Last time, we were thought we were setting up for a big heist-style infiltration sequence… but what we got was a battle instead.
As it turns out, destroying the Gadoll
factory, rather than being a case of an intricate sequence of events,
is more a simple sequence with extreme barriers against executing it.
The Gaddoll can be erased with almost literally the press of a
button, since the robots (fairly intelligently, in my opinion) keep a
kill-switch in their base, which would I presume be handy if the
Gadoll started rampaging out of control. In addition, in order to
earn more than a brief peace as occurred after the mountain, the
factory’s main reactor needs to be destroyed or at least damaged,
shutting down production. It’s a fairly simple goal but the security
is intense.
And, of course, the betrayal plotted by
Turkey and his dupe Sark (that being the proper name of the
moonshiner) doesn’t help matters. Jill, the little cycloptic hacker
robot, has a lot of help to give with the plan, such as dispensing
the wisdom needed for Kaburagi and Natsume to do their side of the
operation, and also the management necessary for the other side, a
massive prison riot. The bugs set fire to the Gadoll feces (which
burns quite energetically), creating a massive amount of toxic smoke
that disables the guards and, when vented, panics the Gadoll in the
lake above, throwing the factory into disarray as their no-gravity
zones engulf everything.
The betrayal lands in the form of the
premature arrival of enhanced guards. Highly resistant to the smoke
and heavily armed, they immediately start shooting to kill, which
gives Sark some deep second thoughts about whether or not he did the
right thing, even as Turkey tries to tell him that he did. The riot
begins to resemble a massacre. Jill panics, pulling Donatello (who
had previously been logged in to enjoy the last Gadoll hunt) into the
action as Kaburagi faces down against his own unexpected enemy, the
Kamina Shades Boss (Hugin, properly). Kaburagi is strong, but an
admin’s avatar is apparently leaps and bounds above what a normal one
like Kaburagi is capable of. Even with Jill providing some hacks to
help, he kicks Kaburagi’s ass with Natsume only narrowly sheltered
from death.
Donatello’s bulk in his normal body,
though, is not just for show: he’s more than able to trash the
enhanced guards when he comes across them, even using the husks of
his defeated enemies as weapons to take out even more. In this, Sark
is shot, and shortly after Turkey decides its time to abandon ship
himself, coming across the wounded Sark in a tunnel. Sark, who says
he can still move, begs Turkey to take him along, but Turkey quite
cruelly turns him down and abandons Sark to die. Of course, Turkey’s
escape is short-lived, as he’s soon intercepted by Donatello and
after a fairly one-sided fight hurled into one of the pits, with
tar-like Gadoll fecal sludge at the bottom.
Sark, seeing his operational limits
reached and thus knowing that his death is imminent and unavoidable,
considers what he’s been through, and what Kaburagi said about
pushing his limits. He stumbles into the main room, now quiet with
both most of the rioting inmates and seemingly all of the guards
destroyed, and makes his way to the processing pit. Turkey calls out
to him from the bottom, hoping for rescue, but Sark instead plugs in
his final, ultimate reserve of his liquor, lighting his damaged body
up from the inside as he throws himself into the pit, to do something
grand with his death at least.
The pit goes up with a massive
explosion, which travels up the pipes that drop the Gadoll feces into
the prison and causes massive damage to the factory, even taking out
the reactor core. With the reactor down and the factory flooding
from several angles, Natsume manages to give Kaburagi a heads up at
just the right instant to get Kamina Shades Boss’s avatar washed away
to the depths, escaping himself, though badly injured, to reach the
control area and trigger the Gadoll genocide. Kaburagi and Natsume
manage the double-plunger system, and Gadoll everywhere begin to
disintegrate. The Tankers cheer, the Gears are confused, Minato is
furious, and Natsume finally asks the question she’d clearly been
holding since they entered the factory, about what the truth of her
world really is.
And this time, Kaburagi answers.
So, I said last time that I thought
Deca-dence was slowing down. Turns out, I was wrong. This episode
was a whirlwind, much like the early episodes, where every note got
the time it needed and yet at least a couple episodes worth of plot
in some shows were delivered in just one. There are quite a few
powerful scenes in this one: Sark’s final moments, Natsume’s burning
question, and even a surprisingly heartfelt scene with Kurenai and
Kaburagi at the start of the episode. And the show is still going,
much like in episode 5, after a huge climax that would be enough for
many other shows to end on. There’s a whole new act to go with, and
as with episode 5 its hard to know precisely where we’ll go up and
out from here. Obviously, we need to clash with the System, and it
looks like Minato may step up as an antagonist. I’ll repeat, as I
said before that the one thing I think the last arc NEEDS is for the
Tankers to stand up and have agency in the story, doing something
more than having Natsume follow along in Kaburagi’s wake. The
horrific truth that they’re zoo animals for a massive and effectively
alien society is about to be revealed, and their own technical
leader, Minato, seems liable to make the next move against them… so
the pieces are in place, they just have to actually do it.