Texhnolyze S1E12: "Precognition"

The end of season one. This has been a real experience of a show, for me. I can't say it's been one of my favorites, but it's definitely one of the most unique series I've seen up to this point. I feel like I've been slacking by not doing any proper analysis posts for Texhnolyze. The show's opacity, combined with me not being at my full cognitive ability these last few months, has made this a lot harder for me to engage with on that level. Hopefully after this season finale I'll understand enough to make a proper midpoint analysis post.

Well. Let's do this.


The episode starts with a look at something that I feel like we should have been shown much earlier in the series; a lift rising out of the dig site, carrying the latest meager load of raffia up now that the Organo have gotten it working again.

It's been clear from the start that raffia is a resource that Lukuss was built to extract from Earth's lower crust. In the abstract, we've known everything we need to know to keep the story moving. But still, it would have helped make everything stick a little better if we actually saw some mining going on before now. What does this raffia stuff even look like, anyway?

Cut to what looks like the foreman's office, with him on the phone with someone about the problems they're having with the ever-shrinking raffia yields, and the Organo making unreasonable demands. Hmm. I think this might be a flashback scene, actually. Set some years earlier, when there were still a few dig sites pulling up fumes instead of just the one, and the Organo pseudo-regime was new. Anyway, the foreman's stress and irritability gives way to outright panic when he turns around and sees one member of the recently returning work crew brutally murdering another. The one doing the murdering is still wearing a full EV suit, so it's probably an established character who the show doesn't want us to be able to identify yet.

The foreman raises his handgun, and we hear shots being fired. Then, a distant camera shot of the murderer carrying a body (the original victim's, or the foreman's? It's too far away to tell) away from the mining camp before succumbing to their bullet wounds and falling.

The title of this episode appears. "Precognition." I guess a flashback segment for this episode is title-appropriate. I'm guessing the episode will also be Ran-centric, which I have mixed feelings about. On one hand, I kind of want her role in the story to hurry up and be clear already. On the other, I kind of hate it when stories handle prophecy the way that this one seems to have been doing so far. Anyway, Ran is the very next thing we see after the teaser and title. She's in the marketplace in Lukuss, watching a Racan thug heckle some old fruit salesman. I thought the old man was her grandfather at first, but no, just a fruit seller. After bullying the old man for a while, the thug notices Ran and shamelessly reveals that he's a

Ran doesn't react, even when he starts physically pawing at her and making as if to drag her into the nearest creepy abandoned building. The reason Ran isn't concerned, of course, is because she has an army ready to step out of hiding and come to her defense.

Kitty Corps loom menacingly around the Racan guy, prompting him to scream some desperate insults and put-downs about Gabe and its inhabitants and then run away clutching a stolen flower to his jacket.

Hmm. So those cat-masks are known to be associated with Gabe, rather than just being a personal quirk of Ran's. That kind of calls how effective it is as a disguise for Ran into question. Hmm. Well, anyway, I guess there are more than just two or three people still living out in Gabe then.

Ran watches him flee, but otherwise doesn't react. The Kitty Corps either hide again, or take off their masks to blend in with the Lukuss marketgoers. Then we jump over to Organo HQ, where Ichise and his new friend Bartholomew are having a conversation. Or, well, a monologue that occasionally pauses for Ichise to give a one to two syllable reply, you know what I mean.

Bartholomew asks Ichise if he's proud of his new teuthida body, now that he's learned to use it effectively. Does he think he needs any other weapon besides his metal fist and foot? Well, regardless of whether or not he thinks he does, he does. There's a reason that the Organo enforcers always carry swords around, and it's not because they're trying to cut ammo costs. Swords are highly visible when worn OR wielded, they require skill to use effectively, and they have cultural connotations of martial aristocracy. The Organo's katanas are a weapon of terror and intimidation at least as much as ones of actual hands-on violence. They carry them to constantly remind the rest of Lukuss' inhabitants that they are powerful, separate, and superior, and thus they must never be seen in public without their swords.

Ichise looks bored, and comments that this sounds like a real pain in the ass. Bartholomew says that it really is. The work of intimidation and mastery is exhausting, frustrating, and stifling. But, policy is policy, so now that Ichise is an official Organo combat unit he needs to learn to use a sword even though it literally makes no difference to his practical fighting ability. Bartholomew tosses him a blade, and they start doing cool poses in the artificial sunlight.

Heh. George Orwell's "Shooting An Elephant" summarized in one little exchange there, basically. The slavery inherent in being a slavemaster. It really takes all the "cool" factor over the dramatic animu posing that follows it, which pretty much has to be deliberate.

...

First of all: I doubt this is intentional by the writers, but I kind of love how this works as a sendup of the lightsaber lesson scene in Star Wars: A New Hope. An elegant weapon, from a more civilized time, less clumsy and random than a blaster? Hahaha no, this weapon is objectively inferior to a gun in every way, but you need to learn to use it because it makes you better at bullying people who couldn't even defend themselves to begin with.

Second: Ichise hasn't reacted to this at all, but he himself has experienced what Bartholomew's talking about in the most awful, visceral, firsthand way imaginable. He spent the first several episodes trying to avenge himself on the people who maimed him with exactly these swords for exactly these reasons. Now he's just silently accepting one when it's handed to him, expressing only the most token resistance or contempt. Is this a corruption arc? Him just being too broken and beaten down to refuse? Or is he just playing things close to his chest for now? In any case, this is probably the psychologically darkest thing that's happened in the series so far, which isn't a statement to make lightly.

...

Cut to Shinji, who is not in a good mood after learning just how deep he got suckered in by Yoshii. Him having booked it when he learned the truth instead of fighting is probably also something he's not proud of, given that he probably now knows that he could have played a role in bringing Yoshii down if he'd stuck around.

He gets a chance to let out some aggression when his pedophile underling gets up in his face and starts asking to be given command over a squad because raisins.

This guy has not been making himself popular with anyone, it seems.

Shinji leaves him sprawled out on the pavement, and then strides into a nearby apartment where his girlfriend and his second-in-command are waiting for him. They're still trying to figure out a good location for their new clubhouse. Then, after sending girlfriend out of the room, her and second-in-command converse anxiously about how much respect the two of them are losing among the Racan rank-and-file due to their string of failures following from the ill-advised firebombing of the Union headquarters. They might not be the leaders of the Racan for very much longer unless they do something to earn back loyalty.

Back to Ichise and Bartholomew. They're being told that someone overseeing the dig site was assassinated, and it doesn't seem to have been done by that Organo marionette guy who already got caught. Ah, okay, so that scene at the beginning wasn't a flashback, then. So that WAS the same dig site that was sabotaged earlier? Or are there actually still multiple dig sites? Anyway, Ichise and Bartholomew are being sent to investigate.

Brief interlude at a restaurant, where the Kitty Corps have brought Ran for safekeeping as they discuss what they should be doing with her now. The Sage's granddaughter was accosted, which seems like something that they should report back to him. I guess these guys actually work full time here in Lukuss, then, and just happened to be nearby with their kitty masks on hand when they saw Ran in trouble.

They also don't think much of the Sage letting his granddaughter go into the city alone and unguarded all the time. I guess they might be a bit more sceptical of Ran's prophetic ability than some.

As they finish their discussion and look out into the seating area, they see that Ran has vanished on them. She didn't even eat the meal they gave her; just left a flower on the table next to the plate. Either she decided she had something important to do, or she just found them condescending. Off to her next whacky adventure, I guess.

Back to Ichise and Bartholomew! I learned the latter's name now, it's Toyama. Ichise and Toyama are at the foot of the big obelisk. Is that where the murder at the episode's opening happened? Maybe? It looked like it was more out in the fringes, but...I dunno. They arrive, and Toyama goes into a building at the foot of the obelisk. It's the same building where the teaser happened, so yes, same site, and probably the only site. The dialogue in the teaser was kind of confusing in that case then, since they were talking as if the extraction was CONTINUING rather than starting up again after the sabatoge, and also seemed to be mentioning dig sites plural. Could be a translation mishap I guess. Anyway, Toyama goes in to talk to the witnesses, and Ichise waits outside in case they need to break any skulls.

As Ichise watches and waits, an old man approaches him. Seeming to recognize him.

Ah, getting some more backstory now. We know Ichise's father was executed, and that it looked to have been done by the Organo, and I think it was hinted that he was a scientist or doctor or something who worked with raffia. Other than that though, we don't know much.

The old man tells him that the eastmost peninsula is the secret Ichise has grown up to look a lot like his father, aside from being much taller and more muscular. Ichise doesn't say anything. "Ichise doesn't say anything" summarizes a good third of this series, honestly. When he asks how is mother is doing these days, Ichise somehow gets even silenter than silent, and uncomfortable withdraws his tropico hand which contains some of his mother's stem cells into his coat sleeve. The old man doesn't notice the hand movement, but he picks up the gist of her status from Ichise's expression. Then, when he expresses his sympathies and starts to say something else about his father, Ichise interrupts him.

Uh...huh. So, Ichise's dad was executed for betraying someone to someone. It looked like it was the Organo doing the executing, so they couldn't be the ones he was betraying "his people" (his neighborhood? His colleagues? Lukuss as a whole?) to. Wonder who he was working with, then? Either way, that also explains the hostility that Ichise faced from those lead pipe-wielding randos an episode ago. They weren't just envious of Ichise getting ahead in life, they were outraged that the son of a traitor was being raised above their level and assuming he probably did something treacherous to get there himself. Not justifiable, or even relatable, but at least a little more understandable.

The old man refuses to hear such things said about the late Ikuse. Evidently, he either doesn't believe that he was a traitor, or he disagrees with most others' definition of treachery. Ichise refuses to hear this though, and just turns his back to the old man. The latter looks sadly down at the ground, and walks away.

As Ichise goes inside and confers with Toyama, Ran watches them with her psychic powers. I guess she can see current things sometimes, not just futures.

She whispers a few cryptic words about vision and complications that don't mean anything to us yet. Then we're back to Ichise.

Remember when I thought this episode was going to be all about Ran? Not sure how to feel about that expectation now.

Ichise and Toyama ride the mine elevator down into the quarry. Either because they expect to find clues down there, or just because its the most secure location for a sensitive conversation that they currently have onhand. As they descend, Toyama repeats what we and Ichise all already know, which calls his decision to repeat it into question: the Class allows the baseline humans of Lukuss to continue living only for as long as they can keep mining raffia for them. Whether the people up on the surface still use raffia, or have found an alternative of their own, no one knows anymore.

He does contribute one new piece of information, at least to the audience, though. It's unfortunately a very cliched piece of information. Like, I rolled my eyes when he revealed it.

Raffia is apparently something that is produced when you fill a mass grave deep underground and let geological and deep crust biological forces work on the bodies for a while.

Of course. Never heard that one before. Yawn.

I guess it raises an interesting question about whether this deep underground mass grave was produced deliberately in order to create raffia, or if it was an after-the-fact discovery. But more than that, it just seems like the most tired and unimaginative answer to "where does mystery resource come from?" for a grimdark scifi story.

Also, shouldn't Ichise already know all this? He's reacting to some details as if he doesn't, but that's kind of hard for me to believe. Shouldn't everyone down here know at least the basics of what raffia is and where it comes from?

This is followed by a bizarre segway into the topic of fathers. Toyama asking if its true that Ichise's father worked as a night watchman at this quarry, when he was still alive. Hmm. The "treachery" was allowing theft or sabatoge then, I think? Or was he collaborating with an occupier who has since been repelled? Ichise just silently nods, and Toyama just continues babbling about how fathers aren't really important. They're just strangers who you happen to be related to, no more than that.

He obviously doesn't actually feel that way, given the whole "I'd kill you right now if you weren't my father" thing an episode ago.

He then, finally, in another seemingly random gear shift, tells Ichise that he learned something about the murdered man. He'd recently been slipping out for mysterious meetings with a mysterious someone.

So, that's the lead for them to follow now.

Really bizarrely written conversation in this scene.

As Ichise and Toyama leave the raffia mine, we flash over to that bathhouse/spa type place where we've seen Organo bigwigs hanging out once or twice before. This time Onishi himself is here, along with one of the other guys whose names I can't remember. Whatsisname is asking Onishi if he still has the Doc working on his cybernetics. When Onishi answers in the affirmative, the guy tells him he should try and use that connection with the Class to get onto the Hill and see what things are actually like up there.

Onishi tells him that if he thinks that's an opening for him to get up there through, then he doesn't really understand the situation.

Hmm. That time that Yoshii followed her up to what looked like an unusually well-maintained mountaintop facility. That WAS "the Hill" then? As in, she was going back to visit/commune/fuse with the rest of the Class, when she drove up there? If so, then it may be Onishi who is misinformed. Or else knowingly telling a mistruth. Doc isn't totally disconnected from her transhuman brethren.

Again, if that place really was "the Hill." I think it was, but I'm not sure.

The other guy shrugs, and says that he just feels like they're wasting their entire lives lording it over a crumbling vassal state's crumbling vassal state like Lukkus. It feels like his whole life has been trading the same bits of territory with the same gangs of punks like the Racan and Salvation Union, and he doesn't feel like they should grow old doing that as well. He even says that he kind of enjoyed the novelty of the catastrophe Yoshii caused, if only because it shook things up for once.

That's definitely spoken from the perspective of someone who was wealthy and connected enough to be protected from the worst of it and who didn't get their testicles shot off, or their house burned down, or their family murdered.

Onishi, who DID lose something permanently to Yoshii's rampage despite his even greater power and privilege, gives him a very cold glare.

Back to the streets with Toyama and Ichise. Toyama explains that it turns out the murdered man was secretly stealing part of their already meagre raffia yields and selling them to someone under the table.

Erm...how did he learn this? And, how could he have learned this WITHOUT learning who he was selling it to, since that's what they're trying to find out now?

They actually just did this part of the investigation offscreen? With no indication of how they followed the lead?

Not how you do a detective arc, show.

After listening to Toyama's inexplicable infodump, Ichise happens to notice Ran walking down the street ahead of them. She's not wearing her mask. He walks up to her and tries to get her attention, but she purposefully continues facing away from him and trying to shut him out. When he grabs her by the arm, she still avoids reacting for a while before telling him that he's hurting her. He doesn't let go.

...okay, regardless of context, that's a pretty disturbing moment to watch.

He asks her why she's started avoiding him. And what she answers is...less viscerally uncomfortable than him grabbing her and refusing to let go when he's hurting her, but a lot more ominous and emotionally daunting. She doesn't want to have to see the future she's predicted for him.

Hmm. I thought she only saw "possible" futures? But I guess the little interlude with her and her grandfather in Gabe suggested that she can also tell how likely or unavoidable a given outcome is. So, maybe she foresaw that Ichise's terrible fate is actually unavoidable.

I didn't realize it could get worse than "being Ichise," tbh. Maybe she just saw that continuing indefinitely and it was enough to horrify her into a dissociative fugue.

Then again, maybe the terrible future she sees for Ichise involves her being near him. In which case, her avoiding him might actually BE an attempt at preventing it from happening, rather than just a desire to not have to look at it. That could make sense too.

She refuses to answer any more questions. He lets go off her arm, but blocks her path, demanding to know what she saw in his future. Then, suddenly, Ichise and Toyama notice several members of Kitty Corps appear from the crowd and start closing in on them. When the hell did these guys get ubiquitous? Have they just been searching all over the city for Ran ever since she left the restaurant? Fearing trouble, Toyama tosses Ichise a katana and tells him to prepare for battle. Scary music starts playing. And then, for the first time in the show, we see a really visceral, emotional expression from Ran.

She turns her head skyward, trembles, and screams. It's an ugly, sickly scream. Almost more like a dying animal than a person in distress.

Then, she slumps forward, seemingly unconscious. Ichise manages to rush back over to her in time to prevent her from hitting the pavement.

The way that the camera focused on Ichise prepping that sword and the Kitty Corps gathering around them before Ran screamed, I wonder if she foresaw them murdering each other horribly?

If so, she probably could have prevented it just by talking everyone down. But maybe the nasty vision was just so overwhelming and so close at hand that she lost it. Well, either way, crisis seemingly averted.

Jump ahead to the restaurant she ran away from earlier in the episode. Ichise has brought her back here, presumably at the instructions of the Cat Corps (they trust him enough to let him come with them, now? Maybe they just thought saying no to an armed Organo cyborg wasn't worth the risk, once they ascertained he wasn't an immediate threat to Ran). Toyama understandably hasn't come with (in fact, I can only imagine that he gave Ichise a real "dude, what the fuck?" when he abruptly left him mid-mission to go help these randos carry this girl indoors when they could already do it perfectly well themselves lol). As she lays, unconscious, on a bench, Ichise speaks with a dragonfly who seems to be running the place at present.

The actual speaker reveals himself after a minute, but the first part of the conversation has him around the corner out of sight, with the camera paying a lot of attention to one of those dissonantly realistic CGI dragonflies whenever he's speaking. To the point where I actually thought he was supposed to be a weredragonfly at first.

There's some kind of symbolism being done with the dragonflies, obviously. But aside from them being generally associated with Gabe and the people from there, I really am not getting it.

The old man who I thought was a dragonfly explains that Ran is a prophet. Ichise had already sort of figured that out, but thanks anyway Old Man Dragonfly. Also, how much do people in Lukuss in general believe in stuff like prophecy? There's also that "voice of the city" thing that they've gestured at in the past, which might also be a supernatural thing that people at large may or may not seriously believe in. Well, regardless. Ichise mentions that she said she saw his future, but didn't want to share it. Old Man Dragonfly abruptly changes the subject, and starts talking about Ichise's father.

Oh, wait, I see. Old Man Dragonfly is the same old man who Ichise met outside the mining facility, who recognized him. I guess he's a member of the Gabe Catboy Brigade.

Anyway, he tells Ichise not to resent his father, because he happens to know that he was actually innocent of the crime he was executed for. Ichise, naturally, is rather shaken by that revelation.

According to Dragonfly, Ikuse was one of the few security personnel who refused to take bribes to let the diggers make off with part of the raffia harvest for black-market sale. He avoided turning anyone in, but he also refused to let anyone get away with it. That was a bad combination, as he made a growing list of enemies in the mine without getting rid of any of them or inspiring much in the way of fear or respect. So, they eventually framed him for some unspecified treasonous act, resulting in his public execution as we saw in that flashback way back in the early series.

I feel like that plot point went untouched for way too long between then and now, tbh. Though on the other hand, the theme of "Ichise's parents being destroyed in life and in death alike by greedy assholes in just the way to traumatize Ichise the most" has been more consistent.

Dragonfly won't answer who it was that did the frame-up, saying that all these years after the fact it wouldn't do any good for Ichise to learn that. Lol, it was him, wasn't it. It was totally him.

Then Ichise starts seeing a bunch of monochrome visions, and clutches his head and asks why Dragonfly is "showing him" these things.

...telepathy is a thing, now?

Is Ichise just blaming him for a flashback that he's having on his own?

We see Ran starting to wake up on the other side of the room. Is *she* beaming stuff into Ichise's head? Is she telepathic as well as precognitive?

I can't tell what the images are of. It looks like it might be flashes of the memory we already saw, of Ikuse's execution, but I can't tell.

I'm kind of lost at this point. Which isn't helped by the fact that from there, we cut to Doc (who we haven't seen in forever) having a phone conversation. In an unfamiliar environment. While a goldfish flies overhead in a levitating water-bubble.

I'm gueeeessing this is supposed to be in the Class habitat on The Hill? A heavenly techno-wonderland of marble floors and waterbending goldfish?

Regardless of where she is, Onishi tells her to be careful around Lukuss, since the political chaos going on right now still isn't over, and the intra-Organo backstabbing might catch her in its blast radius. She seems completely unperturbed by this. Like she just finds it amusing. We still don't know exactly what defines the Class, but it seems at least very likely that she's not conventionally mortal, which would make her fearlessness make sense.

She tells him she'll keep tuning up his legs; he just needs to worry about the rest of himself while things are like this. Onishi ends the call, and heads into his next important meeting. His secretary lady asks him if he wants to postpone the meeting and have sex. Um...lady, his wife just got murdered, and he's still recovering from his own wounds, I don't think that's on his mind right now. Indeed, it's not; he tells her no thank you, and proceeds back into the snakepit.

Back to Ichise and Toyama, who are still in a detective story for some reason. Toyama has learned - again, offscreen, with no indications of how - that the murdered man wasn't selling to anyone with Racan or Union ties. But, he has also learned that some suspected acquaintances have been spending a suspiciously large amount of money recently. Again, offscreen. I might not mind the sudden genre shift into crime novel if the show at least let us SEE them do the goddamned detective work. They go into one of Lukuss' countless ramshackle old factory buildings; this one has been converted into a fighting pit.

Is it the same fighting pit that Ichise used to work at? Maybe. Toyama asks him how it feels to be back here, and Ichise doesn't answer. Toyama might not know exactly WHICH place Ichise used to fight at, though, so he could be speaking more generally when he says "here." If it is the same place, they're probably going to run into the Organa-aligned ringmaster and his psychotic rapey wife. This...will not end well, if it happens.

Anyway, they start asking questions. Or, well, Toyama asks the questions. Ichise is as silent as usual, and seems to be fixated on the match going on down in the arena. He seems to be either having a PTSD episode, or reminiscing over the simple, fun, punchy life he used to have. The tone is kind of hard to tell.

They have a small group of people in the restaurant/bar corner of the place pointed out to them. Toyama starts asking probing questions that they react defensively too. Ichise is just staring at the fighters punching each other bloody down in the pit. Then, suddenly, something from that (telepathic?) vision he had during his conversation with Dragonfly returns to him. He recognizes the face of one of the men Toyama is interrogating from the vision! He's older looking, but very much recognizable.

Tense sitar music plays as Ichise marches over, pushing past Toyama, and demands the group's attention.

Toyama asks Ichise what the hell he thinks he's doing, but Ichise ignores him.

...for a second, I thought the woman at the side of the table WAS the rapey ringmistress wife, but no, just some other woman.

...are we really coming back to the Lukuss fighting scene and NOT picking up that plot thread in favor of this other one that was dropped on us literally just this episode?

Really?

Ichise gives the Inigo Montaya speech. The man he recognized from the vision sweats and stammers. Then there's a bunch of artsy black-and-white stuff going on, during which Ichise beats the man to an unrecognizable pulp with his cybernetic fist.

Toyama is just staring in confused horror as Ichise kills their important witness/suspect. From somewhere else, Ran watches through her mind powers, with a despairing expression. This must be part of the bad end she foresaw and was trying to avoid. I guess she foresaw that him being around her would lead to that conversation with Dragonfly which would lead to him getting the psionic mugshot which would lead to him doing this.

Well, that's it for this episode.


This one kinda sucked. More than kinda, actually.

If the whole thing about Ichise' father being hated was established more than one episode ago, and the whole thing about him having been framed was established earlier than *this damned episode,* this would have worked much better. As it is, we've been following Ichise as he gormlessly bounces around Lukuss getting injured and taken advantage of without really learning anything new about him for the better part of a season. Going into this stuff earlier would have not only broken up the aimless, boring monotony of Ichise's mid-season role, but also tied his story and the plot of the show as a whole into a coherent arc.

I know that Tempura is "experimental" and "artsy," which means that it's under contract to make itself as hard to follow as possible. I'd have preferred "good," which it could have had much more of with jsut these small changes, but I guess that's just my tasteless peasant self.

Are the fight organizer and his wife from the pilot still in the story at all? Like, did they just get killed offscreen during Yoshii's shenanigans or something?

The detective story that the bulk of this episode dedicated itself to was farcical, in a tiresome rather than amusing way. The Class-related stuff continues to be tantalizing, but it's also so slow-moving that it's starting to challenge my patience. I did enjoy Ran more in this episode than I normally do, since we're seeing her limitations and motivations instead of just inscrutible omnipotence, but there wasn't quite enough of her to make up for all the other frustrating threads.

Unsatisfying, to say the least. Hopefully it picks up again from here.


On an unrelated note, I'm pretty sure that it was just the English localizers who decided to call this the end of season one, because it really isn't trying to be that. I'd say the previous episode would have been the obvious cutoff point, or possibly the one before that. That's not the creators' fault though, so I won't hold it against the show.