The time travel rules
Say Karen is needed here
That will take doing
This was, in isolation, a better episode – it’s determined that the Kunad Gate will not close because Karen is responsible for some of the distortions, and Yuito and Kasane can’t just heal those; Karen himself needs to undo the tangles caused by his time travel the same way Kasane and Yuito’s mother hand to go back to fix her tangle. But of course that would normally mean playing “Where in Time is Karen Sandiego?” since he’s not at a time and place where normal network services can pick him up.
The team does get an idea, though. Based on what Yuito and Kasane saw in Red Strings space, they know that Karen, in the past, killed Yamiko Sumeragi (Founder of Suoh and Yuito’s Ancestor), a person that Yuito’s brother was quite certain was not only not assassinated in the ancient past but who still lived in cryogenic stasis beneath Suoh.
However, given the fact that by the point in his life where Karen killed him, the founder wore a full-face mask due to a disfiguring accident, the team still comes up with the deduction that Karen must have stolen his mask and his identity, and thus would be the person that big brother believes is their ancestor in cryo-sleep. That means that the team needs to get him to open up the Sumeragi family crypt so they can drag Karen out and have him reverse the damage he’s done to reality itself.
I’m not sure how well that’s going to work out for them, seeing as we’re treated to scenes of Karen being spat out of the Chronos Terminal to the tune of an impact crater, being left lost and bewildered wherever and whenever he is. But we did also see him murder the founder, so I guess this will all be assembled later.
In any case, this results in setting up, through Fubuki, a meeting between Yuito and his big brother, who has been stripped of his command and placed under house arrest after that whole “gonna kill everyone to destroy moon men” thing. Still, he’s able to arrange the meeting in a boondocks district, and attempts to take advantage of that to kill Yuito for his brain like they’re still going to pull off his crazy gravity revenge plan. He isn’t really able to shoot his little brother, though, and the arrival of a pack of Others forces reassessment of the situation. Ultimately he gives Yuito the crypt key and then strides off to sacrifice himself, because apparently despite being head of the OSF his answer to Others is ineffectual handgun and… despite a fairly decent build up to a death scene, the cavalry arrives just in time, with Fubuki revealing that a ceasefire has been negotiated between Suoh and Seiran in the face of Kunad Gate destroying everything.
And, just as that’s revealed, it seems like we might get everything destroyed, as a surge from the gate that cripples the pre-emptive AA guns that typically prevent most Others from landing is followed up with a surge of Others the likes of which as never before been seen. But that, of course, is trouble for next time.
At this point, much of my verdict is going to have to be on the series as a whole, which needs it to finish in order to be determined. I can say that it’s not looking good however these last few go, but that the difference between being truly bad and simply lackluster is a fuzzy line.