Texhnolyze S1E4: “Synapse” (continued)

The Doc sits on the edge of Ichise's cot, idly petting the shoulder of her conscious but fully paralyzed and anesthetized rape victim while the machines do their work. Considering the circumstances that led to him losing that arm and leg, I don't even know if I can imagine how nightmarish this must be for Ichise. Totally paralyzed, on his back, eyes open, while a woman who just raped him is free to do anything without consequences and has given only her word that she won't spear his eyes on her fingernails on a lark.

Cut to Yoshii. He's apparently left the Salvation Union compound's neighborhood, and is now sitting at a table near the food stalls in an open air market. He pores over his notebooks, writing something in one of them and consulting the others. Ah, turns out it's a journal he's writing in. Either for his own sake, or (more likely) to turn over to whoever sent him down here from the surface world.

He notes that the locals' have a degraded "bodily self-repair" ability, which the ruling Organo gang has taken advantage of by removing limbs to make examples of people. The way he phrases it makes it seem like up on the surface, limb regeneration is an easy everyday thing that no one thinks twice about. This supports my earlier inference that Lukuss' downfall was caused by either better raffia deposits being found elsewhere, or medical technology improving to the point of making it obsolete.

He also says that here in Lukuss, the people who shut themselves out of the real world to instead create one of their own on "the hill," a people known only as "the class," are all but nonexistent. Which means that the Organo has tyrannical control over almost everyone down here.

...

Well huh. This might be a mistranslation, since some of the wording is pretty awkward, but if not then it's sounding a lot like we're in an impoverished backwater corner of what is otherwise a post-singularity future. Most of the world has people existing entirely in virtual space, with the meatspace bodies they sometimes occupy being easily repairable and modifiable due to hyperadvanced medical tech. Lukuss, once a city on the cutting edge of transhuman research and technological advancement, is now one of the third world shitholes left behind by the new age and taken over by this future's equivalent of tribal guerillas with half century old AK-47's.

If I'm not badly misreading things, this is a type of scifi I've actually been curious about for a long time, and have even had story ideas along the lines of. What happens when fully automated luxury gay space communism comes along, but not everyone is able to access it even long after the fact? What kind of world do those "left behind" by the next singularity live in?

Come to think of it, the surface world being a lesbian nipple missile wonderland isn't too surprising from the mind behind "Serial Experiments Lain." It's a world playing with some of the same concepts, but from a completely different angle. And, at least so far, with a much more coherent execution.

...

As Yoshii writes, a couple of randos sneak up behind him and start eyeing the metallic gleam of the pistol inside the backpack on the bench next to him hungrily.

I doubt this is going to go very well for them. Yoshii is very good at making himself seem harmless and helpless, but as we saw in the pilot he's an experienced killer.

Cut back to the lab. Ichise might be anesthetized, but he's clearly feeling *something* as the cybernetics are installed, because his pupils are dilating in response to the surgical machines' activities. A cut later, and we see an array of micro-sutures stabbing away at his brain, which is open and exposed. Jesus fuck, she didn't put him under for this? I guess it's possible that you just can't, but...holy fuck. Meanwhile, a kelplike forest of tubes and wires writhe as they feed something into the t3eadsfdge arm and leg themselves. Probably a something that includes the hypertrophic cellular remains of his mother.

Back out in the market, Yoshii is having...well, still a better day than Ichise's, but that's a low bar to clear. Instead of picking a fight that they probably wouldn't win, those couple of thieves elected to just grab the backpack with the gun in it and run. Yoshii might be a dangerous combatant, but he isn't any faster than you'd expect an able bodied man to be, and these two know the streets well enough to give them an advantage.

I guess that's probably the more realistic outcome of what we saw happening, heh. Less trope-y, but more realistic.

Yoshii chases them, and manages to keep up for a while, but their home turf advantage lets them elude him long enough to tire him out. Things are not looking good for his mission, assuming he had other important stuff in that bag as well. Which...well, we know he has canned food in there along with the firearm, so that's kind of important, yeah.

Cut back to Boss Onishi, who has just gotten out of his meeting with the Union preacher. He's staring off into the pale white artificial sunlight of Lukuss, looking unsatisfied. I guess that meeting didn't go too well. After a while, he gets into his car. The chauffeur starts to put her hands on the wheel, but then he stops her, leans in, and stares at her kinda creepily right in her face.

Is that driver the same lady who extorted and then maimed Ichise? I don't think so. Similar hair though.

Anyway, they kiss, and she seems to go along with that willingly, but the look she's giving him in the shot above when he first initiates this makes it seem like she really might not have a choice.

Speaking of rape, back in Doc's lab the Doc is looming over the paralyzed-but-conscious Ichise like this:

After a moment, she straightens up, grins malevolent, and takes a sip from her measuring cup. Whether its blood, cranberry juice, wine, or whatever, it definitely resembles the first option as a drop of it dripples out of her grinning mouth and down toward her chin. She's either metaphorically eating and drinking him alive, or doing it literally, but in either case the visuals are pretty heavyhanded.

Then a bird's eye shot of Yoshii chasing the thieves through the alleyways. With his baggy brown jacket against the shabby background, he almost looks like a cockroach scuttling desperately through the dirt from this angle.

Three short clips, back to back, all rubbing in the pain, horror, and hopelessness of life under a kleptocracy.

Yoshii finally runs out of breath and is forced to stop, letting the thieves get away with his pack and everything in it. By chance or design, Ran then catches up with him. She's holding her kitty mask at her side, and pulling her flower cart through the alley with her. She gives Yoshii a concerned expression from a distance, but then turns a corner and leaves without giving him a chance to notice her. Either she knows there's nothing she can do to help him, or she knows that there is and it involves going someplace else. Then, a moment later, the robbers come back and hold Yoshii at gunpoint with his own pistol.

I guess they weren't just opportunistic pickpockets. They want something from him in particular.

Although...wait. No. What?

The one holding Yoshii at gunpoint tells him to "just give it up already." Even though they'd already escaped with his stuff, and he didn't appear to have any means of tracking them. If they already got what they want, why are they engaging with him again?

Yoshii asks them to please give him his bag back. They can keep the gun, but please give him back the rest of what's in the bag. The two start getting suspicious, and ask him what kind of position he thinks he's in to be making demands. I...want to know why any of the three are in their current positions, if the bag and its contents were really all they wanted in the first place. They haven't demanded anything else from him, or asked if he has more valuables in his pockets, or anything like that. This scene is not making much sense to me.

The two start arguing with each other over what they should be doing next. Um...okay? They take their attention away from Yoshii for a split second, which is all he needs to backhand the gun away from his head and then bring the guy holding it down with a sucker punch to the face. The other guy tries to tackle him, but Yoshii effortlessly flings him away. In the altercation, one of Yoshii's sleeves gets torn, revealing the gleaming metal underneath.

So he's also a cyborg. Possibly a more advanced version of the texfgwskl technology, going by what he implied about the surface world he descended from.

Seeing that he's a cyborg, the two robbers make a frenzied, hateful assault on him with their bare hands, even though he's already knocked them both down at least once. Salvation Union sympathies making them hate cyborgs? Probably. Just as he's about to reluctantly mash them into paste, two more men round the corner, and one of them orders the robbers to stop before they embarrass him any further.

Is this new gang leader one of the men who bullied Ichise in the market back in episode two or whatever it was? I think he might be, but I'm not sure.

Yoshii asks the man - named by his defeated underlings as Shinji - if he is the leader of the Rakan. Huh, I'm pretty sure that's a new name. Another minor faction waiting in the wings for Organo to show weakness? Possibly. I guess Yoshii has either been looking for Shinji, or just knows him by description. Anyway, Shinji says that yes, he is, and apologizes for the conduct of his henchmen; whether he's actually sorry that they did this, or just sorry that they failed and got themselves beat up, is of course open to interpretation. Yoshii tells him that he just wants to walk away with his belongings intact and in his possession. Shinji is about to reply to that, but then appears to notice or recognize something about Yoshii.

Seeing that recognition, Yoshii coyly smiles. Creepy music starts playing.

Without any more words wasted, Shinji invites Yoshii to follow him and his men, and they lead him down into a basement/bomb shelter type place where other Rakan members - including women and children - are living. Looks like Shinji is about to introduce everyone, and probably discuss an alliance or exchange of favors with whoever Yoshii is here on behalf of.

Cut back to Doc's lab, night. The lights are off, and she's having a quiet phone conversation with Onishi. From the sound of things, she's using this experimental new human tissue-based t12ewwsrasdtg interface on Ichise basically as a test run. If it works well in Ichise's case, she plans to upgrade Onishi's own cybernetics with that same technology.

That explains why he's letting her spend her time and resources on this, even if he isn't thrilled about her choice of guinea pigs. For her own part, I get the impression that Doc is planning to betray Onishi at some point down the line, but I couldn't yet say how or to what ends.

Anyway, as she finishes the conversation, Ichise pulls himself off the cot. She apparently didn't expect him to be mobile yet, and she still hasn't learned her lesson about keeping him strapped down (though I suppose with the souped-up limbs she gave him it might not be that simple to restrain him anymore). He tries to sneak up behind her for a knockout blow, but he's unused to his new synthetic limbs, making him slow and noisy enough for her to hear him and land the first punch herself, knocking him down due to his lack of balance.

She asks him how the hell he's up so quickly. As if he's supposed to be able to answer that, lol.

If the anaesthetic dosage was wrong, then that's not on him, Doc. That's on you.

He starts banging his metal fist on the ground, screaming over and over again that it's not his arm. Physical feedback might be working fine, but he's clearly having something dysphoria-adjacent about it that the neural cybernetics can't counteract. She gives him a bullshit speech about how his will to live is so impressive and she's just giving him what he wants and needs and yadda yadda, and also bitches at him about denting his new hand already. He just keeps crying and thrashing, as is reasonable given everything that's happened to him over the last few days.

Meanwhile, Ran has gotten back on the train to her grandfather's outlying village. As she sits, the compartment around her suddenly goes black, and she sees a vision of Ichise - fully dressed to cover his cybernetics, with which he is now walking confidently and smoothly - striding past her. I guess this is her prophesizing that he'll be important.

I guess she also foresaw that Yoshii was most likely going to get a good outcome from his alley chase, which is why she left him to it.

End episode.


That was sure something. Depressing and demanding, but still worth the effort. I'm starting to suspect this localization though, so I might double check with the dub after reviewing subsequent episodes to make sure nothing is being lost.

Anyway, I'm on board with Tempura. The show had a slow start, but it's gotten me hooked.