Texhnolyze S1E2: “Forfeiture” (continued)

It looks like the big boss is also present for this discussion. He's saying he'd rather not move against the Union, in part due to the sage's own wishes. However, the underboss' insistence that their men need to go bash some skulls and this is a good opportunity to do so sways him eventually.

Gangsters gonna gang, I suppose. There's due to be more street violence as the Organo decides to strike back against its cult-like rival after all.

External shot. That tower is just an obelisk after all, not a giant elevator shaft leading up to the surface. And...the sky really does look like the actual sky, rather than a cave ceiling.

I really do wonder how this place works.

As the morning wears on, we jump back to Tachat. He's managed to get a piece of broken piping to use as a walking stick, and struggling to use it to get to someone who can help him. He's lost the arm and leg he tried to bring with him at some point. Struggling to balance, he falls repeatedly as he descends a daunting flight of stairs.

How is this guy still moving holy shit.

Cut to the underboss in his office, with his eye-gouging love interest at his side. He's on the phone with someone, saying that he has use for their "scientific methods" in punishing the Union now that he has the overboss' approval. Hiring a science-y mercenary to do some retaliatory strikes, I guess.

Back to Tachat, who's managed to hobble and drag himself to a marketplace. He finds a seat in an alley near a food vendor, and uses his one hand to fish some paper money out of his earnings envelope, which he puts in his mouth to bring to the stall window. Seeing the blood-covered, ragged, one-armed and one-legged man struggling to even get out the money to pay, the vendor walks over and gives him a free bowl of stew.

Tachat recoils and cowers away from it in shame and sorrow. Realizing how far he's fallen in such a short time, and that this will just be his life now. Helpless. Depending on pity and charity.

Low-dialogue works like this one really make nonverbal moments like this more powerful. It's a real gut punch, delivered entirely through visuals and (very) minimal sound effects. No words, or even music. And goddamn does it hit hard.

A little later, as he moves on through the market, a couple of very strangely dressed street toughs wander near him, talking among themselves about the upcoming battle between Organo and Union. One of them happens to notice Tachat, and starts talking to him. Tachat either can't hear him in his dizzy, anemic state, or doesn't have the strength to answer.

In response, the more oddly dressed of the duo pushes him to the ground, for the umpteenth time since he started hobbling around on that stick. As he hits the cobblestones face first, the thugs note that his amputations are fresh. They smugly tell him that he should have hired them for protection before letting this happen to himself, and strut off. No one helps him up, presumably afraid that whoever cut off his arm and leg would look disfavorably upon anyone who helps him too overtly.

Lukuss is not a nice place to live.

Cut to the cyberneticist lady who we saw working on overboss' legs earlier. She's doing...something?...in a dark lab room. Then, we cut to Ran and Yoshii as she walks him to the train station to ride from Gabe back into downtown Lukuss. Ran tells Yoshii - is this the first time she's spoken? I think it might be - that she sells flowers in the city by day. "Flowers" might be a euphemism for something, or it might not. Then, we see a battle scene in a trainyard.

It's intercut with images of Yoshii and Ran quietly chatting as they ride a train together, so the fight is taking place elsewhere along the rail system. Maybe they're about to ride right into it or something. Anyway, presumably this is either the Organo's punitive strike against the Union, or the Union following up their assassination attempt with another preemptive action of their own.

I wonder how much territory the Redemption Union controls. And where they're based, relative to the Organo. The latter seems to be the dominant power in Lukuss, but one or both organizations might have branches in other cities as well. Underground or up on the surface.

Cut to where the gun battle is continuing. Escalating too, from bullets to what sound like fairly powerful explosive shells or grenades. Then, we return to Tachat. Dusk is not approaching. Or, well, "dusk." I'm still not sure how day and night work in this hollow-earth-ish setting. He's seated at the foot of yet another staircase in this not-very-handicapped-accessible city, staring at the daunting task before him. It's only a couple dozen steps, but it might as well be hundreds at this point with how exhausted and delirious he is. He sees a man ascend the stairs, and give him a pitying look, before moving on up without daring to speak to him or offer him help.

The man looks a lot like Tachat's old self, when he had all his limbs. Was that really just yesterday? Could this have all just been a nightmare? Yes, and no, respectively.

He falls again. Bangs his remaining fist against the wall hard enough to break the skin all over again.

Then, his arm, and his head, slowly fall to the pavement.

Cut briefly to Yoshii and Ran just...riding on into town. Yoshii asking her some general questions about her and her grandfather, and her answering ether tersely and evasively or not at all. She does share her rice balls with him, though, so they're getting along fairly well.

Back to Tachat. Night, or the underground equivalent, has fallen. He stares up the steps, eyes wide, vacant, and haunted. Sad, and very intense, music starts, as his body starts to go slack against the wall he was sitting against. An insect crawls across his face, and he lacks the strength to brush it off, or perhaps even to notice it. The Organo has killed him. A slow, torturous, humiliating death, for the crime of not letting one of their bigwigs stab his eye out (for fun or because of cyberbrain weirdness, irrelevant from his perspective) while she was raping him. His city turned into a hostile desert wasteland around him, leaving him to parch and die and leave his bones on its sandy bedrock.

Then, the cyberneticist lady happens to spot him, and takes an interest.

Altruism? Need of a test subject for some experimental new limbs? Some sketchier motive? Unclear. We know next to nothing about this lady, except that she's going to be outfitting Tachat with his Texmex prosthetics. End episode.


It's definitely getting easier to invest in, now that I kinda sorta understand what's going on. I'm also pleased to see that this is a very different type of story from Serial Experiments Lain, so even if I end up disliking it I at least probably won't end up disliking it for the same reasons. The complicated plot and minimal dialogue do produce a barrier to entry, but I think I'm pretty much passed that barrier now.

Stylish, moody, and intense. It might have a little too much going on too quickly (underground city, psychic girl, Tenochtitlan cybernetics, etc), but as long as it doesn't go too much crazier in the next episode or two it should be okay. So far, so good.