Darker than BLACK / First Impressions

Summary:

With the Stargazer still speaking cryptically about the stars, one of the girls in the Astronomy Department wonders if the Stargazer is reading the stars’ Garching wavelengths, and Kanami feels that the Stargazer even speaking is a message in itself. Meanwhile, an announcement is made throughout metropolitan Tokyo of a curfew because of the terrorism threat, and no one on the rainy streets notices or cares about July walking along getting soaked without an umbrella. At the same time, Yin wakes up in Amber’s lap at a shrine with Amber complimenting her on how cute she looks while sleeping. Hei and Mao discover Yin gone from the cigarette shop, and in her place is a pink envelope with Amber’s name on it. Hei runs out after seeing the note, though he gets cut off by Huang who offers him a ride. Back at the Observatory, Kanami violates an order to keep silent and phones Misaki to tell her about the Stargazer. She offers to send Misaki a list later of the stars that sparkled during the building explosions, but Kanami is curious about the Contractor involvement because she had thought that those explosions were retribution attacks by the various intelligence agencies. Misaki doubts this because of how public the incidents were compared to how shadowy those agencies usually move.

As she drives along, Misaki then notices July talking to an officer on the street. When she talks with him, July reveals how November 11 wanted the boy to find her if something happened to him. Since Misaki wants to know where November 11 had been headed, July explains that he tracks his comrades, so Misaki gets him to take her there. November 11 is actually being held in the old bar that Maki and Amagiri are using as a hideout, and at the moment, Maki is practicing his Japanese greetings when Amagiri brings him milk to drink. Maki burns his tongue trying to down the hot milk, and when Amagiri tells him to drink it slowly, Maki points out that cold milk wouldn’t fulfill his price. Their conversation gets interrupted when November 11 suddenly sits up and asks to be allowed a smoke. November 11 claims that he has some in the left pocket of his suit, but Amagiri refuses to touch him because he knows that November 11 is an excellent Contractor by how November 11 had protected himself from Maki’s explosions earlier with a shield of ice. Amagiri then starts lecturing November 11 about the dangers of smoking, though of course November 11 knew all of that already. Realizing that this is November 11’s price, Amagiri wonders what happens to Contractors who don’t pay and jokes that they melt like butter.

After Amagiri heads out, November 11 calls Maki praiseworthy for studying between blowing up buildings. Maki responds by saying that Amber taught him the meaning of words and that she wanted him to practice. He is willing to do anything for her, including destroy the city. Meanwhile, inside Huang’s car as it races down a road, Mao questions why Amber took Yin and what happened in South America all those years ago between her and Hei. Instead of answering the cat, Hei orders Huang to stop since he’s just realized that they’re going the wrong way. Huang then turns into a warehouse and explains that the higher-ups in the Organizations have ordered him not to let Hei and Amber meet. Hei runs out of the car when he hears this, but Huang shoots him in the leg to stop him. In pain, Hei threatens to kill Huang for getting in his way, however Huang feels that it’ll be Hei who gets killed for defying the Organization. When Huang then momentarily gets distracted by Mao telling him to stop this, Hei uses the chance to limp and roll to safety behind a crate. A combination of Hei’s cables and a roof crane crashing down causes Huang to trip onto the ground, giving Hei the opportunity to electrocute him.

Back at the old bar, Maki questions why Contractors are being used by man. Maki feels that they as Contractors are the chosen ones and cites how people who can’t make contracts fear them. He believes that they are the more suitable beings to lead the world of the future. Maki eventually reveals that they’re trying to cause the same tragedy as the one that happened in South America, and although he doesn’t know why, he thinks that because Amber said so, it must be necessary. Amagiri then joins the conversation by saying that November 11 should understand the meaning of their creation and actions. He claims that their group, Evening Primrose, welcomes November 11 and tries to get him to join them, so the MI6 agent asks what privileges he’d get. Amagiri’s simple answer is the future, and he feels that November 11 doesn’t have many other choices in such a situation, so he should decide rationally. Hearing this causes November 11 to laugh because he remembers saying the same thing to a certain Contractor not long ago who he didn’t think had a chance to win. That Contractor had still attacked him, and November 11 had questioned what that person was thinking. In any case, November 11 rejects the offer to join, and at the same moment, a heavily armed SWAT team bursts through the door with Misaki.

After November 11 jokes that Misaki is like a princess riding a white horse, she reveals that his companion – July – informed them of this place. Although he’s being held under gunpoint, Maki uses his powers to blow up parts of the room and create a distraction long enough for himself and Amagiri to escape via a secret passageway. When they reach the street, Maki wants to know where Amber is, but Amagiri still only reveals that she’s waiting for the final key. This causes Maki to question who is so important that Amber would leave him, and he gets angry when Amagiri says that there’s no need to tell him. Amagiri then sends Maki towards the second rendezvous point and gets the boy to comply by claiming that it’s Amber’s order. However, as soon as Amagiri goes out of sight, Maki turns and runs the other direction. Amber is at that time telling Yin about how a certain guy has only truly smiled once. She admits to feeling that she can do anything for this person if she can see just see his smile again, and she thinks that Yin feels this way too. The person she was talking about – Hei – is currently limping in their direction, but he runs into Maki along the way.

Recognizing who Hei really is, Maki reveals that their previous encounter was the first time he had said thank you without thinking about it, and that made him very happy. However, Maki now feels jealousy and throws several exploding rocks at Hei. After dodging behind a car, Hei electrocutes the water puddle that Maki is standing in, but Maki manages to get out of it in time. Maki then throws another rock that blows up the car, and after it explodes, Maki says that Amber had always spoken of Hei and that’s why she didn’t take Maki with her. Hei’s body isn’t beside the car though, so Maki tries to chase him, but the boy doesn’t get very far because his legs get frozen to the ground by November 11. When Maki escapes by using his power to melt the ice, November 11 tells Misaki to go after Hei while he and July go after Maki. November 11 then sees Maki blow his way into a nearby building, and the boy challenges the MI6 agent to come after him because he’s used his handprint as a trap on everything so that November 11 can’t attack him. Feeling that the appropriate Contractor for Amber is himself, Maki wants November 11 to show him something stronger than himself.

Rushing up the stairs to the room that Maki is in, November 11 almost opens a door, but July stops him from touching it shortly before it explodes; July feels that they can do it together. In a semi-delusional state now, Maki wants Amber to tell him that he’s the best, but when he stumbles to the door and opens it, he finds rain pouring through a hole in the ceiling. Standing in the rain is November 11 holding a spear of ice. By now, Amagiri has reached the shrine and Hei eventually limps his way there too. As soon as Amber sees that Hei is hurt, she runs to him in concern, but he slaps away her hand. He isn’t going to forgive the person he thinks is a traitor, though before he kills her, he wants to know what happened back then to his sister Bai. Amber thinks that he should say something else before talking about that, like how it’s been a long time since they’ve seen each other or how she’s still beautiful, but when Hei insists on her answering him, she questions if he wants to meet his sister. She offers to let him meet Bai, though when Hei asks where she is, Amber playfully replies that Bai is very far and very close as she points to his heart. This earns her a slap across the face from Hei, but Amber remains calm and tells Hei that he can meet his sister if he comes with her. However, she questions what Hei would do if the town had to disappear into darkness for the sake of that meeting. This only gets Hei angrier at her, and he starts to activate his Contractor power right as Misaki bursts onto the scene with her gun drawn.

Seeing what Hei is about to do, Yin yells for him to stop and Amagiri activates his power as he yells for Amber to get out of the way. Amber, however, chooses to use her own Contractor power and freezes everything. Though Hei can’t hear her, she tells him that she’s traveled a lot and that she’s wanted to see him for a long, long time. With tears in her eyes, she then kisses him. Afterwards, she flicks Amagiri’s forehead to unfreeze him, and when he realizes what’s going on, he warns her about how there’s a limit to which she can pay her price, so she should think about when to use it. As she passes by Misaki on her way out of the shrine, Amber asserts that this was one of those times. Back at the Observatory, the Stargazer is the only one unfazed by the time stop, and she tells the stars not to be impatient because the full moon is yet to come. When the world returns to normal, the Stargazer has fallen silent once again. Misaki emerges from the time stop to find her glasses on the top of her head instead of on her face, and by the time she puts them back on, there’s no one left at the shrine – only an umbrella.

In the aftermath, Amber and Amagiri head to the rendezvous point and meet with two other women and a man. They are willing to wait for now and feel that a certain man is necessary to make the flower of their Evening Primrose bloom. Amagiri then notes that Maki should have already come here, but Amber knows that the boy isn’t coming. In fact, Maki had been stabbed by November 11 who had been helped out by a bandaged up, but otherwise cheerful April. Huang meanwhile wakes up in the warehouse and realizes that Hei had gone easy on him. As the sun rises, Hei returns to his apartment and checks the inside of a drawer where he keeps the charm Amber gave him.

Preview

Well, this episode gives us plenty of Amber, and she turned out to be quite nice and caring, making her that much harder to hate as a villain (which is probably a good thing in terms of storytelling). It seems pretty clear that she’s in love with Hei, regardless of how he feels about her or abuses her, and she even went as far as to use her Contractor power, which shows how important this was to her. Heck, she even appeared to have pushed up Misaki’s glasses, allowing Hei and Yin those extra few seconds to get away while Misaki was putting the glasses back on. I get the feeling that everything Amber has done, she’s done for his sake, but their past still remains unclear, so that’s just speculation. We also don’t know what Evening Primrose’s ultimate goals are – unless it’s making Contractors the dominant race – and how Amber’s feelings for Hei fit into it, but for now I have a hard time believing that she’s sinister enough to be the final boss type bad guy. That being said, I don’t expect that she’ll survive through the end of the series, especially not if Hei doesn’t either.
As for Maki, his attachment to Amber led to his downfall since he didn’t just do what Amagiri told him to. I didn’t think November 11 would kill Maki since he was only a kid, but he did in fact stab him. Maybe it’s okay since we only saw the before and after and not the actual act. On a related note, I like how they contrasted the MI6 group working together to overcome Maki’s power with how Maki was all alone. Similarly to Yin two episodes ago, July seems to put a lot of importance into being a comrade and companion to November 11 and April.
Overall, I’m beginning to think that we’re at the point where there’s more than enough story for them to completely cover in the remainder of this series. Among other things, we still know relatively little about the organization Hei and Huang belong to, Hei’s past, what happens when Contractors don’t pay their price, and now there are three new characters belonging to Evening Primrose who might complicate matters further. It doesn’t look like Amber will be in this next arc, but regardless, I’m excited about where the story is going.

71 Comments

  6. The middle person the preview. Is she related to Yin by any chance?

    Cool ep. But still..even though I love C.C. to death, I’m not so into Amber. I still can’t wait to see future eps though!

    Nikkiluvscraziinezz
    Reply

  8. I get the feeling that the personalities of Hei and Li are pretty much completely separate; given how Li reacted to seeing the note from Amber, even though Hei already knew that she was in the city.

    Very, very nice episode. But now we have to wait another week QQ

    Yggdrasil
    Reply

  18. “Is it just me or Amber look younger after she use her power.May be that is her payment.”

    She really does… that’s very interesting… However, their ‘payments’ have always been something they’re psychologically compelled to do after using their powers, not something that has hapened to them. I don’t see how she could have turned herself younger.

    Tryptomine
    Reply

  27. >>Kat

    I’m sure that they are connected, because when Amber used her power the old lady also glowed and could move. Didn’t think about them being the same person, wonder how that would work?

    Only thing I didn’t like about this one was that it was slow to pick up, the last one seemed fast-paced throughout. But the story keeps getting better and better.

    Yggdrasil
    Reply

  29. When I first saw the old lady pic, I was thinking of the Stargazer from last ep.

    See:

    https://randomc.net/image/Darker%20than%20BLACK/Darker%20than%20BLACK%20-%2015%20-%2029.jpg

    Either way it does make you wonder about the connection between them. The comment about the limit to the number of times Amber can use her ability was also interesting. It made it seem like she is reaching some point where she can’t freely use it (kind of like that guy in the first ep or two who had to break his fingers as payment. If he didn’t have any fingers to break then what?)

    kiryuu
    Reply

  35. “Misaki emerges from the time stop to find her glasses on the top of her head instead of on her face, and by the time she puts them back on, there’s no one left at the shrine – only an umbrella.”

    Ah… Slick. That clears up my previous comment. Anyway, I got a couple thoughts:

    Maybe there’s no particular relation between the Stargazer and Amber. Maybe the Stargazer is just immune to all Contractor powers. Maybe that’s her Contractor ability and her price is her lack of lucidity, or the necessity to take some kind of drug, or something else that would explain her demeanor,

    Also, re: Amber’s power/payment, maybe she has to live backwards? That would certainly explain why she apparently has knowledge of the future.

    I know that both of these suggestions could imply Contractors having to pay prices that are unconsciously paid, but let me remind you all that we still haven’t yet seen what Hei’s price is, if any, and that Amber’s power and the Stargazer’s apparent power are both the most powerful we’ve seen so far, so there are atill plenty of unknowns out there.

    quigonkenny
    Reply

  37. Nah, Amber, I hate her at the firt sight :)) even before her face was seen (in the opening where she held Hei). And now I hate her more seeing her kissing Hei.

    It’s episode 16 now there and there’s still a lot of things to explain. Truly, I wonder how BONES can do it in the next 10 episodes. They may be able to pull things nicely (which I hope) IF they’ll just focus on the main story and not the things like Detective Gai’s.

    Why do I have a feeling that Amber will eventually die in Hei arms, be it he himself kills her or she dies protecting him. Whatever, I don’t expect this series or Hei particularly to have a happy ending. I just hope that Hei won’t die at the very least.

    DarkBlack
    Reply

  38. And I forgot about this: Doesn’t the fact that Amber has feeling for Hei just make her another unique Contractor (like Hei) that has emotion? Even more, love, like we all may know, is one of the strongest (if not the strongest) emotion that human has.

    DarkBlack
    Reply

  39. @darkblack
    well, Maki has feeling towards Amber as well.
    Don’t think feeling ‘love’ is actually unique for contractor. Too bad his “Killer Queen” lost. Amber has “The world” ofcourse.

    Quina
    Reply

  43. I think Hei’s price for the contract is to have to deal with EMOTIONS…
    Remember when a girl said that he was like a Shinigami before getting his contractor powers??? She also said that contractors have no emotions, but Hei has then… Therefore getting angry/happy/sad/etc is the price for his powers.

    Airas
    Reply

  44. Except the renumeration is suppose to come after using the contractor power. And Hei seems to have plenty of emotions all the time. Besides, I think the whole lack of emotions thing is overblown, as plenty of contractors have shown some kind of “human emotions”.

    So much stuff still left unexplained. This is why I hate watching an original show that’s currently airing. I have absolutely no patience. Yet like Code Geass, it’s too good for me to NOT to download it right after it comes out.

    meh
    Reply

  45. “Has it really ever been said what would happen to a contractor who doesn’t fulfill their payment?” I thinks that was eps 3-4, Mai/moratorium a madman w/ no control and no emotional stability? For Hei emotionally stable? Bring Desu back!!! Hei needs to teach Desu a trick or two about how to handle wooman. MOAR!!! dont think Hei no more renumeration if killed his family with South America?

    reservbed
    Reply

  49. Amber’s price almost has to be her getting younger, because if you compare her height to Hei before and after(during really) her using her power, she loses about a head in height. Check 17:55 to 19:23 (times for anon-raw, from the beginning).

    Yggdrasil
    Reply

  50. It would be hilarious if the Star Shards created Contractors like the JoJo Arrows created Stand users. Hei with Red Hot Chili Pepper as a Stand would be the awesomest thing ever.

    PhoenixSeraph
    Reply

  53. Amber does seem to be to getting younger. In that flashback on episode 15 where she asks Hei to borrow his knife, she looks A LOT older. And by the end of episode 16, she seems much younger. Im leaning towards that being her payment.

    D
    Reply

  54. Just finished ep 15 and 16. Amber indeed looks younger than she was five years ago, and looks shorter right after she used her power. I just wonder if this is intentional or just difference between drawings. The overall atmosphere has become darker and no sign of a happy ending 🙁 Just don’t kill Hei. As for Amber, I expect she will eventually die no matter what, especially if her payment is that she gets younger.

    Darkblack
    Reply

  56. well the other guy did say it was a limit to Amber’s renumeration. Hm just a theory, you don’t think Bai and Amber is in the same group since Amber said she could show Hei where Bai is?

    semtex
    Reply

  58. “I smell 52 episodes rather then 26.”
    26 is quite short (given the situation now). 52 is quite long. I think 37 is at best. I just hope that they don’t lengthen the story for the sake of fan and fan services. I don’t hate fan services that much but this is such a great series that I don’t want it to be spoiled by by unnecessary things >_

    Darkblack
    Reply

  59. 37 episodes seems to short, due to all the stuff that needs explaining. Knowing Bones they
    probably will push it to 50 episodes, and rest assured it wont be just for fan service. 😀

    jabathehut
    Reply

  60. If it’s 37 episodes, then I can be somehow relieved hat there no place for fan service. I don’t mind 52 ep though AS LONG AS they don’t just put fan service to make the story longer.

    “and rest assured it wont be just for fan service.”
    You make it sound like there will be fan service, just not much 🙁 But I don’t want ANY of it :((

    Darkblack
    Reply

  62. Bones is pretty hardcore. Bones don’t like doing anything other than what they want to do.
    If there is enough money out there they will release filler subsequents, everybody likes to live and needs money. Like everybody wanted Eureka movie, so Bones created a secret project Eureka. Lets put it this way, that project is stalled and I think that is where Bones wants to keep it.

    reservbed
    Reply

  64. maybe ambers payment doesnt have to do with her contract, she might not have a contract because she seems to have a conscience. and i could be wrong but do u think july might be related to november??

    hillary
    Reply

  66. Possible Conclusions………
    Amber is not the old lady, the old lady/stargazer is amber’s grandmother that has the ability to foretell the future.

    Amber’s renumeration is whenever she use her GEASS, she gets younger by a year. Another drawback is she can’t grow old that’s the reason her GEASS ability is only limited I suppose around 6 more uses where she can still thinks, other more uses than this could result for her being a child forever.

    Hei’s renumeration either the candy or the amount of food he eats.

    Yin constantly regaining her memory and insanity as a human girl. Maybe she would revert back to a human girl after the end of the series due to some sort of event.

    arigatou
    Reply

  68. that’d be real sad if that was true
    i’ve also noticed she gets younger each time she uses it
    but i don’t think that she can’t get older i think that she’s
    used it that much during her time away from hei
    😉 i only think this way so that hopefully hei can get frozen
    in a capsule or something from a severe wound so he could
    look around the same age as amber so the series could have
    a more romantic aspect
    -OR-
    have hei like or seem like he likes another girl
    so amber can snap :]

    Hei
    Reply

  69. why does everyone like amber i hate her!!!!!!!!!!!!

    I luvd this epp are they gonna cancel this show?? 🙁 hope not i will die!!

    How did misakis glasses get on top of her head????

    Hanif
    Reply

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