Follow the convoy
To a PVP grudge match
Soylent Red is Brains
Once again, we have an episode basically dedicated to a single set piece event. For the full course, we start with Yuito’s group somewhere in the desert half way out in them mission, where they meet with a random encounter. He has some sort of psionic stroke and ultimately has to taste his dubious prescription, bringing him back into the fight. From there, they’re able to catch sight of some trucks transporting weird mystery boxes to the other faction. They follow this to a facility, where they discover the contents, human brains, and a massive number of the same containers inside, along with more of those red ampules, indicating that the drug that Yuito and Naomi are both dependent on is made here, from brains. Yuito, quite reasonably, loses his lunch over this.
Apparently, this is the same place where Naomi is being kept and where Kasane’s team is still hanging out. Kasane decides to make an engagement out of it, attacking Yuito who blames her both for killing his father and for being involved in the now-revealed brain consumption thing. The side characters ultimately break up the fight and Team Yuito retreats. Somewhere in there, Naomi also learned what the serum is made of and has her own freak out over it, leading to a somewhat tender scene with Kasane. Everyone bats back and forth “We don’t know what the right thing to do” is again.
Finally, Team Yuito reports back to Fubuki. At least the start of the episode had a scene to establish his plan: reveal the evil dealings of the government in order to force reform, rather than using brute rebellion like Karen. Here at the end, he seems to suggest that everything is going according to plan, but that he might have more of a hand in the whole psychic-stabilizing brain serum thing.
Aaaaand, cut. This is episode 9. I don’t doubt that the show could tie everything together, but really very little is being accomplished. There needed to be more to this story for it to really stand proud as an anime, rather than as a game where at least the gameplay can be engaging… at least if they’re covering everything in 12; if the story is more than that, there’s room for it to be decent… but then it could have been just as decent in less screen time.