Red Strings, there you are
Cryptic talk and cryptic scenes
Seto bites the dust?
So, we resume Scarlet Nexus with a big battle on the highway, and things get a little… low-budget. I wouldn’t say there’s strictly an animation downgrade, but the blocking and shots are decidedly weak. It’s often hard to see what’s happening, and I’m not sure continuity is particularly maintained with regards to who is fighting whom and where.
The worst shots are when brainwashed, crazy, and empowered Nagi is attacking. There was one scene where he was using his chakrams against a cowering Yuito and Kasane, and we pretty much cut between the two of them wincing, and Nagi wiggling his hands in the air as chakrams vibrated crudely around him. This may be a video game anime, but were the glitchy cast animations a must to include?
Seto breaks off his fight with big guy Gemma (who seems to be doubting his part in this weird coup-like attack) to go protect Yuito and Kasane, who can do little more than cower or sometimes move random bits of rubble in to protect themselves. He gets himself hit in the process of defending the pair, even though they didn’t really need the special defense, and staggers up to Nagi to give him a shock that puts him out.
In all of this, Kasane’s headaches have been getting worse, and at the end she starts to see red strings swirling around Nagi and Seto. That’s when something happens around her with more red strings and a black portal in the sky opens and starts sucking up the entire highway. Faceless mooks fall up into the magic space hole of missing-presumed-dead, as does Seto’s body (despite a rescue attempt from Gemma, who is now fully regretting his allegiance with our cryptic villain), while Kasane, Nagi, and Yuito vanish.
We catch up with the leading couple as they fall into the weird red string space that Kasane saw in her dreams. There, they glimpse a vision that we don’t have enough context or clear imagery to know the significance of, other than that it involves a member of Yuito’s famous family, and then Kasane gets pulled away, escaping Yuito’s grasp. He wakes up with his surviving allies (and also Gemma), who retreat to a shelter where Gemma starts to fill them in that at least his motive was about government brainwashing, but that he now suspects the ringleader (who is still spouting cryptic statements like “It’s finally here” and “I will get it back this time”) has some other true motive.
Meanwhile, all telecom goes down and a giant horde of Others starts to invade the city, running amok while the government is paralyzed and response forces are mostly dead or MIA. I’m sure that won’t be an important crisis at all.
Kasane, for her part, also wakes up with the remnants of her squad in a far different place, able to see the still growing sky portal and the twisted ruins of the highway glowing crimson in the distance. Well, guess we’re splitting the party.
Finally, as though we don’t have enough cryptic loons, we cut to a new figure who spouts one cryptic line for us here at the very end. We don’t get a clear image of the character, but based on the focus on his sword hilt and hair he appears to be some old ronin version of Yuito I guess we already knew there was some level of time abnormality what with a current-appearance Kasane manifesting before kid-Yuito, but did we need more right now?
I have to say, I didn’t think I was expecting too much of this show, and yet I’m still I’m finding myself disappointed. They can turn it around, but based on the skill that I’ve seen on display thus far it would be a big surprise if they did. Between this and Revisions I guess having an awesome opening by The Oral Cigarettes is just the kiss of death for shows…