Texhnolyze S1E2: “Forfeiture”

More Texnolysis! Let's see how Wrinkles, Mustache, and Ran will escape the murderous zealots, and whether or not Tachat's had his delectable namesake cut to pieces or if he can still be saved.


Start with a quick recap of the pilot's ending, with the gunman who attacked Wrinkly's group being taken out before he can kill anyone, and Tachat being possibly killed. Come to think of it, the gunman who attacked Wrinkly and the mafia-looking people who attacked Tachat don't actually look very similar to each other in terms of clothing, equipment, and general demeanor. Did two evil organizations send two kill teams after different targets in the same ruin at the same time, just by coincidence? Maybe, but I don't think so, there's got to be a connection. Title drop, then we see...is that Doctor Evil? Either him, or another mastermind type character who we haven't seen before, having a phone conversation while a doctor or cyberneticist does something to his leg. He's having a phone conversation, and it sounds like...hmm.

He says that "the sage" is safe, as his bodyguards are "our own people, very competent." An organization called the "Union" just tried to assassinate him, and this guy thinks they learned their lesson from the failure and that the situation should not be escalated further.

Hmm. IS this Doctor Evil? The framing in the previous episode made it seem like he was sending these killers to the site, while this guy seems to be aligned with Wrinkly (assuming he's the "sage"). And, if Wrinkly's faction was aligned with the people who attacked Tachat, why weren't they running over to help defend him from the zealot?

Hmm. There might be more than two factions involved here, and I'm not yet sure who's allied with whom.

After seeing Wrinkly and Mustache lead Ran in egress from their no-longer-secret location while Ran plays with the dead zealot's eyeglasses, we cut back to Tachat and his own attackers. They didn't kill him, it turns out. They just cut off one of his arms.

Presumably this is why he's been hiding out here instead of enjoying the proceeds of the arena fight he recently won. Does this have something to do with the robot that glitched the fuck out when he was fucking out its glitches? Maybe. There was an exchange of money involved there, somehow. I'm still not sure what went wrong though.

...

Okay, I went back and rewatched the sex scene gone wrong. We never actually see it happen, but the before and after shots make it seem like he might have punched her off of him after she put her fingernail to his eye.

I thought it was her just having a sudden seizure or computer meltdown or something due to how erratic her behavior leading up to it had been. She does this weird half-squat over him after they finish having sex, and stares at the ceiling blankly, while holding completely still, for an unnervingly long time. There's what seems to be a POV shot from her perspective, with weird computer code filling up her HUD as she stares into space. Then the fingernail thing. Then she's writhing on the floor rolling around and making noises.

Looking back, Tachat does seem to be inspecting his fist right afterward. And now, in this arm-cutting-off scene, her face is bruised. So...I guess?

I'm more confused than before about what exactly happened there, though. It seems like she's a cyborg rather than a full-on robbit, if she's capable of bruising. But if so, is she a cyborg that can be brain-hacked? Or, did she have full control of herself the whole time, and just receive a text message on her cyberbrain that said "lol you should stab him in the eyeball" that she decided it would be a good idea to act on?

She seems to be taking her (and her husband's? Master's? Creator's?) team of henchmen to cut off Tachat's arm for revenge for punching her. Or else, it had something to do with the money she was teasing him with or withholding from him to pressure him into sex or whatever.

The series of events doesn't fit "corrupt fighting ring mistress exploiting the talent," and it also doesn't fit "malfunctioning sex robbit." Hopefully the show will be able to spare a few of its precious spoken words to explain this in the near future.

...

Anyway, Tachat bleeds on the cracked, dusty pavement, and we flash back to Mystery Man and his surgeon/technician/whatever. As he waits to hear back from whoever he was talking to on the phone about the failed assassination attempt, he starts waxing philosophical about how he wishes the technician lady would last as long as these cybernetic legs she's hooking him up to. She drearily tells him that his texhnolyze legs might not be nearly as durable as he's insinuating, and he sighs and tells her that she knows what he means.

So, we learned two things here. The first is that cyborg limb (and other body part?) replacements are very much a thing, so I should assume cyborg before robbit when I see artificial looking people. The other is that cybernetics are called "texhnolyze" for some goddamned reason. How the hell do you even say that, let alone spell it?

Back to the scene of dismemberment. Tachat writhes on the ground in shock, grasping at his severed arm with his remaining one. Then, with a truly horrifying, delirious roar of pain and rage (hats off to the voice actor, it's really disturbing), he lurches to his feet despite the blood loss and makes a mad lunge at cyborg mafia eyeball-gouge lady. He almost manages to make it to her before one of her minions brings his katana down again and gives Tachat the full Edward Elric treatment.

Poor Tachat. Losing two limbs in a world where prosthetics are this goddamned hard to talk or write about.

Boss Cyberlegs (at least, I think that's him? Too many soft-spoken black haired men in suits) is then having a chauffeur drive him across the nighttime city. His vehicle arrives at the scene of the dismemberment. Mademoiselle Eyegouger and her husband/boyfriend/master whatever (who was also here apparently), who had been about to drive away themselves, stop and get out of the car again to await Cyberlegs with submissive body language. Guess he's the big big boss who presides over the smaller bosses. And...he's also protecting the Sage, I guess. Morally complicated individual, or else just the only guy who you can buy security from in this town. He asks them what this spectacle is all about. They tell him that one of their fighting dogs went mad and bit its trainer, indicating the dismembered Tachat bleeding to death on the ground at their feet. With dispassionate annoyance, Cyberlegs says that there's no point in handicapping someone like this. He'll be of no use to anyone including them going forward unless someone splurges on texhoefmkdlsa prosthetics for him, and obviously they're not going to do that. So, better just to kill him and keep their city a bit more orderly.

Also, the underboss is named as Aida, and the organization as a whole appears to be called the Organo. Italian for "organ?" A corrupted Spanish or Latin for "organization?" Maybe one, maybe neither. Granted, this show and etymology so far don't seem to have all that much to do with each other.

Unnamed cyber-legged overboss produces a handgun and fires repeatedly into the man on the ground.

Or...not. He apparently shot him repeatedly with a handgun loaded with blanks. Which I guess he keeps in his pocket for some reason.

He just says that their dog will have to live the rest of his feral existence - however long it even lasts - crippled, helpless, and unsightly. Then, he instructs them all to leave, abandoning Tachat on the ground.

Bossman here has a penchant for Texdlfjerwa usage himself. I suspect he might be planning to recover Tachat once his bloodthirsty minions are out of sight and give him prosthetics and a mission.

Cut back to Mustache and the Wrinkled Sage. Mustache says that he came all the way from the surface, and it took him four more days than he expected to make it down the staircase to Lukuss. Wait, this whole city is underground? What? Is the sunlight artificial? I guess maybe it's supposed to be artificial, or else they're at the bottom of a (very, very deep) open shaft.

...hmm. The stairs come down into the complex that has that tower in it. It looked like it has a top, but maybe it actually just disappears into the light of the ceiling? If so, this isn't "underground city" so much as full on "hollow earth." Unexpected.

Wrinkles asks why Mustache took the long trek all the way down from the surface. Mustache unconvincingly replies that he didn't have a reason, he just felt like going to Lukuss and didn't mind spending a week on the staircase. Before Wrinkles can press him on that though, he gets a phone call from the Organo. The person on the other end asks some unheard questions. He believes that the people ("people" plural. So there was more than one attacker, even if we only saw the one) who tried to kill him last night were agents of the Salvation Union. So, we have yakuza-ish Organo as the dominant power at least in this area, and religious zealot Salvation Union opposing them.

After getting off the phone, Wrinkles abruptly drops both previous subjects and tells Mustache that Ran can see possible futures. Hence, her having been able to warn him of likely-but-not-certain death the other night.

How does she do this? Is she the only one who can do this? Are abilities like hers a known quantity in the setting? No clue. But more than any of those things, I want to know why Wrinkles just totally forgot that he was asking Mustache about his reason for coming here. And also what prompted him to suddenly start talking about Ran.

Cut to Tachat, who has somehow managed to turn a clothesline into a tourniquet and tie it around his arm and leg stumps using just the one hand. He's dragging himself along the ground, leaving a trail of blood. His severed limbs are tied off too, and he's dragging them after him.

Cut back to Sage Wrinkly and his companions. He's brought them out into the sun(?)light in a barren, abandoned village. Apparently this used to be the town of Gabe, which failed to become self-sufficient and eventually had its population bleed back into metropolitan Lukuss. It's just his gang and maybe a few other misfits and recluses squatting out here now. Anyway, Wrinkly tells Mustache that Ran as business back in the city soon and she can drive Mustache back there if he's ready, and thanks him for saving his life from the Union fanatic. Mustache thanks him in turn for feeding and housing him, and Wrinkly is like "bruh, you literally killed someone to protect me after two minutes of us knowing each other, it's the least I could do." He also asks for Mustache's name, and after a little coaxing he provides it.

Yoshii it is then.

Then, Wrinkly asks him...well, this feels like it's been very awkwardly translated, but it seems like he's asking Yoshii if he came to the underground world to make things better, or to make things worse, since he's obviously a man of action on a secret mission of some kind. Yoshii just tells him that Ran must have foreseen at least one of those two things. I guess he can ask her then, since anything she's seen must be at least a *possible* outcome of the timeline up until now.

Okay then. Secret mission is secret, so Yoshii can't really answer beyond that.

back to Tachat, who has somehow managed to drag his ruined body to a basin of potable water and is drinking it. How much blood has this guy lost by now holy shit. Well, water will help him last at least a *little* longer, probably. Long enough for someone to give him his Texcoco grafts at least. As he drinks, he clutches his mezuzah case with his remaining hand until the scene whites out, suggesting a loss of consciousness.

Then we cut to the Organo underboss' office, where they're trying to decide what kind of measured retribution they can enact against the Salvation Union without causing the escalation that the big boss wants to avoid. On top of which, they apparently do need a show of force that the people can appreciate, and that their own hotheads can feel proud and cocky about.


...holy crap I'm only halfway through this episode.?

Okay, gonna make this a two parter. Second half will be up next.