Episode 2
W-W-WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?! I wasn’t expecting a god damn jump scare, but that’s the moment President Hebinuma Miyuki started because touchy with her face and then we saw him sport out his freakish snake tongue I’m like: WHOA WHOA WHOA RUN GIRL RUN!!! Thank god Kujirai got the fuck out, but good lord, what in the world is going on?!?!!?
This was yet another super trippy episode so let’s start with Kudo, because as soon as we got his perspective, it absolutely blew my mind.
So everything Kudo said to her, and all the places he had taken to her last week, were all things Kujirai B had said to him. It seems he was repeating these things in hopes that it would jog her memory, but as the episode progressed we started seeing discrepancies between Kujirai and Kujirai B. For instance, she, Kudo made a point that Kujirai doesn’t have her ears pierced. Now that’s a major clue because piercings don’t just disappear without a trace.
Next thing, which circles back to the crazy shit, when Kujirai goes for a consultation with the President of Hebinuma, there’s something intriguing about her file. He’s showing some freakish interest in her, for having wrinkles that consists ‘no memories’, as it appears her wrinkles existed from the start. There’s no history to be had, and her claim about ‘missing memories’ is supposedly false because she had no memories in the first place. So what the hell is going on?
At this point, it does appear that Kujirai and Kujirai B are not really one and the same person, at least not in the way Kudo may have initially believed. Kujirai A ultimately decided that she’s going to let go of trying to fit the mould and replicate Kujirai B, and just embrace this new self she’s coming around to learn about.
And lastly, thre was one other bizarre instance that popped up this episode: Kudo found himself running into a 500 Internal Server page when he was trying to look up the Bartender’s info in the database.
Episode 3
AGAIN WITH THIS GUY! WHAT THE FRICK IS GOING ON!?
Not even five minutes into the episode, even less than that if you exclude the OP– AND WE HAVE THE FREAKING FREAK SHOW UP TO THE OFFICE AND TONGUES KUJIRAI?! I actually shouted: EW! EW! EW! When that happened, because that was so gross. Holy shit, what the hell is with this guy!? He described himself as a snake– which I tend to interpret quite literally since he literally has a snake tongue, freakish eyes and wears snake skin tie, shoes and handkerchief, and now we got to see he also has a full body snake tattoo!
And if that wasn’t crazy enough, we see the guy who Kujirai met earlier (who I’m going to refer to as “Masked-Gwen” until I know what the hell is going on, and what he calls himself), who has whatever form of relationship with Miyuki.
This Masked-Gwen guy mentioned that he went to check up on “his” former place of work where he had worked up until two weeks ago, and has been missing ever since. Right now, I’m suspecting the one who has gone missing the bartender Kujirai had met. The pretty much aligns to the information of the fact they’ve learned he had stopped working there. And while he and this Masked-Gwen guy share the same face, there is one major difference between them: Their hair length and hair style. The Goldish Teahouse bartender had his hair pulled back and in a short ponytail, where as Masked-Gwen has longer hair. Additionally, we saw he has a very different attitude towards Kujirai. Unlike the friendly bartender, he treated her with contempt.
Masked-Gwen had told her he’s aware of the relationship between Reiko (Kujirai B) and Kudo, but he doesn’t know who she, the one standing before him is. He also dropped the bombshell that the Reiko he knew no longer exists in this world, and feels like her memory is being trampled on seeing Kujirai, a stranger who’s basically a carbon copy of her, while obliviously living someone else’ life.
Well, at least that confirmed my speculation from last week. This isn’t a case of an amnesia, they are two entirely different ‘souls’, which might be the best way to put it for the time being.
And as if that wasn’t enough to ruin her day. Kudo has more or less officially rejected Kujirai. She had given him a sunflower, but was exposed by Xiaohei, who called out the flower meaning: I only have eyes for you. It especially sucked with the symbolism of seeing Kudo didn’t take care of the flower, and as result it wilted and had to be tossed out. But honestly, this is for the best because as it stands right now, Kudo’s longing for the ghost of Kujirai (B) Reiko, and they’ll never have a sustainable relationship if he’s unable to accept her as a different soul. Also doesn’t help that he doesn’t believe in her feelings for him, and even likened it to an illusion. But Kujirai doesn’t think that way. And it really sucks that she really has no real way to ground herself to present concrete proof (even to herself) that her feelings are truly her own. The one thing she’s clinging onto is the sole sense of longing and desire that she earnestly believes to be genuinely from her own heart.
That said, poor Kujirai, while she was able to get some answers, now she has even more questions and a worsening identity crisis. Interestingly we are starting to see what appears to be side-affects of the sort. Kujirai’s eye-sight been getting worse again, to the point she’d needs to wear the glasses– but she doesn’t want to because she’s trying to separate herself from the original Reiko. (Though maybe she needs to use those eyedrops again…) And the second thing that happened, she suddenly couldn’t breathe properly and ended up collapsing.
Apart from that, we are seeing Kudo investigating Gwen’s disappearance. After encountering the 500 Error, being unable to get into Gwen’s apartment, and now noticing there’s appears to be land adjustment int he area, he’s starting to get a sense there’s an abnormality going on in Kowloon. If that “Dead End” sign is an indicator for anything, it seems something is going on.
Another curious thing we learned was how the residents seem to not want to leave Kowloon. When Kujirai suggested options like living downtown Hong Kong outside of Kowloon, Xiaolan said he felt like she didn’t want to leave the place. So it’s curious how some of the residents feel completely tied to the place to prevent them from leaving.
So to sum up these past two episodes; I have no idea what’s going on, but I’m deeply intrigued! That said, I’m kinda 50/50 whether I want to continue the coverage, so I’ll see how I feel next week. But if I do decide to continue with it, I suspect I’ll likely be covering this in double-posts format.
