Eden of the East 02 Melancholy Monday
I hate the title card image, which has the uguu~ style. But I did find this spectacular bit of non-English in the opening credits:
Recap
We rejoin our heroes on the plane. I'm surprised air traffic to Tokyo wouldn't be closed after massive missile attacks. Saki tells Akira that there have been past attacks, the "Careless Monday" attacks, but in those attacks no one died. Saki seems very confused that Akira doesn't know about this stuff.
Two guys in a car--along with two parent-age people and a kid in the back--call Saki to say they're in traffic but on the way to pick her up to bring her to her "final interview". Akira's minder calls him and tells him since he's back in Tokyo, he has to do his job. He asks her why he wiped his memory, she doesn't know. He has 8 billion yen--on his phone, no less! JAPAN!--and has to spend it all during his mission. The airport is totally full of people, but when Akira asks his handler to help get them out, things shut down fast, like he's a diplomat or celebrity
Saki asks Akira on a date, he smoothly brushes her off by saying he's an amnesiac and needs to engage in self-discovery instead of date her. Brutal. She mopes in a bathroom only for Akira to follow her into the ladies room and creepily ask her for directions so I guess she gets her date after all?
Cut to a cop who clearly doesn't give a shit about his job. He gets a prompt that Akira has spent some of his money. He rushes towards the phone signal.
We find out Akira's apartment's area got bombed in Careless Monday. It was a surprise attack, the politicians were caught off guard. But no one died? Who was behind the attack? Was it the Japanese government? But after a while, people stopped caring about it. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be reading this as a parable for the ineffectiveness of Japanese governance over the last 15 years -- this is right up my alley, I actually follow Japanese politics! But seriously, how the hell did no one die?
Akira walks up to the cop and talks to him because he has the same model of phone. He asks the cop if he has lost his memory too. The Cop gets his passport, and mentions that Akira is (Selecaw???) #9. This obviously ties into the "candidate" thing I mentioned last episode.
Akira asks Saki about herself and we get a character background dump. She's a college senior. She's an orphan. Her sister and her sister's husband run a company that she wants to work for. She likes her brother-in-law. And now we get Akira's background dump. He remembers, as a sentimental piano score plays, buying something as a kid but not what. He remembers his Mom going missing, violin cues. Saki shows Akira photos of New York on her weird flip phone. OK cool, the Freedom Tower in NYC, which means 9/11 happened in this universe.
Saki expresses she never wants to forget what happened. I wonder if she was orphaned in 9/11, given that she said there was an "accident" with her parents and that she wants to never forget.
The Cop is looking through Akira's bank account and has no idea why he bought the things he did. Some sketchy jerks hassle the cop so he gets on his cell phone and calls the same handler that Akira has--acting as Akira--and has the two jerks and an innocent bystander murdered. Noblesse oblige.
Review
This was another sort of in-between episode. Still not much happening, still just sort of teasing us about what is yet to come. I'm glad that the show takes place in the real world because it gives a really good political basis to work from--the sense of global unease in the Post-9/11 period mirroring the unease in Japanese politics in the same time period--for future episodes. I suspect Saki's brother-in-law's business will play a role, because that info dump was too big for it not to.
The relationship between Saki and Akira seems good, although I have no idea why she isn't the least bit curious or inquisitive about the fact that he apparently has the incredibly rare total retrograde amnesia despite having no injury.
We'll see how it goes.