Human Others fight
A message sent to the world
Time and Death abound
So, this week we follow up with the comment about the human-derived Others being moved. Kasane and team show up and quickly get the point that these aren’t friendlies doing it. As they fight those forces, a Togetsu kill squad arrives and attacks both sides, trying to acquire Kasane. The leader of said kill squad is a Kasane-model psionics-user who seems able to absorb and supercharge the abilities of others, albeit at the cost of her donor’s life if what happens to the rest of her squad is anything to go by. Naomi, Alice, and the rest of the Human Others decide to ride to the rescue, though, and take on the boss so Kasane can be kept safe.
Meanwhile, Yuito and Crew infiltrate Arahabaki (disgustingly easily because they aren’t the focus of this episode). The inside of the “Supercomputer complex” looks more like somebody’s Dwarf Fortress visualizer, but I’ll let that slide. They upload the talk from Yuito’s brother about being willing to burn the entire nation to get vengeance on the moon, again with no real opposition there.
Karen, meanwhile, rescues Fubuki from an assassination attempt, only to realize what’s going on with the Human Others, including dear Alice.
Kasane manages to get one last conversation with Naomi, who won the battle but was fatally injured in the process. Compared to Nagi’s death last week, this was actually quite effective. It’s odd, given how little time we spent with Naomi before her transformation, but perhaps because she did get a few good scenes and in part because we at least know Kasane cares, the emotions do land. Karen shows up a little late to have anything like that with Alice, who disintegrates as Others do. Karen bursts out laughing (in that broken and crazy sort of way), says he’s failed again, and copies Kasane’s Red Strings power before teleporting off. Even though he enigmatically copied her power in the future. He then shows up and, as the episode ends, grabs Yuito’s half of the power as well. It’s heavily implied from all of this that Karen has been using the Red Strings to loop back and try again, over and over — an often well-used theme in anime… but for any weight to that, we’ll have to wait at least another week.
I am liking how the second cour of Scarlet Nexus is running. It’s not a great show by any means, but the course correction from the really lame episodes in the first part of the show does seem to be holding for the time being.