Silent Mobius - 9: Tokyo Antique

Title:Silent Mobius
Episode:9: Tokyo Antique
Synopsis
Episode 09: Tokyo Antique / かつて愛した街角 = Katsute Ai Shita Machikado = A Street Corner that once was Subject to Love

Katsumi's appartment has been damaged. While she is in search for a new home, she tries to stay at different AMP member's location, which turns out to be troublesome.
Comments
MAJOR spoilers ahead - beware!
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At AMP office, Grospolina and Rally talk about the Tokyo of former times, when Rally was a child. Rally asks Grospolina to not yet tell the truth to Katsumi: "We still need her to fight on our side."

Katsumi returns to duty at AMP office. Grospolina, in his "passive form", soon becomes kind of a pet for the AMP girls.

It turns out that recent battles did heavy damage to Katsumi's home. Yet Katsumi decides to stay the night there. Before sleeping, she asks Grospolina about her father, but gets told he is not yet remembering all the details well enough.

Next day at AMP office, Yuki suggests to let Katsumi be guest at each member's place alternately until she has found a new home.

Katsumi's first try is at Yuki's home, where there seems to be Karaoke party everyday. She can stand that for a while, but finally ...

Next one is Kiddy, whose home looks more like a dust bin - not the environment that Katsumi actually likes. And what's more, a night next to Kiddy can be quite stressful ...

Lebia lives in a big high-tech appartment with swimming pool. But the automated home defense system turns out to be quite trigger happy unless you have read all the manuals thoroughly ...

Finally, its the Yamigumo house where Katsumi tries to stay. But while Nami is perfectly polite, Katsumi falls from one mess into the next one ...

Ralph Bowmers earns himself a free pot of coffee by telling Roy de Vice that Katsumi is in search of a home. This might be an opportunity ...

Now being without a home, Katsumi and Grospolina feel lonely. They decide to have a ride through the older parts of Tokyo, the ones that Grospolina helped to protect back then ... while Katsumi is asleep in her car, Grospolina asks Rally whether he may at least send her some dreams about her parents - he is touched by the strong connection between related humans. Rally is holding a picture in her hand, showing herself as a girl and a younger girl at her side ... Katsumi dreams how her parents met for the first time.

Roy orders a larger home for himself, just to find out that he is invited by Katsumi to her new home's initiation party.


Stretch:
This episode was great fun as Katsumi finds each of her comrades to be incompatible as a roomie for various reasons, always amusing. Grosspoliner's loyalty to her was touching and interesting, too. There's a neat new station break featuring him (it?). No L Hawks this time around; I still don't know what to make of them. As a whole, Silent Mobius is seeming less complex, less into far-out concepts like ESP, than I'd expected. But that's okay, since I enjoyed this episode a lot.

Devil Doll:
as you 'endured' episode 8 (introducing Grospoliner and Ganossa Maximilian), here comes your reward with episode 9, probably the funniest one of this show. (Which doesn't mean much, only that the second half of the series won't be funny at all...) And you now begin to see why "trust" is one of the main terms of this show, much like in The Lord of the Rings... more to come soon.

Stretch:
Maybe the reason the cast of Silent Mobius didn't immediately grab me had something to do with the need for a "suspension of disbelief". Powers which ought to be impossible would require a greater suspension than most concepts. Again, it's hard to put onto words, but I'm reluctant to accept just any claim of supernatural powers without some sort of strong "evidence" to back it up (i.e, a clever, "grabber" episode one).

Devil Doll:
I see, but the explanation may need to come only later in the show. If you need it right away you won't be able to enjoy any mystery show. How much of an explanation do you need? Is "I'm a Wizard" enough? Or do you need to understand the root of all Magic? Part of the AMP are wizards in this sense (you know this of Katsumi and Nami now), the other part is "technically enhanced" (you will learn the "procedures" for each of them soon enough, as you've already seen in the case of Kiddy). We're in a cyberpunk scenario (year 2024+, after the "Silent Crisis" shown in episode 1), so obviously there must have been some technical progress, and both the Simurgh spaceship and the Gravitron firearm are part of this, as are the Megadynes cyborgs. At the same time, we're in a fantasy scenario, and components like the Swordking Grospoliner or Katsumi's dagger are the result of this. (More such gimmicks to come, rest assured.)

For me the suspense of disbelieve depends on whether the story is internally consistent. If I accept what they offer in this aspect then I can "leave reality". Again, take The Lord of the Rings. I don't need to understand what exactly Gandalf is able to do, I'm okay with him being a Magician. I don't need to understand what exactly the mutants in Total Recall are able to do either. Why would I then need an explanation for the qualifications of a special squad fighting demons? It's obvious that normal people would simply be eaten by them, so there's a number of possibilities why "enhanced" policemen would exist (take Robocop, for example, who isn't that different from Kiddy). Understanding their exact abilities might spoil a few surprises later; it's more fun to observe their actions and guess their abilities and nature from these.

The critical element actually is the interaction between SciFi and Fantasy elements (i. e. Nami and Katsumi casting spells whose effect isn't that different from the AMP's HighTech stuff, and in one scene of episode 5 a weapon's effect is actually "explained" (well, not that it would make sense to people with our technical knowledge...). For me, this coexistence of Magic and Technology was much harder to accept (why can Kiddy shoot a bullet at a ghost?) than the fact that I don't know what the AMP is capable of, and where their abilities come from. (Actually the latter question will be answered for most characters, and you will then see why it wouldn't be a good idea to do so in episode 1 already. You're not far away from this point. I agree that this show would be easier to understand for you if a someone had explained a bit more right at the start, but... wait and see.)

Stretch:
And of course I'm principally a comedy viewer, the occult is definitely not my favorite topic (which is one reason why I took so long to watch this show, which I'd heard of long ago). Perhaps this makes no sense at all...

Devil Doll:
Actually, Silent Möbius isn't all that "occult" in the sense of not trying to be "realistic" in fantasy terms - no vampires, no blood, not really Japanese, low on violence and action for that kind of scenario. In this aspect Kyuuketsuki Miyu would be a bit more "occult", for example. And you watched Evangelion and gave it a "Rent", so it's not as if you'd be limited to comedies... while Silent Möbius can be confusing about what's going on it is easier to understand than Evangelion.


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