Dimension-bending mayhem is upon us! Those of you who have joined me on this ride, I think we’re now being at least somewhat rewarded for our patience.
So, this episode focuses on Ryo and Kyo. We get their backstory, how the original Kyo died while their father researched a cure for the condition that killed him, coming across the God App system in the process. Did he create it? Discover it? Or simply apply science to it? Not answered and he’s an NPC so it’s probably not important. Ryo interacts with that and is asked for her wish. Eventually, she ends up running out into the night and having a close encounter of the Truck-san kind, where she finally registers her wish to see her brother again. This leads, presumably, to her existence as the ever-dreaming candidate and Kyo’s immortal fact.
In the present, Kyo attempts to recruit Goro, offering that they can work together and use Goro’s power over reality along with Ryo’s power over parallel worlds (shared with Kyo: she creates them, he can shape them) to bring about a perfect reality. Goro turns him down because… um… well he gives a speech about how a utipia would actually be shitty but given how friendly Goro normally is it seems more like it’s because the script says so. I guess if he knew this guy had butchered his other friends (though, I will decline to count my corpses before they’re buried) he might be inclined to raise a middle finger, but in any case, Goro wants to fight.
Goro’s finishing move? Let’s ask Ryo what she really wants. She wakes up, dumping all three of them back in reality, at the intersection, with Kyo (previously immortal because a Kyo from a different alternate universe would replace him every time he died) glitching and fading out and none of them really able to move.
The NPC mob declares the mysterious kids who just appeared must be responsible for what happened to the city before and descend on… mostly Ryo, beating her to death as Goro pleads her innocence and Kyo fades away without his master in the right state to maintain him. Goro at last pleads to Iyo for help… but as Goro’s costs go all on runaway, it seems that Iyo has forgotten who he is, and her words align her more or less with the lynch mob.
Thus we drop the curtain on episode 11.
For a show with animation that often borders on tragic, the Ryo flashback scene was actually gorgeous. NPC-dad largely stays out of frame, and their world is full of deep, saturated colors that make it look like the characters live in some kind of impressionist painting. The emotions and ideas are also good through here, in a way that makes the kind of weak Goro-Kyo fight stand out for the worse. Still, even that had the Yoko Taro touch we’d been missing until about an episode ago.
This includes the state we’re left in: Ryo/Kyo is almost certainly dead and gone. Last we saw of Chika, Honoka, and Kouki we had every reason to believe they’d bit the dust. Goro is losing everything, and is presently surrounded by an angry mob without even the strength to stand. We know he’s not actually going to bite it, at least in the normal and for real sense, because opening narration (though it wouldn’t be the first time Yoko Taro just killed off a main character), but all the same it’s going to take a serious twist at the start of the next one to pull him out of that and keep the game from being a 1v1 of Iyo and our teleporting friend.
I honestly suspect much of the current status is going to be upended outright, for one reason or another, as we move to the end of the first Cour, and I’m here for it.