshots.

    As for the poll, if you made one asking about the age ranges of your readers, it might explain the 60%+ no-kiss rate. If more than half the respondents claim their range is teen, it might make more sense. Also, the respondents in this poll seem to display remarkable candor; few would deliberately choose “no kiss” for the heck of it.

    Eleutheria
    Reply

  12. I already asked age as a poll, quite a while back. These polls aren’t meant to be taken so seriously and won’t hold up to methodology scrutinization. If I think of something while watching an episode of anime, I go with it. If you really wanna question/complain/discuss/suggest something for the poll, them email me. It has nothing to do with Darker than BLACK.

    Omni
    Reply

  13. Apologies for being off-topic; I didn’t mean to sound critical of your poll — it’s just that there is no separate discussion spot for polls.

    I shall not intrude on your thread any more.

    Eleutheria
    Reply

  14. So THAT’S why Mao can talk. I hadn’t thought about it before, but I guess even this world is weird enough for a talking cat. This episode made a lot of things make sense. I was expecting something a little more dramatic after last week’s episode, but I like the less serious tone. It looks like Hei lost a couple of buttons between last week and today, too.

    Does anyone know the seiyuu for the new Contractor? His name is staying just out of reach.

    Cam
    Reply

  19. NOT FAIR!! NOT FAIR!! DAMMIT!! it seems like pizza hut is easy access anywhere in the world!! but we still dont get it in BROOKLYN!! it just dont make sense!! i want some!!

    BROOKLYN otaku
    Reply

  22. Its cool to have a relax episode. I´ll have to wait a week to see the chapter in subs, but it looks nice, the last preview make me think the worse.. so.. i am glad about the quality in the serie. An Tamaki.. jejeje.. it was cool to see that reference since he looks like a relative of November 11. jeje

    Vanessa
    Reply

  24. Looks like Mao found where the dead bodies are kept?? Wait..no.. Um, anyways, this was a pretty interesting episode. Haha. The detective enjoyed being seduced didn’t he?

    tg
    Reply

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