| Title: | Silent Mobius |
| Episode: | 26: Tomorrow |
| Synopsis | |
| Episode 26: TOMORROW / 希望 = Kibou = Hope, covering the second
half of manga volume 11 and some scenes from volume 12, both
of which were released only after the TV airing of the anime. Katsumi is horrified by what she finds after breaking out of Medium's control. At a press conference, the government comes clean about the existence of Lucifer Hawks and AMP. The AMP crew takes stock and vows to continue onwards to total victory over the Hawks. | |
| Comments | |
| Beware of spoilers! Stretch: Basically, everything works out the best way it possibly could for everybody. The climate of angst and turmoil is discarded, as if everyone has woken up from a bad dream. At the end of the last episode, it seemed that the AMP team had been annihilated altogether, but here we see that they hardly got a scratch. Apparently Yuki teleported everybody to safety at the last moment, using an ability which I had no idea existed. Also, Avalanche Wong seems to have been watching from a distance, and intervened to save those who couldn't save themselves. The overall effect is to tell me that since the characters have the unlimited luck or magic to solve any problem, the AMP team was never really in danger to begin with. We were told that the only way Katsumi could break out of her possession was if Medium killed somebody dear to her; we weren't told that that person could be resurrected immediately afterwards. I can't help thinking that I tried to make sense of the convoluted plot for 25 episodes, and then the makers themselves didn't bother to do so for the conclusion. And what's more, this was all nothing but a prelude to "the final battle"? It's almost like we didn't really get an ending at all. Devil Doll: Silent Möbius is an excellent example of what can happen when a TV series has to be aired even though the manga isn't finished: While writing the story (and forming a comprehensive story arc out of the many separate episodes of the early manga chapters) the creator obviously ran out of time, and a final movie could have done the trick, much like End of Evangelion did it for NGE. This movie would be the one anime that I wished to be made more than any other if I had the choice; then again, it would be necessary to rewrite the final episode for this (much like the two existing movies rewrite the beginning of the series). But apparently the commercial success of Silent Möbius in Japan wasn't sufficient for this kind of release, or for another one or two DVD episodes. So the episode 27 review has to do what little can be done to provide the content of that ending, as given by the manga releases from 1998/1999. Silent Möbius and Evangelion were the first two animes I've ever seen, and working my way through all the problems of getting answers for those many crucial questions in these two series has made me the anime fan I am: Willing to invest any amount of time for a story that's worth it. (One may say I got there the hard way.) Lord of the Rings, anyone? After sacrificing his life for the Fellowship, Gandalf is resurrected there as well - would you say that Frodo and his companions were "never in danger" because of this? And Kiddy's death was much better prepared than Gandalf's (see below). "Hope" (the name of the final episode) is a core theme in both works: Regardless how hopeless the situation appears, the heroes fight to protect the weak. And in the end, the good gals win, as in so many fairy tales. (It's not like Ganossa could defeat Katsumi now after having lost all of his powerful subordinates - the Black King is alone on the chessboard now, and Kiddy promoted Katsumi into another White Queen). Compared to many other animes, their battle has a meaning (and Silent Möbius is a rather Hollywood kind of show in this aspect, mostly because of strong American influences on the manga author and anime director, Asamiya Kia). And it would have had a lot more meaning if they had let Kiddy die! The relation between her and Katsumi, from rejecting the newcomer at first until getting close to her during the course of events (with Roy and Ralph becoming catalysts for this), then mistrusting her at the party, then apologizing for this, only to learn that she had been on the right track just one episode later, and then making her fateful decision - this is the leitmotif of the series, and the reason why I love it for its character development: Who would expect this revengeful Megadyne to turn into that deep a character? Kiddy's scenes in episode 24, her first attempt of peaceful family life together with Ralph, prepared us for the disaster that this couple might befall - that's why I chose it as the first image for episode 24 (and delayed showing it to Stretch until he watched episode 25). I truly hate her resurrection, as it's so unnecessarily destroying the importance of her choice. Roy as the main victim of this show had a decent role, and his death served as a main turning point in the story; Kiddy's sacrifice seems to have turned into a non-event. If Kiddy had indeed paid the highest price, how would Katsumi be able to face Ralph ever again? What a great opportunity has been missed here. And yet, the development of her character was completed at the end of episode 25, and for me she remains the hero of this show, the one who managed to break Ma-ken Medium's spell and set things right. Someone had to do it, and it obviously wasn't going to be Katsumi. Mana would have been one candidate for it (having been a prisoner of Ma-ken Medium before and having killed her beloved fiancé Genvara Cheng because of it), and Lum Cheng another one (being the one AMP member to know Ma-ken Medium's secret as it was her grandfather who sealed this sword back then - this is what her "I have to do it" meant when we saw her make her lonesome decision in episode 24, and in the manga it was her who let Bratieze into the AMP building by a stupid mistake - in the anime Nami plays this role and attempts to pay the price for it). At this point it would have been interesting to bet on who would become the one to free Katsumi. Still, Kiddy (who learned about Ma-ken Medium's secret by a mere coincidence when her foot touched a switch in the Simurgh on the AMP's way back from the Cyclotrone incident, allowing her to overhear the conversation between Rally and Mana) was the "right one" to do it in this show. But it seems the author wasn't willing to show the audience both of the loving couples of this show getting ripped apart by this battle... Note that it was Love who won the war, as Ganossa told us early in this story. Had the AMP members not been able to make Katsumi remember how strong the bonds between these friends had been before their separation, then Katsumi/Medium would not have hesitated, giving Kiddy the chance to attack her and get killed by Medium. And Ganossa (watching from above and being fully aware of the F Mission, we saw him use Rally's computer from his remote place in episode 24) saw it coming, he knew that his control over Katsumi was about to be broken. Thus he made the AMP central computer's clock run faster so that the strike of Lebia's satellite would finish what "his" Katsumi had not achieved. Unfortunately for him, there was another character with clairvoyance as her primary attribute... Yuki knew as much about the F Mission as Ganossa did in that crucial moment. As for Yuki's abilities, let's go back to episode 10 and Annie's attacks. One of these were an explosive mechanism which Annie teleported out of the room to "protect" herself and Yuki. Do you remember Yuki's comment on this? "That was Hiroko's primary skill..." - right. How did the Tajima project work? "Factors", i. e. ESP abilities, were transferred from one character to another, in order to form one person, the "perfect human weapon", who would combine all those abilities (and Dr. Tajima had selected Yuki to be that final result, as Annie told us). So when Annie killed Hiroko she inherited Hiroko's abilities... thus, when Yuki defeated Annie and left her a broken wreck in the hospital, all of Annie's abilities (including Hiroko's ability to teleport) became abilities of Yuki (and the audience saw how Yuki used Annies ability to fight against the Lucifer Hawk in episode 16!). Which means that in the end the YLEM project led to the creation of an AMP member who possessed the necessary skill to save the whole AMP team! Just what Tooru had wanted to achieve: Something that allows humankind to be able to fight the LH. Tooru didn't achieve happiness but he will be satisfied with the result nonetheless: Without him getting involved the AMP (excluding Rally) would have been eliminated by the F Mission strike. (Answering one of the open questions of episode 25). Ah, Rally. I would also have preferred her to die in this story, mostly because she hid the truth from the other AMP members for so long, and she should pay a price for it. Avalanche Wong appearing there in the nick of time appeared way too convenient; I would have loved Silent Möbius to become the ↗Seven Samurai of anime. Still, Rally's story was completed as well: Her love for Rosa prevailed over Rosa's hate for the humans, and in the end Rosa returned that love and sacrificed her existence in Gaia (the goal of Rally's contract with Nemesis) in order to allow Rally to survive, thus their "battle for respect" has found a resolution without having a boring happy ending where the sisters would simply get reunited. Rally's main opponent was Rosa, not Ganossa; having Rally be killed and Rosa still not getting her identity would have been pointless. So Ganossa Maximilian remains as the last enigma of this show - and the episode 27 review to answer those questions. | |
