Future culture and eccentric big-eyed villains!
So, to start out, we get scenes between Yuugure and Akira where she… mostly gets pretty pushy about that marriage thing and refuses to elaborate on who she is, where she came from, or what the new world is like, declaring most of it to be classified information.
They check out the ruin where Akira woke up, and there manage to evade a pair of other Towa-face gynoids who appear to be looking for them on OWEL’s behalf, and who also appear to be saner and more level-headed than anything else OWEL has provided. After that close call, they leave the village for real and begin what is said to be a pretty long road to Tokyo.
Along the way, the two run into Amoru, a young artist who offers to get them to their next stop without any OWEL entanglements. They bond a bit about her absent parents and her desire to draw picture books like they did, while we get some darker truths of OWEL’s utopia and some implications regarding the immediate situation.
First, it seems that there is a form of slavery in this new world, wherein an individual gives up their human rights in exchange to not being subjected to the normal punishment for their misdeeds. OWEL guarantees the slave’s necessities, but such persons are also treated very harshly, essentially as disposable tools. Honestly, I appreciate the worldbuilding effort to put some nuance in the situation.
In the latter, Yuugure notices for the audience that Amoru seems to be branded with a slave barcode, and that the precious book she’s carrying is banned.
When the gang gets to their next destination, it seems that Amoru betrayed them, having been set to deliver them to another OWEL officer who is just as loudly nuts as the guy from episode one. Seriously, I think OWEL must hire from the same pool that GHQ did in Guilty Crown, as these guys are seriously over-the-top evil and so hammy they make most of Tim Curry’s filmography look subtle. This one is the preening and vaguely effeminate peacock to the last one’s super macho man. Is Segai in the gacha? He was pretty much the one consistently fun character from that other show so I wouldn’t object.
In any case, Amoru did it for a promise to return the rest of her parents’ books. She is, of course, deceived herself and slated to die as all the books burn, but since it would mean chewing less scenery, the officer tells her that right away in a gloating fashion rather than having her quietly walked off to receive her “reward”. This causes her to disrupt matters enough for Yuugure to get Akira away.
Akira decides, eeh, he wants to go back to save the traitor girl. Fair enough, she is a kid, they bonded, and he feels responsible, but this leads to a bit of a fight with Towa. She tries to pull the “I’ll go with this if you marry me” card and he calls her out on her inhumanity, which clearly stings a great deal. That’s where the episode ends.
Now, on one hand, this episode was basically a carbon copy of the last episode: spend time puttering around learning about the world, and then a kill-happy lunatic shows up to loose cannon all over the scenario and at least promise a fight incoming. On the other hand, based on what the OP and especially ending are like, I don’t think we’re just doing boss of the week, I think this one is going to have a little more staying and trajectory-altering power. The other Towa-faces are also a presumably major element that hasn’t quite bloomed yet, so there’s not much to do right now but wait and see.