The beginning of the end of the world.
A lot about the Robotics;Notes universe was revealed this episode. Apparently the sun is going to explode pretty soon, but before that, there will be a series of solar flares that will have adverse effects on the Earth (on climate and in extension life). In fact, some of those solar flares have already come to pass before the present events of Robotics;Notes. What’s interesting however, is that none of the years mentioned for the solar flare predictions include 2010. That’s when the SS Anemone incident occurred, afflicting Aki and Kai with the mysterious Elephant-Mouse Syndrome. In all depictions of the event, there was an aurora very obviously present in the sky. I’m fairly certain that auroras aren’t typically seen in Japan, and there’s also Junna’s statement that the aurora over Japan has only been present since 2012 (the year of the first predicted solar flare). Did the author of the report merely miss one prediction? Or are auroras actually commonplace in the Japan of the Robotics;Notes universe, just not permanently? I like to think that there’s something to this visually prominent detail, and that it wasn’t just some oversight or inconsistency.
In any case, we are also formally introduced to the “ghost girl” Airi this episode. Turns out she’s some sort of AI (or an app, as Kai put it) that has a major crush on Kai. Ok, I jest. But the fact that she’s been trying to contact him for over 8 years now suggests that she’s interested in Kai for one reason or another. There’s also a more seemingly serious “side” to her known as “Sister Centipede”, which claims that Kai was chosen as the “prime contact candidate”. This kind of takes any romanticism away from Airi’s attempts to contact him, but also seems to imply that there is some urgent need for the AI to establish human contact. Was it just to spread word of the report on the solar flares and the impending explosion of the sun? It does make sense that she is some safety precaution the author of the report created to ensure that word would get out in case he was silenced. However, the effectiveness of this strategy seems a little dubious to me. Would it not have been easier to just publish the report? Sure, NASA might attempt to censor or downplay it, but how is secretly revealing the report to a high school student any better than just telling everyone?
And what does this make the mysterious “agency” that is monitoring Kai? The only “members” we’ve seen so far are Misaki and that mysterious guy who appears to be in charge. There’s no doubt that Kai’s condition is closely related to the solar flares in some way, but the agency has done nothing so far but observe him. And why is it that they aren’t observing Aki as well? Could Misaki have pulled some strings to keep Aki uninvolved? But then I would have thought she’d have done the same for Kai, as we’ve seen that he is pretty close to the Senomiya family. Or perhaps they’re also watching Aki, and we just haven’t seen evidence of that yet? Whatever the case, the motives of the agency are still unknown. Are they monitoring people with Elephant-Syndrome because it could be connected to the solar phenomena? The way Kai talked about the syndrome made it sound like common knowledge though. Granted, he suffers from it himself. And what kind of role does Mizuka play in all this? It’s apparent that she knew the author of the report. In fact, I would say that she was very close to him, judging from her reaction to his name. The mysteries just keep building up!
Robotics;Notes is doing a really good job at grabbing my attention. I really can’t wait to watch the next episode to find out more about just what’s going on.
The next episode needs to come out sooner!
The Screenshots
Sushi GoKart 