Texhnolyze ep.8-10

January 14, 2005 | 7 Comments

Well, here I am with a recap of Texhnolyze instead of doing a brand new Winter series. I wish I can do otherwise but I do have a lot of older titles backlog which I must complete sooner or later and I already promised someone that I'll do at least 2 episodes of this series now. Upon watching the episodes, however, I realised that it'll be better if I cover ep.8-10 since these 3 episodes formed the final half of the Yoshii arc. With that in mind, here's the 3 episodes that everyone's been waiting for. :P Oh all right, so it may not be the most exciting series out there. In fact, watching the series feel like watching a group of people living their daily life in hell. But if you're interested to see a series that has a social commentary or two, then this maybe what you're looking for. If that's not enough reason, there's always Yoshitoshi Abe's awesome character design to see.

Rogue 08: Crucible

Previously on Texhnolyze: Luchs is a decaying underground city where its inhabitants suffer from poverty, as well as violence from various organised crime syndicates. The situation becomes worse when a mysterious man called Yoshii, intentionally creates conflict between the 3 major crime syndicates in the city: Organ, Alliance, and Lakan. Because of Yoshii's machination, Organ members blew up Alliance's headquarters sky high to revenge the death of a comrade they thought got killed by an Alliance member. Continuing from this story, episode 8 begins with Yoshii arriving at Lakan's HQ, asking if the explosion is the handywork of Lakan. Lakan's leader, Shinji, is annoyed by Yoshii's suggestion and replies that the explosion is Organ's responsibility. In other part of Lakan's headquarter, Ichise is seen looking bored after being cooped up inside the HQ so he decides to go out for a walk. Ran, of course, decides to tail him as usual.

Elsewhere in their own HQ, Organ's leaders are not happy with Onishi's inaction to Alliance supposed attack. In reverse, Alliance members swear revenge on Organ after the destruction of their headquarters. While these happen, the mastermind of this entire misunderstanding, Yoshii, is seen trying to make a conversation with Ichise and Ran. He, however, hits a wrong note with Ichise when he comments about Ichise's Texhnolyzed limbs. Unfortunately, Yoshii manages to evade Ichise's punch and goes on to leave the two teens after finding out Ichise's name from Ran. The next scene shows Onishi and his secretary, Michiko, meeting a group of people with a set of Texhnolyzed arms. The men started out smirking when they see Onishi but their expression turn into terror when Michiko starts to lock a door. At the same time, the crazy female doctor who gave Ichise a Texhnolyzed transplant is seen experimenting with 2 rats inside her lab.

Fast forward to the next day, a man wakes up inside Lakan's HQ only to realise that there is a time bomb located nearby. Before he can get away, however, the bomb blows the entire place to smithereens. Lakan's leader, Shinji, and some members, however, manage to evade the destruction and are now unhappy as well. Meanwhile inside Organ's HQ, other high-ranking Organ members are bad-mouthing Onishi, who is apparently on his way to settle things peacefully with Alliance member. Their talk, however, is interrupted when Onishi's secretary appears in the room with blood splattered across her face. It's then revealed that Onishi has brought the Texhnolyzed limbs of the men, who I assumed involved in the bombing of Alliance HQ, to the Alliance leader. The Alliance leader, however, tells Onishi that it's too late to for the two syndicates to make amends. To make things worse, Shinji and his Lakan members then arrive on the scene demanding payback.

Onishi tries his best to convince Alliance and Lakan mobs that they are being played like puppets by someone else. However, the mobs seem to be in no mood to talk. Then, as if there are not enough participants in the highly explosive scenario, Ichise and Ran also stumbled upon the confrontation. Meanwhile, the puppet master himself, Yoshii, hides himself inside an abandoned building with a sniper riffle. When Ichise's Texnolyzed stops working and causes him to become disoriented, Yoshii shoots one of the mobs, creating instant pandemonium amongst the other people in the street. The result is a bloodshed between all parties involved. Onishi, however, tries his best to not harm anyone who comes into contact with him, including Shinji who he knocked unconscious. Onishi then escapes inside a car driven by his secretary taking the now unconscious Ichise with him. The episode ends with Ran showing up in front of Yoshii's train conductor friend, Tatsuya Sakimura.

Rogue 09: Wiggle

Episode 9 begins with Lakan members failing to chase Onishi's car with their motorbike. Yoshii, however, has another idea and tries to shoot Onishi using a sniper rifle. Thankfully, Onishi's 6th sense, if one may call it that, warns him of the attack and therefore Onishi manages to evade the bullet. In the end, Yoshii fails to kill Onishi and looks very disappointed with the result. Meanwhile, in another part of the city, a mysterious figure is seen giving a coin to a beggar. Upon receiving the coin, the beggar drops something into a sewer underneath the big Obelisk in the city, causing a black haze to surround the Obelisk. The episode then cuts to a scene where Organ's high-ranking members receive a phone call informing them that there was an accident at their mining facility. Upon hearing this, one of Organ's high ranking members, Mizuno, is very eager to blame the recent string of problems on Onishi. So he nominates himself to personally take care of 'the problem'.

Another member, however, seems to disagree with Mizuno and decides to secretly contact a young man called Touyama. Meanwhile, Onishi is seen recuperating at his secretary's house but then decides to go back to his office after asking her to take care of the still unconscious Ichise. Unknown to Onishi, however, Mizuno has taken over his office and kill all of his underlings. Thankfully for Onishi, while on his way to the office, Touyama appears and warns him not to return to the office. Touyama also informs Onishi that the people from above are coming and that the council has decided to put the blame on Onishi thanks to Mizuno's goating. Once Touyama left, Onishi decides to make a phone call back to his house to warn his wife, Mana. Unfortunately, psycho Yoshii is already there and tells Onishi that he's not happy that Onishi is not willing to play his game. He tells Onishi that he wants his 'feasts' or else his wife is going to die.

Upon hearing this, Mana tries to stab Yoshii with a scissors. But unfortunately, she fails to do so and ends up getting kicked into a glassy wall. Four of Onishi's bodyguards then arrive and try to shoot Yoshii. The psycho, however, manages to kill them as well. Fast forward a couple of hours later, Onishi returns home only to find dead bodies of the bodyguards as well as his wife. He then receives a phone call from Touyama informing him that the source of the problem is a visitor of Lakan. Meanwhile, Yoshii is seen forcing his old friend, Sakimura, as well as Ran to come with him. Sakimura asks Yoshii to stop his insane plan but Yoshii refuses and instead tells his friend that soon people from the top will join in the 'feasts'. Yoshii then reveals that the reason he's been doing this is to 'empower' the people of Luchs so they'll believe in their own strength. In other words, he's a psycho. The episode then ends with the arrival of a white-robed man from the upper world.

Rogue 10: Conclusion

This episode begins with Yoshii, Sakimura, and Ran sitting inside a train. Yoshii still rambles about how his plan is to show young people, like Ran and the one they're about to meet, to see the truth. Understandably, Sakimura is not convinced one bit. Meanwhile, Mizuno's men barges into the bar where Onishi is hiding and demands to see Onishi. The owner, however, pretends that he hasn't seen Onishi so the men proceed to leave the place. Once they left, Onishi appears and says some parting words to the bar owner. Back at Onishi's office, Mizuno is informed by his henchman that they can't find Onishi anywhere so Mizuno decides to cancel the attempt to find Onishi. The absence of Onishi from Organ, however, immediately creates friction and power struggle amongst the remaining Organ leaders. Soon Mizuno joins power with Tsujinaka and Ikazaki to take over Lakan's area while secretly plans to eliminate the demise of his colleagues at the same time.

Kohagura and Sonada, on the other hand, plan to avoid any battle and decide to appear when the other groups are weak. Meanwhile, Lakan members are not happy that Organ's mobs begin to hang around their turf. When Shinji is informed by his underlings that they don't have enough men to take care of Organ's mobs, Yoshii appears and suggests that they use the presence of the upper world people who are visiting Luchs at the moment. He then asks Shinji to follow him to a place. At the same time, Onishi is seen torturing Lakan's henchmen to find out the whereabouts of Yoshii. He is soon joined by his secretary and Ichise and they decide to leave the place after realising that Yoshii is not in the place anymore. Elsewhere in the city, the Organ's elder, Goto, is in the middle of preparing himself to meet the visitor from the upper world. During the conversation with his right hand man, Goto reveals his preference for Kaego to succeed Organ instead of the greedy Mizuno.

Meanwhile Yoshii has taken Shinji to an abandoned building to spy on the meeting that happens between Goto and the visitor from the upper world known as 'The Class'. He then reveals to Shinji that Class, the heavenly people that Luchs inhabitants seem to revere are actually just a bunch of sick and weak people. Once he finished explaining, Yoshii starts to shoot Goto bodyguards and then try to maim the visitor himself. Shinji is shocked upon seeing this but Yoshii orders him to simply watch and be quiet. Yoshii claims that he tries to eliminate people who are keeping Shinji away from his real strength. Upon hearing this, Shinji points his gun at Yoshii and tells him that he knows now that Yoshii is the one behind the recent syndicate fights. Yoshii tries to reason with him that the reason he does it is to create a true leader in Luchs and he wants Shinji to be a candidate for it. Meanwhile, the visitor reprimends Goto for Organ's inability to control the town.

He warns Goto that if Lafia flowers are lost, Luchs in itself will lose its worth as a city along with Organ's existence. Goto tries to reason that the mining incident is only minor but before he can finish his sentence, Onishi appears inside the room and manages to protect the visitor from Yoshii's attempt to shoot the guy. Unhappy with the interference, Yoshii decides to come to the building himself and finish Onishi off. However, while he manages to injure Onishi, he fails to kill the guy because Ichise appears on the scene and tells Yoshii to beat it. Yoshii sneers as usual and then tries to shoot Ichise. But for the first time ever, Ichise manages to punch his assailant first, knocking Yoshii off the balcony and plummetting the psycho down to his well-deserved death. Upon seeing Yoshii's dying body, Ran makes a comment how things never change, suggesting that this is what she saw in her vision of Yoshii's future in episode 3. The episode ends with Sakimura granting a mercy death to Yoshii by shooting the bastard in the head.

Impression:

The first thing that came into my mind after watching these 3 episodes was that Yoshii's death isn't painful enough. Yes, I really loathe his character. To some extent, his fascination to mess with human lives is similar to Johan's (of Monster). Johan, however, has no pretense that he's doing it for the good of anyone. He simply hates human beings and knows that when push comes to shove, humans are capable of commiting some of the most horrendous acts on each other. Yoshii, on the other hand, is a delusional man who believes that his machination helps the citizen of Luchs to find a true leader within themselves. In the end, the combination of his psychotic behaviour and delusion feels too overwhelming to take anymore. Wisely the series doesn't dwell on this character and quickly finished him off. The series also made me question if my anger management is any better than the characters who got baited so easily by Yoshii's machination. After all, the main reactions that I had after watching these episodes were that of anger and contempt towards a fictional character.

© memento 2003