Kagero, confess!
Turns out he didn’t do it.
Leia is Luke’s sister?!
We’re kind of back to oldschool Scarlet Nexus bloat, using the lead-in on recap as well as most of the first of two acts on going over and refining stuff we already knew. We replay the scene where Chairman Sumeragi died a few times as Yuito duels Kagero over it (showing off some cool moves) in order to force Kagero to admit what we already knew, that his primary motivation is to stop Togetsu from erasing his family’s past despite being severed from his wife and daughter who lived on the Moon. We do at least get the real answer, that Kagero planned to hide the chairman away and fake his death, the Chairman didn’t want to go because one of his sons was ignorant and the other was a maniac willing to sacrifice the nation to shoot at imaginary moon men, and ultimately the chairman got caught in the crossfire by some random Others, seeing him mortally wounded and Kagero fleeing.
Does that seem like it was worth half an episode to you? To be fair, the way it’s done gets us both some decently animated powers and fighting and some good lines, but it kind of feels like it could have been cut or at least compressed given everything we already had a solid handle on. Perhaps developing one of the side characters who’s gotten very little, like “Shot like she’s important explored like she’s an extra” Hanabi would have been more worthwhile?
On the way to Togetsu, the Kunad Gate rumbles. Yuito isn’t using his powers, but the Gate is still theotetically tied to him, dependent on him, and growing. Nobody bothers to mention that an exact copy-paste of Yuito’s powers is running around somewhere, so I guess we’re all just supposed to discount Karen in this, but they do have another observation to make: Yuito’s smooth and adept power use may be a sort of ‘last gasp’ before he loses his abilities entirely. Never mind that future old Yuito still seemed to have his powers, we’re supposed to believe that our Yuito’s could fizzle out at any moment. Of course, he’s an exceptionally weird psychic/medical case so no one knows exactly how or when this would happen, just that his current surge would seem to be indicative of that eventuality. Never mind that all his friends just brought him back from memory-loss oblivion through the power of telepathy and heart so you’d think that might screw with his psychic powers or something, he’s apparently losing them.
The group then manages to Metal Gear Solid their way into Togetsu until suddenly they’re Ramboing their way in instead, only to teleport down to the Supercomputer in a scene that’s perfectly dramatic but didn’t need to happen. A mysterious Togetsu hologram person appears and tells them to wait, and as she comes into focus both Kasane and Yuito immediately recognize her as ‘mom’.
This is a decent twist, since we knew Yuito was related to Togetsu’s plans and therefore it would make sense for him to be related in a more genetic sense, and it’s not like Kasane and Yuito had any chemistry anyway so if they’re bursting the non-existent romantic bubble there that’s no big loss, but it’s hard to say what it’s going to mean going forward. I guess this is probably the original (as opposed to clone) and we do have to have some time travel about saving Yuito years ago which was related to his mom if memory serves, but really they’re going to have to actually resolve something in a way that builds interest going forward.