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“Repay evil with evil”
Episode 10 of Lycoris Recoil gives Chisato even more to worry about as she’s trapped in the middle of a tug-of-war between the DA’s request for her to kill Majima and her interest in saving Mr. Yoshi. But while Majima comes up with a plan to expose the DA and the existence of Lycoris, Mika uses LycoReco’s closing to get some guilt off his chest.
LET’S POSITIVE THINKING
While it’s understandable why Chisato would be emotionally closed off from her problems, it is frustrating to see how much she shrugs off actual concerns in her life and others’ lives. It’s telling that, as soon as Chisato catches Kurumi investigating her heart condition, she decides to disband LycoReco personally. She says she’d have been upset with Mika and Yoshi if they were upfront about raising her to be a killing machine, but from the way she reacts to dying at an even more rapid pace and how she reacts when people show concern for her, I don’t buy that.
This time around, she takes Mika’s revelation about how Mr. Yoshi’s been wanting to train her as a murderous assassin as if he told her that he stole her pudding from the fridge. It feels like she shrugs off the fact that her quintessential father figure has been using her for the longest time and had her executed for not following through on his wishes for her to be a killer.
Her reactions to situations that have far too much gravity to them make it frustrating to see how other people’s words go in one ear and out the other for her. It sounds selfish to say that Chisato needs to be mindful of how she copes with trauma, but she regularly shuts down any concerns that both Mika and Takina have for her well-being. It comes off like watching someone abuse themselves, and then act like it’s part of a positive lifestyle that makes them happy.
THE ONLY THING THAT CAN DEFEAT EVIL IS JUST MORE EVIL
The good news is that Chisato isn’t as irritating as this show’s many pseudo-antagonists. Majima’s the most clearcut bad guy on the show, but he comes off like a shining beacon of light in comparison to the DA, who is more than comfortable saying the quiet parts out loud that they’ve turned Tokyo into a police state with their child army.
As if that’s not bad enough, we’re supposed to act like it’s terrible that he abducted Mr. Yoshi because Chisato still needs to see him for some closure. The choice at the end that Chisato has to make winds up being whether to do the DA’s bidding and kill Majima as Mr. Yoshi would’ve hoped before he had his adoptive daughter murdered, or to find Mr. Yoshi and give him puppy dog eyes as he outwardly disowns her for not being a hitman.
There isn’t a side that’s designated to be good aside from Takina and Chisato, and even they have a hard time grasping what doing the right thing would look like. At least those two are just trying to diffuse the situation, and aren’t actively promoting the suppression of information or outright terror. And Majima would be worth rooting for if he didn’t commit terrorist attacks just to have everyone wake up and smell the coffee about the DA covering up crime with the help of kid cops. At this point, I’m just along for the ride because none of what the DA and the Alan Institute represent is worth saving or salvaging.
To me, I think Chisato’s putting on an act of “nothing’s wrong, I’m always happy”. It’s called the “Stepford Smiler” trope, but we don’t actually know if Chisato’s acting or if she’s just broken inside. I imagine it’s the former, as she doesn’t want to worry her peers. But to us, her acting so happy-go-lucky is a cause for MORE concern, not less.
It’d be wholesome and, honestly, a relief if she gets through all this (i.e. new heart, gets to live longer, etc.) and then takes a moment to bawl her eyes out with Takina as a shoulder to cry on. If you bottle up your tears for too long, you’ll drown yourself in them.
Also, I absolutely love Majima’s scheme. It’s one that would make Heath Ledger’s version of the Joker proud. Scattering thousands of weapons across Tokyo prefecture and then telling everyone to go nuts with them? GENIUS.
It’s actually brilliant on multiple levels. He knows that less savory people will take advantage of being given weapons, which obviously is gonna cause a lot of chaos already. But he also knows that the Tokyo police department has been lax for 10 years since the Lycoris agents are the ones dealing with all the violent criminals and terrorists. As a result, the police do not have any experience in dealing with potentially hostile situations. This is shown brutally when that cop shoots that civilian just for holding a gun and accidentally pointing it in the wrong direction. That cop panicked because of his lack of exposure to deadly scenarios.
He also knows the Lycoris agents are trigger-happy, as they’ve been killing armed criminals and terrorists on practically a daily basis. Even if Kusunoki tells them not to engage, some of them are gonna disobey when they see all the damage being done. And even suggesting the notion of DA’s existence in a citywide broadcast has made a cover-up all but impossible.
All he needs is a Joker laugh like this one: https://youtu.be/wcinzmfZeCc
So what if, and I admit this is a bit out there, it turns out Chisato really IS a genius and all of them have been manipulated in some 4-D chess that will be revealed in the final episode? What if she played her “two daddies” by wrapping them around her finger knowing how they would respond if she was about to die? What if she already has lined up another power source and is letting everyone shoot everyone else to cover her heist of it? Or as the person commenting above mentioned, what if it’s even worse and she’s just doing all this because she got bored?
I don’t really believe that’s the case, but it seems like the way the story has been told to this point, a grand reveal on that scale is not impossible.