An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Seasonal Selection – Scarlet Nexus Episode 12

The Show’s not over
It is exposition day
In creepy moon land

So, this week was the final nail in the coffin of the idea that this would be 12 episodes, which is kind of strange because I was rather strongly led to believe that I was looking at only one cour. Ah, well, the longer it goes the more capable it is of actually wrapping up, so I’ll take it.

This week we got history exposition and… not a lot else. According to Togetsu, humanity once lived on Earth, evacuated to the moon because of a climate crisis, re-colonized Earth (for the founding of the nations we know) and since then has lost contact with the Moon humans because of the appearance of the “Extinction Belt” and, thereafter, the emergence of the Others. It’s not explicit, but it’s probable that they’re going for the angle where the Others are moon-humans descending through said belt, just from what we have been told. In order to learn more, Yuito is directed to another exposition system, but is only starting to access it (to overwhelming response) when the episode ends.

Kasane’s side is a little lighter this time around – she flashes back to stuff we mostly could have surmised, that she was a design child prepared by Togetsu just like they said, and that her Togetsu caretakers weren’t very good at being nice to the little girl. The fact that they murdered her puppy and her mother figure both in front of her is a little exreme, but I think we could get that she was a person-shaped tool to them largely from the treatment last episode. Kagero shows back up, using his power of invisibility to rescue Kasane, breaching her from containment and then… pretty much not doing anything with her yet. At the very least, he has eyes on Yuito’s group and an intent to ‘rescue’ them as well, but we’ll see how that goes.