Plot: 009, 003, and 007 stumble upon a curious family of dogs who are super intelligent. They’re doing math in the park under the guidance of their human master. The cyborgs think nothing of it until they see the man and the two adult dogs being kidnapped. 007 manages to save the puppy, Kubikuro. Gilmore explains that, given the intelligence of the dogs, the man was most likely Professor Inuzuka – a figurehead in dog breeding research known for making dogs super smart.
Kubikuro takes a liking to Joe, and Joe takes him home, but that same night Kubikuro runs away seemingly to find his parents. However, he’s quickly also kidnapped by the mysterious men who took his parents and Professor Inuzuka. They intend on having Inuzuka do experiments on Kubikuro to make him even more intelligent, hateful, and give him pyrokinetic abilities. 009, 003, and 007 have to find Kubikuro and hopefully save him, his parents, and Inuzuka from these evil men before they get the weapon they desire.
Breakdown: So, cards on the table – I watched this episode at x2 speed. If you know me, you know why. Dog death, kiss my ass, I’m plowing through this as quickly as possible. This story is in the manga anyway, so it’s not like it’s affecting my reviewability too much. You can pretty much just copy/paste my rating from the manga version here.
Now, there are some differences between the two versions. First, for some reason, a chunk of this episode is dedicating to watching Francoise perform a ballet. This connects to nothing. It’s completely pointless except to remind us that she is, in fact, a ballerina. However, it did result in both Joe and Francoise yelling at Lil’ 007 (I refuse to call him Lil’ GB) so that was fun. Five stars.
On the way to the ballet, they find a man, named Professor Inuzuka, showing off his three dogs, two adults and their puppy, doing math. They answer any math question by picking up cards with numbers on them. Kubikuro is the puppy, and his parents are named Mr. and Mrs. Tomo. His parents and master never got names in the manga. They’re all very loving and caring toward each other.
After the ballet, Inuzuka and the parent dogs are kidnapped, but Lil’ 007 saves Kubikuro. So….he gets one good point. In the manga, the unnamed man and the two parent dogs were found dead in the street. Joe also notices that both of the parent dogs had scars on their heads, indicating that they were experimented on, which explains why they were so intelligent. He only realized Kubikuro was also experimented on later when he showed heightened intelligence.
They bring Kubikuro to Gilmore’s lab, and he explains that Inuzuka is a figurehead in dog breeding science, making them super intelligent.
Kubikuro doesn’t like Lil’ 007. Good doggy.
While they try to figure out how to find Inuzuka and Kubikuro’s parents, Joe takes him home to take care of him. He builds him an indoor dog house in like two minutes and gives him some food. That night, Kubikuro manages to escape, seemingly trying to locate his parents. In the manga, Joe and Kubikuro spent months together before Kubikuro ran away. And the reason he ran off was because they heard news of his parents’ murderers being apprehended by police.
Meanwhile, at the bad guys hideout, in another anime-exclusive scene, they try to force Inuzuka into doing more harmful experiments on the dogs. Inuzuka was tricked by generals in the last war to…I guess…make dog suicide bombers?! The flashback just shows a dog jumping on a rock and then exploding. The kidnappers, by the way, are from the government of the fictional country, Vetoria. They’re at war and they want modified dogs as weapons. This time, they want dogs who have pyrokinetic powers, which…is definitely better than being suicide bombers, but eugh. Also, they never explain how Kubikuro got pyrokinetic powers in the manga. He just, somehow, turned his intelligence into a “pyrokinetic rage.”
Inuzuka refuses. He’d rather die than do that again. Besides, he says, the dogs he has with him are too old for the surgeries involved in doing what they’re asking. And it’ll be two years before they can have puppies again. However, one of the men brings up that there was a puppy with him, but he got away. They head off to find it.
Coincidence of all coincidences, the men find Kubikuro in the road as he looks for his parents. They nab him up. Inuzuka, despite saying he’d rather die than do those experiments again and seemingly knows he won’t get out of this alive, does the harmful experiments on Kubikuro anyway.
Months go by. The cyborgs are at a standstill in finding Kubikuro until he’s finished most of his surgeries and has gained the pyrokinetic powers they wanted. They test out these powers in the woods, starting a forest fire. Eyewitness reports of a dog being at the scene tip the cyborgs off to Kubikuro’s whereabouts.
As 009, 003, and Lil’ 007 rush to their location, we see Inuzuka performing the final surgery which will give him “evil killing intentions.” I honestly can’t tell if he means intentions to kill evil or killing intentions that are, of course, evil. It should obviously be the former, but the last thing Inuzuka says here is he knows he’ll be killed as soon as this surgery is over and he hopes Kubikuro lives forever, fighting against the forces of evil for him as he blasts the fire of hatred from his eyes. So he wants him to be hateful….but also fight against the forces of evil….with evil killing intentions?
009, 003, and Lil’ 007 arrive at the hideout. They trigger an alarm as soon as they step foot on the premises. Despite not knowing who they’re dealing with or even looking at them, the men immediately book it out of there with Kubikuro and rig the place to explode. Before leaving, they tie up Inuzuka and muzzle Mr. and Mrs. Tomo (who are locked in cages).
The cyborgs try to get to them, but they simply don’t have time. Boy, sure is a shame no one has any acceleration powers….The place explodes, and Inuzuka, Mr. and Mrs. Tomo are found dead, thankfully offscreen, but god. That’s an even worse death than they had in the manga. Not to mention how horrible it must have been for Mr. and Mrs Tomo all this time watching their son get horrible surgery after horrible surgery, seeing him turn into a vicious weapon, and then not even get any time with him before they die.
003 spots the men trying to escape in a motorboat with Kubikuro, but luckily 009’s car can drive in the water….without transforming at all….Kay.
009 decides the best course of action to take here, when he knows Kubikuro is in the boat, is to ram the boat at max speed, completely destroying it. SOMEHOW, this sends the men flying off uninjured, and Kubikuro is just somehow on a piece of floating debris. *massive shrug*
009 brings the men to the police on murder charges, much to Kubikuro’s displeasure.
Some time after this, Kubikuro has gone missing again. Lil’ 007 finds him outside the police station waiting for the men who kidnapped and murdered his parents to come out. As they enter a police transport vehicle, Kubikuro uses his powers to set the entire truck on fire. Everyone inside is burned,
Later, Lil’ 007 reports on what he saw. Despite Joe not believing Kubikuro would do such a thing, he gets a phone call that immediately changes his mind. It’s seriously like five seconds between “Kubikuro would never do something like that.” and “Kubikuro did?!”
The phone call notifies Joe of a fire at the pound. Who’s calling him? No idea.
I guess the pound was set on fire to release all the dogs. 003 asks 009 why he’s at the pound, and 009 responds by saying he set the driver of the truck on fire too, not just the criminals. That didn’t answer her question, 009.
However, manga!009 does, kinda, have the answer. There, he says the enhanced intelligence has made him as smart as a human, but it’s also given him the vengeful cruelty of a human. It was implying that Kubikuro had no choice but to become this way because it’s human nature or something. Kubikuro was killing animal abusers and criminals after he got his revenge, but he was also acting confusing because he and his pack of followers also killed and ate some of the animals they saved. It was very strange.
The next attack is weird. The text on screen indicates that the “main culprit” in the Inuzuka murder is being transported for on-site investigation. Then Kubikuro sets the train that is supposedly transporting him on fire. What “main culprit”? All the people who were directly responsible were in that police transport vehicle earlier. Anyway, in a rather darkly comedic domino effect, the train derails, crashes into an oil truck, which then sends the oil truck careening into an oil refinery? All of these things either burn up or explode. I was half-expecting an ember from the flames at the oil refinery to fall into a dynamite factory next door.
Realizing he needs to stop Kubikuro now, Joe lays a trap for him. This is basically the same as the manga. We see a headline in the paper saying the men who killed Inuzuka are being released from the hospital today. No idea if the men actually did die in that truck fire from earlier. Joe just said they were all burned, but burns can be survivable. This is a trick, so it’s possible Joe is just lying here, but super smart seeming-follows-the-news Kubikuro would know if those guys were dead or not, right? In the manga, Joe was pretending this was a convoy for prison transport for Kubikuro’s parents’ killers.
The drivers of the truck are wearing fireproof suits to protect them. Kubikuro blocks the road and sets the truck on fire. The drivers jump out. Kubikuro leaps to the back to ensure the men inside get burned alive, but a man in a fireproof suit jumps out. He holds his hand up, but Kubikuro shoots more fire at him. The fireproof suit MELTS (!!) revealing Joe. He tries to reason with Kubikuro, saying he doesn’t want to have to kill him, but Kubikuro attacks again, leaving Joe no choice but to shoot him.
So, this shot I was thankful for having at x2 speed….the following I was not. Joe carries him to the church, asking why God would let something so horrible happen, but also requesting that He take Kubikuro to a better place filled with peace. A shot of Kubikuro as a puppy is overlaid on screen followed by him as an adult, and then the image shoots up into the sky as the camera pans up, and, given the speed, it make it look like God was beaming him up. I felt horrible for laughing at that.
So, yeah, my overall thoughts on this story are the same. But did the anime do anything better or worse? Well, the connection with Joe and Kubikuro isn’t nearly as strong. Joe should have been the one to save him from the criminals instead of Lil’ 007, and he only spent like six hours with Kubikuro before he was taken by the criminals.
The anime actually explained the origins of the pyrokinetic powers, which was nice. Giving the man and Kubikuro’s parents more time alive and even giving them names was welcome, even if Inuzuka does seem like he did all that to Kubikuro for no reason. The only reason I can think of is that he wanted one of them to live, and if he refused Kubikuro would just die alongside him and Mr. and Mrs. Tomo, but even then I think I’m making stuff up because he never says that’s the reason.
The stuff with Francoise’s ballet was pointless, but I’ll take a pointless detour over focusing on more sad animal stuff any day. Plus, like I said, they yelled at Lil’ 007 for being an idiot during the show, and that’s awesome. Keep yelling at him, please.
This version has Kubikuro acting alone instead of having an army of dogs, which is fine because I don’t know how Kubikuro was controlling all of those dogs nor what their motives were. This Kubikuro at least seems fully focused on just getting revenge, barring the pound thing, but they never say anyone was hurt in that fire. His main sin is mowing down anyone who gets in his way.
I won’t say I like either version more because I hate this story. Let’s move on.
Next time, the king of Giraliya is targeted for assassination. Can 009 and the other cyborgs save his life? Also, more ballet for some reason.
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