| Title: | Silent Mobius |
| Episode: | 14: Mobius Klein |
| Synopsis | |
| Episode 14: Möbius Klein / 序曲 = Jokyoku = Prelude | |
| Comments | |
| Devil Doll: Time for more answers... and time for more relatives of today's AMP members to appear. We've just seen Ganossa's version of the story, now let's hear what Rally has to say. It would be a good opportunity to rewatch episode 1 after you've seen episode 14, you might understand the first few minutes of it much better then. (Which is why I mentioned Lebia's grandfather, for example.) Stretch: I think I'm going to need to watch this one a second time. Katsumi is present before she should have been born? And since she asks "have you forgotten me?", it's implied that she has been around for some time. Gigelf was born with the power of demons? Is that the same thing as the power of Lucifer Hawks? And I should understand why AMP is all female now (but I don't). The comment that Nemesis was becoming "purified" while Earth was being "ravaged" implies that they are an evil and a good world, respectively. Plenty of new characters, including Luffa, Teres, and Vagrance appear. But the most memorable moment of the episode came for me when "Assembler", a character from another Kia Asamiya work, Compiler, made a brief cameo. I burst out laughing, louder than usually happens even during pure comedies. Devil Doll: Episode 14 "Prelude" serves a similar purpose as the two "Weaving a Story" episodes of Evangelion, just like the Silento Crisis serves a similar purpose as the Second Impact of NGE. This is the popular "Mad Scientists" scenario of many animes: The Magicians' Guild performed an experiment to "purify the world" (which is what they thought it would achieve), not unlike what SEELE tried by awakening the Angels (only that SEELE's motives were completely selfish whereas Gigelf was driven by despair about Gaia's condition), with Gaia = The Earth and Nemesis = The Underworld being a dualism of "worlds", i. e. layers of reality, that could become connected by "opening the gate" between them, using a combination of magic and technology, the latter being symbolized by the Cyclotron of Stephan L. Maverick. (Which is as much "explanation" as we get; it still remains a mystery whether or not Gigelf wanted the LH to enter Gaia; perhaps he knew it might happen and thus considered his own plan to be "insane".) And these layers are indeed related! Remember the start of episode 1 when Gigelf Liqueur tried to "close the gate", and triggered the "Silent Crisis" to happen (killing 90% of humankind in the process)? A person appeared in front of him, and Gigelf instantly understood: "Katsumi!" (Who wasn't even born at this time... then again, Gigelf appears to have been the greatest magician of his time, and if even Yuki Saiko can foresee the future...) Time is a very non-linear element in this story as you will see in more episodes to come (episode 16 being the most obvious one). And it's not exactly the strength of Silent Möbius to make the cause-and-effect-chain transparent... then again, plausibility of the background story isn't the strength in the SEELE/Angel parts of Evangelion either, it's the character relations that have to save the day in both shows. This flashback episode also makes clear how many AMP members are related by blood to the events of the Silent Crisis: 1. Katsumi Liqueur is the daughter of "project leader" Gigelf Liqueur, 2. Nami Yamigumo is the daughter of Razan Yamigumo who tried to stop Gigelf (but failed to do so because of Fuyuka's intervention), 3. Lebia Maverick is the granddaughter of Stephan L. Maverick, the scientist who ran the Cyclotrone and computerized Tokyo to become the automated city it is at the time of this series, 4. Rally Cheyenne is the daughter of people who must have been related to the events of the Projecto Gaia as well as she must have learned that Ganossa tried to "turn this world into a hell" (and one of them must have been a LH). Three more AMP members are more or less directly related to events of the Silent Crisis and the battles that took place back then, one of which you will learn about during the next episode (the two other ones will be explained only late in this series, and only with one short remark). Of all the AMP members, there is only one (Kiddy Phenyl, the former police special agent turned into a Megadyne) completely unrelated to the events of the Silent Crisis; most of the AMP members are there to make up for what their ancestors "did wrong" back then, or for other personal reasons. About there being a "good" and an "evil" world, actually it's not that simple. But part of explaining why this is so would still be a spoiler at this stage, and to make things even more complicated, there are parts of the explanation about this in the manga that didn't make it into the anime (see the "episode 27" review for this). In episode 14 Rally explains to Katsumi: "Fighting is always destructive, but one thing is for sure: We (females) have the ability to bring forth new life. Certainly your parents must have seen it the same way." The corresponding manga scene is at the end of manga volume 3 (of 12): Rally: "Fighting is a barren thing. It can only lead to more fighting. I think that women have the power to create life; an incredibly wonderful power. When this fight is over, I believe that all of you will create new life. The lives of people you love. The lives you pray for, the women who create them." Combine this with the already given hints about strong bonds amongst blood related humans and the (mysterious) appearance of Katsumi back in the days of the Silent Crisis, plus the large number of AMP members following in the footsteps of their previous family generations, all this together forms a theme of this series: "You carry the responsibility for what your family/ancestors did." (Remember how Lufa apologized to Fuyuka "in the name of the Yamigumo family" after Razan attacked Gigelf with his sword at the airport, even though Lufa herself is no Yamigumo.) And female humans (being the ones to "connect the generations" by giving birth) may be even more responsible in this respect. Rally doesn't express this more clearly, perhaps because she's afraid she would crush Katsumi by explicitly putting this burden onto her small shoulders; this might be what Rally assumed Katsumi to "learn during the fight". And if there's anything worth fighting for, wouldn't it be the future of your children? This is my interpretation of this scene, and the anime won't become more explicit about it than here. But there are in fact two scenes much later in the series that will refer to this theme, and a third and fourth one causing a surprising twist in the final manga chapter much of which didn't make it into the anime. (See the "episode 27" review about additional manga content, but only after you finished the anime as this entry one is FULL of spoilers at this stage). Lots of things aren't explained in full detail in Silent Möbius. Some of them can be derived by putting the details together, others will forever remain a mystery. (Much like in Evangelion.) | |
