The Wandering Totem Pole

Key Events

We are introduced to another Minimum Holder with the ability to see 10 minutes into the future with the help of a tablet computer. With that ability and the help of her friend Three, she is able to apprehend a sniper who was targeting a person she’s guarding.

With that ‘monster’ running amok last episode, the government had to cover it up disguising it as a commercial shooting and asked Hamatora to start in it. The commercial gets enough views to rank 2nd on a video website, the most viewed is a guy trying to act, and he’s so good he has his own fan website.

The future seeing girl is called Honey, and Art requests her help. But at the airport she accidentally picks up someone else’s suitcase and loses her tablet. She is then kidnapped at the airport, but Three catches up in a car driven by an elderly lady. He rescues her and find out these guys were carrying gun parts.

Art is investigating cases where 15 year old children use real guns to commit crimes. All of them claim they received their guns by sending an email. They then receive the weapon along with a letter asking them to attack a shop nearby or join the rebellion, if they don’t, they will die. Art calls Nice in and briefs him.

Nice figures out the gun case connects everything. All the children are heavy users of the video website that their commercial was on. And everyone on that website will have seen the video of the guy trying to act. That video has a subliminal message about the guns and the email address to contact at a high frequency that only children can hear.

The uploader of that video was given a Minimum by Moral, to make himself look ‘beautiful’ on video and Moral used that to plant the mosquito frequency sound. Moral kills the uploader as he wanted to hand himself over to the police.

They aren’t worried about the rebellion that the letter spoke of. Honey contacts Art about finding gun smugglers and Art and Nice ask her to find out where this large rebellion event will happen as they’re about 10 minutes from the designated time. Honey pinpoints the place to a theme park nearby.

Art orders all police to get there there and they make it in time with people from Hamatora to guarantee the children’s safety. Meanwhile, Moral makes his escape.

Thoughts

Not much more revealed about Moral or his grand schemes, but at least he’s there to have some fun. Y’know I think although he wants to beat Nice, they’re both actually quite similar in some ways. They both saw that the hulk monster guy was having fun, and that to me is a sign they must be similar but Moral took the wrong fork down the road whilst Nice took the right one. Two sides of the same coin, so to speak. Moral looks to be challenging Nice in any case and is enjoying himself, so that’s nice, sorta… if only he’d stop being mentally unstable murdering people, I’m sure the two would get along. I wonder why the dislike for Nice anyway, that is what I’m interested in. They must have a history together, at least connected by Facultas academy by some extent. I love a good insane villain, but what I love more is if that villain has an excellent backstory too. When the time comes to show us his story, I hope it’s good.

It was another good episode with good cases linking together. However, it’s all been somewhat of a child’s play, again, I want a bigger case. Like when I’m watching Conan, standalone episodes with a small case are still good, but they’re certainly not the things that stick in your mind, you need something that brings impact. Moral was good, he made good impressions on me, they need to keep up his constant involvement in the cases but rather than him creating a standalone case for them, it should be many little things that link up to a much bigger case. Hopefully that made sense, basically I’m trying to say that whilst I’m perfectly happy with the somewhat episodic storylines, I would like a big case that’s allowed to build momentum, tension and then have an excellent resolution. Think I’ve made this point too many times so I won’t mention it much again or at least not in this detail. I trust it’ll happen eventually, they’re still in the early stages of introducing characters, like Honey, keeping in line with their strange naming sense.

Also that thing about the mosquito frequency noises, I actually remember that from Conan. That case with Kaitou Kid on a hill, if anyone remembers. Some good things to be learnt.

This episode felt like the anime’s settling down, which is good. Still going at a slow pace, and we’ve yet to see more from the rest of Hamatora. Hopefully they’ll all get decent screen time in the following episodes. It’s definitely an interesting group so whatever happens I think it’ll be enjoyable. I’m most looking forward to see what that girl can do, the one who’s always hungry, you just know she’s hiding something big. Maybe something similar to super strength, that’s the impression I get, probably wrong.

I like the new character introduced, a big range in the cast is always an asset to any anime. As long as it doesn’t get out of hand. Like I said I think it should start telling us more about the others at Hamatora before they slip our minds. You made a good show of their abilities in the first episode, should get back to them before the impact of that fades. And when I say get back to them, I do mean do a little more than just give them a little screentime to act casual as that seems to be all Birthday’s getting. But hey, it’s worked for him, I mean for one thing I remembered his name. Though that may be because of the oddity of it. Either way, if I can remember someone’s name, then you’ve done a good job keeping them in my head. So for now, I don’t think the cast should get much larger, let us get used to everyone already here first, I don’t like the idea of overwhelming viewers with a huge cast when they’re not ready for it. Not in the early episodes in any case, may have made that point too many times as well. But nonetheless, I look forward to the next episode.