Listeners – 9, 10

「フリーダム」 (Furiidamu)
“Freedom”

I can’t say I’m feeling the magic here. I thought there’d be more afterthought to the deaths of Richie and Lyde. But it’s just being shoehorned in as a reminder for us to see where Nir is coming from when she makes her goal of killing Mu clear. And just this whole thing about Mu being robbed of her freewill. It seems too sudden and forced. And the whole political situation with Tommy and Ace is clunky and contrived. He just seems antagonistic for the sake of being antagonistic. Because the story demanded it. The way he shot Ace – with no kind of adverse reaction from the others, felt really jarring. Can they not see that Tommy is so obviously evil?

Despite selling Echo out earlier, Marshall has a soft spot for the boy, saving his life and passes over his confiscated amp. I actually found Marshall to be the redeeming element in this episode. That you can have people working against you, and be your enemies on technicalities. Nevertheless, they’re humans too who have their own interests to look out for. And provided it doesn’t threaten their own safety, they’d be happy to help out and don’t necessarily have inherently ill intentions towards the protagonist.

With Nir being blown away by Mu’s sheer strength and Echo ending up in the middle of nowhere, I’m curious to see the detours they undertake and how everyone will converge back to Londinium for the finale.

「クロスロード・ブルース」 (Kurosuroudo Buruusu)
“Cross Road Blues”

You never know what you’re going to get with Listeners. One week, it’ll be a slog. Another and it’s genuinely interesting. This week the coin landed on interesting.

So Echo ends up at an intersection between reality and memories – and while he experiences what felt like a very real stint of time with Janis and Mr Roberts, it turns out that they’re long gone recorded memories designed to guide people towards the Origin – a record player of significant importance to Players and Earless alike. As a result, Echo gains a plug point in his back and has officially become a Player. Exactly what that entails, who knows. But I know he’ll definitely go back to face off against Mu and maybe reach the conclusion that Jimi unsuccessfully sought out.

I really wish this episode came earlier on in the series. It shed so much light and context, which would have served better in terms of driving the narrative, as opposed to being a mystery dangled in front of us this entire time. Though I think Mu being Queen of the Earless would have been fine staying as a shocking reveal. Which brings me ont a point I previously raised I’ll repeat this – why is someone awesome like Mu into Echo? This isn’t coming from a place of jealousy. I just can’t… feel it so to speak. The reasoning or chemistry in their connection. Regardless, I can appreciate how Echo’s love towards Mu drives him. And I’m willing to give Listeners another shake to convince me on his character, seeing how Echo’s so determined to save his dearly beloved. We’ll see what he can achieve with his newfound powers.

Anyway, that’s about everything I wanted to discuss. Sorry for the delays – my pet of ten years is no longer of this world, so I took a week off to mourn him. But I hope that people understand. As always, thanks for reading this post – and let’s see what Listeners has in store for us going into its final two episodes.

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