| Title: | Silent Mobius |
| Episode: | 4: Brake-in |
| Synopsis | |
| Episode 04: Break-In / ブレイク·イン = Bureiku-in = Brake-in Katsumi does a solo stunt during action, and pays the price for it. Yuki, the AMPs "good spirit", goes out to settle things and manages to keep the AMP members' friendship alive and firm. | |
| Comments | |
| Spoilers ahead - beware! - - - - - - - - - - Central police organization asks for personal history of all AMP members but Rally refuses to give information for the third time. AMP's position within Tokyo police remains difficult. AMP in action, hunting a LH2; Lebia is in command here but Katsumi thinks she can handle him alone and makes the whole plan fail. Rally and Mana are busy with the "brake-in" of their new and heavily armed aircraft, the "Simurgh" which they invest all their time in for now. Back in AMP office, Katsumi confesses the reason of her insubordination; the other girls now take her as arrogant and avoid her. Kiddy (who has always been the "first in line" until Katsumi arrived) is especially angry about Katsumi's solo stunt; Yuki is very unhappy about the situation. Lebia Maverick has developed a new gun prototype, the "Graviton" that can stun LHs, maybe even make them explode from the inside. The prototype gets too hot after one shot already and isn't easy to handle - only Kiddy with her super powers will be able to fire it for now. Katsumi is wandering the streets alone when she meets Yuki who invites her to her own little café (she has a part time job there). Yuki tells Katsumi she wants to be her friend, just as all the other AMP members are friends to her. Katsumi leaves, and then senses a LH2 nearby whom she starts to hunt. She is still in reach of Yukis ESPer senses, and Yuki follows her immediately. When Katsumi confronts the LH2, Yuki uses her cell phone to call the AMP to the scene. The LH2 evades and lures Katsumi into a trap where lots of lower LH3 attack her. She can stand them off; when the LH2 strikes again, AMPs spinner arrives and Kiddy and Nami join the action. But this LH2 is very powerful, damages Lebias spinner, and knocks down Kiddy, Nami and even Katsumi. Just when he wonders whom to take out first, the Simurgh arrives - Rally and Mana open fire ... AMP hat got a new office building for their "department 00"; Yuki serves coffee for everyone as usual, now including Katsumi again. And the coffee tastes so well "because we are all drinking it together". Devil Doll: the relation between Kiddy and Katsumi will be crucial for the whole series, in more ways than you can imagine right now. This team interaction is what I love about the series - and there will be more of it. You've now seen what you need to in order to decide whether to continue or not, and you now know why I said this isn't an Action series but a Character Development series. This isn't GitS SAC, and part of this is based on the fact that all AMP members are women. Stretch: What I didn't get was why Kiddy got so pissed off at Katsumi just because she said she had thought she could kill a LH by herself. It's not like she said "...because I consider myself superior to all of you fellow AMP personel". It wasn't made clear that her training had strongly emphasized the importance of teamwork. Devil Doll: During the first battles it might already have become obvious that each AMP member is a specialist: Yuki and Lebia have their strength in the tactical support department, Kiddy (offensive) and Nami (defensive) are the battle specialists. Neither Rally nor Mana will be seen in tactical maneuvers unless it's absolutely necessary. The AMP work as a team because they have very individual skills (to be explored in depth during the feature episodes for each member, Kiddy will be the first one in episode 6); none of them would survive very long if they were on their own. You've also seen how Yuki "glues the team together", she's essential for the good mood of the AMP. Silent Möbius isn't the scenario for solo heroes. Katsumi has incredible offensive magic that Kiddy is envious about (this aspect is emphasized even more in the movies where Katsumi refuses to join the AMP for quite a while and is a much less likable character), and now that Katsumi starts doing "solo shows" Kiddy feels she's losing her position as the "power house" within the AMP, thus bringing additional tension into the team. Later in the show there will be one more new AMP member causing similar problems...) Consequently, the new Gravitron will boost Kiddy's self-esteem now as only she can wield it. And it makes the AMP a bit less dependent on Katsumi... What's more, there are LHs of various categories and Katsumi's experience with the "big" ones is limited. Katsumi was tricked easily by a mere LH2 in episode 4, and the new Simurgh ship came just in time. Katsumi is quite something but she has to learn how to use her powers. She's not invincible. | |
