We get the conclusion of Tag this week in an episode with more meat than usual. We got Endorsi’s backstory and motivation, some philosophical talks, Hoh’s play, and Bam actually doing something.
The first place we check in with is
Endorsi, Bam, and the other tanky fighters where Endorsi has just
backstabbed her team. It turns out, if she takes out the other two,
she’s guaranteed a slot going forward – which given how bad a
position her little tumble with Anak put her in, is a very attractive
prize. Bam challenges her on the ethics of backstabbing her team,
but like Khun in the previous episode, Endorsi has a real ‘team’
unrelated to the one she’s been assigned for this particular test:
Anak, who she’s decided she wants to climb the tower with. Offing
her current “teammates” and competition will guarentee them both
spots.
We also learn that Endorsi is no
stranger to eliminating competition. Adopted by a minor noble family
who put her and other girls in her same position through nightmare
training, Endorsi was the bottom of the barrel, punished for her
‘incompetence’, until she snapped and killed off all the competition.
Seeing as she’s now a Princess of Jahad, her and her abusive
adoptive family would seem to have gotten what they want. She
encourages Bam to be prepared to do the same and betray and murder
his way to the top of the Tower, but Bam is determined to hold to his
ideals and. In a fairly good exchange he spars verbally with Endorsi
before protecting her from one of her marks activating his magic
weapon and going to town, earning her support to go to Rachel and do
things his way.
In other news, Hatz and Hoh. Hatz
engages the Ranker, only to be let down by his idiot comrades,
something the Ranker finds to be an affront. Suffice to say the two
“spear bearer revolutionaries” won’t be climbing the Tower after
he’s done with them. On Hoh’s side, he decides to add to the case of
acute backstabbing disorder his team has come down with by enacting
his own version of Endorsi’s plan. Guided by a mysterious letter, he
takes Rachel hostage, believing that if he kills her, Bam will drop
out, leaving a Wave Controller slot. The Ranker faces down against
him, and though he’s clearly disgusted by Hoh’s way of doing things,
he doesn’t press the attack when Hoh has the knife at Rachel’s
throat. Bam arrives, and Hoh intimidates him into trying to take on
the Ranker. The Ranker paralyzes bam with a Shinsu technique,
telling Bam how to do it in the process so that he can stop Hoh.
Bam manages, but not until Hoh wildly
stabs Rachel in the back, putting her in critical condition. As Bam
cries over her and she threatens to slip away, Hoh starts giving a
soliloquy on his own despair and the big red dude who had been part
of Rachel’s team with Endorsi vanishes from the winners’ lounge, much
to Rak’s confused dismay. Hoh commits suicide, thinking he’s been
misled to his doom, which gives Bam even more grief.
Endorsi arrives with a fancy magic
sword taken from her defeated enemy (the one Bam protected her from
earlier) and challenges the Ranker to a quick end of their Tag game,
flashing a tiny bit of red to indicate her badge is inside her
jacket, while affirming that Bam should stick to doing things his way
while Endorsi does them hers. The two of them take on their
technical opponent to end the game fast so Rachel can get some
medical aid. With Bam once again applying his new technique, to the
Ranker’s surprise. What wins the day, though, is Endorsi’s
misdirect. Predictably for the audience, the red she flashed wasn’t
her badge, and after the Ranker takes her jacket, she snags his badge
in the denouement when his guard is down and reveals that she has
both badges while he only has her panties from that inner pocket.
The episode closes with Hoh being wheeled to the morgue and Rachel,
just behind him with Bam running at her side, being taken to the
hospital.
Thank you, Episode Nine. This has been
one of the strongest episodes of the show, having some decent
character drama, some alright action, reinforcement of the show’s
previous themes, and development for Bam if only as a fairly standard
protagonist. Endorsi and Hoh’s stories help continue painting a
picture of Tower society as a staggeringly unfair place where the
strong freely tread on whoever they want and murder and abuse are
just accepted, which supports the interest of our most grounded main
character, Khun, in defying the rules of the Tower as well as simply
climbing to get ahead. It’s good that we don’t just have his example
to go on. And Bam is showing with his ability to copy the Ranker’s
technique that he could fairly quickly gain agency in this story. He
also has a good note of wanting to support and protect Rachel even if
doing so causes her to hate him, because she’s more important to him
than her affection or wishes are, which makes Bam out to be a little
less of a meek puppy than he might otherwise come across as.
But, even though this is a fairly
significant climax, the season isn’t over yet. Next week, we’ll see
where exactly we go with the conclusion of the test and Rachel barely
clinging to life.