Oh crap, boss monster.
Everyone playing both sides.
The pace is awful.
So, we start by finding out what weird way Naomi was going to ‘die’. Turns out, she transforms into a gigantic Other monstrosity. That… wasn’t really what I would have guessed, but you know what? It probably should have been. We get a very confused sequence where Kasane has to face her transformed adopted sister and, eventually, the rest of everyone responds, including Yuito fighting and Nagi having a total freakout. Eventually, some of the higher-ranked fighters show, teleport the Naomi-monster away, and refuse to explain themselves.
What follows is a decent character stretch for Kasane, with perhaps a bit much of the “enigmatic important visions” scenario. We see her having to come to terms with her sister’s “death”, getting basically told off and thrown out by her adoptive family for failing to protect Naomi, and kind of flirting with self-destruction until some all-too-enigmatic talks bring her back around to her senses. At least we hear that there might be a way for Naomi to be returned to human form. She receives a clue from Yuito (ampules of a red medicine found in the subway that match ones seen at Kasane’s house) and his help and cooperation, but then it’s time for the Conspiracy to make its move. They get the entire defense force called out for what should be a massive incoming, and take that opportunity to ambush, at least, the Main Character squad.
The confrontation doesn’t jump to combat just yet, though, as we’re too busy getting a lot of questions answered with things like sullen silence or “Don’t play dumb!” wherein the audience is not actually clued in on what anyone knows or wants. We do know that someone seems to have messed with Nagi’s mind (making him forget Naomi’s fate) and possibly the others. Kasane has more flash visions of some weird red string place that’s not given any context, and we leave off with our vague heroes staring down vague traitors with vague motivations that may actually be not evil since they make vague accusations against the nation that seem to be vaguely supported by other vague talks with no context.
Are you starting to see the problem here?
Now, I’ll say again: I haven’t played the video game and don’t intend to until the anime is done, so I can analyze this unspoiled as its own thing… but in a video game, this kind of thing works a little better. Is it still frustrating when you’re left hanging a long time with mysterious talk about unknown factors that won’t make sense for several hours of gameplay yet? Yes. Does that hurt investment when we’re not really sure why we should care or who we should be rooting for in any meaningful way? Also yes. But at least in a game you’ve got an interactive experience and a tighter focus on the character you control. You can forgive a lot of this sort of stuff and these conspiratorial cliches because part of the point of a game is that you learn by doing. You don’t want a long draggy cutscene telling you everything, you want to find it out. But a show is basically like one big cutscene; the way you interface with it is fundamentally different, and because of that the techniques that at least pretend to work in a game are just plain bad pacing in a show. And Scarlet Nexus, unfortunately, seems to be falling right into that trap.
I can hope we’ll get some answers next week… but we’ve got the fight we set up at the end of this episode to get through, so I really doubt we will actually get them. Either way, though, we’ll be seeing you there.