(L+CR) Subete ga F ni Naru (Everything Becomes F)

[Alf]

I'm also in the theory that the sister is being substituted by Shiki. Much of the context goes great length to establish motivation for Shiki to act on something, and considering the difficulty of taking over the computer system, it's more natural that she have planned all this. Also, one of her personality mentioned "he" has some business that must be taken care of, so I think it's a hint that "he" must be alive to do anything.

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by orion

What about the sister being substituted by the real Magata and the sister killed in her place?

That's the only thing I can think, but when did they switch? We see the full security recording in this episode, and there doesn't seem to be any opening for the killer hiding in the cart to slip inside the elevator (which was my theory before)

New theory: Shiki stole her sister's identity 15 years ago, continued to live on the outside and continue her affair with his uncle, who would become the director of the lab (he's the only look-alike in there).

Shiki used the director to convince everyone that she's holed herself in that room, but actually only Michiru was in there, ordering various items and throwing them in the trash to create the illusion of someone living inside (even if the family somehow concealed the murders from police, there needed to be a scapegoat put in a position where she couldn't cause harm).

And now, she had the director bring him to the lab on the helicopter (of course, what business would her sister have there that night?) .

Michiru constructed a fake body from stuff she had delivered via the mailbox, including the handprint required to open the door (doesn't have to be the real Shiki's hand, just whatever "Magata Shiki" was registered with).

When left alone, Shiki goes back into the helicopter and kills his uncle. (who else would he have dropped his guard for?)

That establishes the who/howdunnit, but I've still no idea what she is trying to accomplish here.

[ThereminVox]

The "don't gawk" approach to the body combined with the smell driving them away makes me wonder if a more thorough examination of what exactly is on that P1 could be enlightening.

And yeah, as soon as Moe mentioned how interesting it was that the younger sister almost looked older it seemed to hint almost too aggressively at a switch. She was, after all, the one who asked the doctor "who are you?" Also, since we're taking at face value multiple people in one body, could we also have a personality inhabiting more than one body?

I get the jibblies thinking about what one might be able to hide away inside of a Lego statue, or a huge teddy bear. Blech.

Lots and lots of different avenues to approach this from. I appreciate that. The show never lets you thoroughly puzzle out any one mystery before distracting you with something else that seems important.

[cyth]

The problem I have with this show is that the mystery can be resolved in whatever way they see fit and I wouldn't care. Not sure if I want to watch more. Gimmicks make it seem too artificial for my taste. It all just seems like pointless intellectual masturbation at this point. But maybe that's what all mystery shows are for and I only came to realize that.

[ValvraveTruth]

Originally Posted by cyth

The problem I have with this show is that the mystery can be resolved in whatever way they see fit and I wouldn't care. Not sure if I want to watch more. Gimmicks make it seem too artificial for my taste. It all just seems like pointless intellectual masturbation at this point. But maybe that's what all mystery shows are for and I only came to realize that.

Agreed. This kind of anime tends to be overvalued. No matter how mysterious it looks, In the end the whole killing thing is caused by someone with mental problem or split personality at the weird coincidence of timing and place.

[SuitUp]

I think the problem is the format (the blandness of the mistery is also a factor), it's impossible to keep everyone engaged in a closed room mistery with a single episode a week, especially one like the present show, that likes to dwelve into "philosophycal" babble and relies mostly in tone to keep you "engaged".
Maybe this story could work as a 200-something pages novel(readable in two hours or so) (I don't know, haven't read it), but it's impossible to remain engaged for 5 hours spaced whitin thirteen or so weeks.

[Stark700]

Episode 7:

That was just weird and silly especially with Moe's experimentation. However, the part that focused on her past as grimy. And Makata Shiki's past is of course even darker after seeing it again.

The English was kinda amusing in this episode and I think the way Makata's sister analyzed Souhei's character is spot on.The part where they talked about the doll is interesting when compared to humans. In retrospect, I think the show itself examines the aspects of humans from a variety of angles and this episode focused more on that with its dialogues.

[kuromitsu]

I'm pretty sure that the mystery is not the point of this story... it's just there to make the character drama unfurl. Which is why I don't mind that I don't particularly care about the mystery itself. The mystery is just the vehicle for us to learn about Shiki, Moe and Souhei, and that part of the story is developing fine.

That said, yeah, they're not being very subtle with hinting that Miki is in fact Shiki, although they don't share the same seiyuu (Shiki is voiced by Kido Ibuki, Miki by Kaida Yuuko) so who knows. Also, I usually don't mind not having native speakers voicing supposedly native speaker characters, but when you've got such a long and important scene why torture the poor seiyuu and then expect viewers to do the impossible and suspend their disbelief? Why didn't they just have the whole scene in Japanese and have Miki speak Japanese with an accent or something? :/

I'm also not a fan of the machine Moe got stuck in. That felt like just another gimmick to achieve something that could've been achieved in more believable ways...

[karice67]

^
They did have Kaida Yuko voice her, so I doubt she felt "tortured" (Kaida complete a four year degree in the US, apparently majoring in musical theatre, so she's fluent in English). Though I do agree that it still would have been better if they had her speak in accented Japanese, or if they'd hired someone who spoke American English fluently...

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by kuromitsu

I'm pretty sure that the mystery is not the point of this story... it's just there to make the character drama unfurl. Which is why I don't mind that I don't particularly care about the mystery itself. The mystery is just the vehicle for us to learn about Shiki, Moe and Shuuhei, and that part of the story is developing fine.

To me it's still a mystery, just the technical clues have already been given and the rest of the story is about revealing the killer's motive. To most writers these days, that's the most interesting part about a murder mystery.

Ahh, that English was really awkward though. Both of the characters are Japanese so why wouldn't they just speak that? Well, Kaida Yuko might have been able to sound legit, if she had written her own script. But it seems she was struggling because of how unnatural the script was.

[kuromitsu]

Originally Posted by karice67

^
They did have Kaida Yuko voice her, so I doubt she felt "tortured" (Kaida complete a four year degree in the US, apparently majoring in musical theatre, so she's fluent in English). Though I do agree that it still would have been better if they had her speak in accented Japanese, or if they'd hired someone who spoke American English fluently...

Well, let's just say she definitely didn't sound like someone who would rather converse in English than Japanese. An accented Japanese would've worked much better.

Originally Posted by Jaden

Ahh, that English was really awkward though. Both of the characters are Japanese so why wouldn't they just speak that? Well, Kaida Yuko might have been able to sound legit, if she had written her own script. But it seems she was struggling because of how unnatural the script was.

TBH I thought the English was OK, then again I'm not a native speaker so I guess I'm not the best judge of that. The delivery, on the other hand, was very stilted. Which is OK with Saikawa, but not with the character who is supposed to be a native speaker.

By the way, completely unrelated, but am I the only one hearing a cat purr(????) in the ending song? Around 22:23 in this episode's video... I've been wondering for a while...

Also, what with the reveal about Michiru, I'm once again getting Mouryou no hako vibes, especially with the bgm in that scene...

[Cloudedmind]

The english actually wasn't that bad, even for Saikawa. The L's and R's and V's got a bit mumbled and gumbled, but that's understandable. I think the two main problems were that the script was most likely simplified to make it easier on the VA's, and especially in the case of Miki's character she had to speak to slowly. They probably should have speed up her lip flaps a bit so that way Kaida could have talked a little faster and sounded a bit more natural. Either way certainly not the worse english in anime I've heard and I could pretty much understand every word the VA's were saying without having to read the subtitles.

At this point I also feel that the character drama is more interesting then the mystery, but I am interested in the mystery as well. On the character drama front I thought this episode was nice.

[SeaDoor]

I am beginning to strongly suspect that whatever the good doctor's plan is, both Moe and the professor are important parts of her plan. Maybe even to the extent that they are the targets.

[AntonKutovoi]

The english scene was unneded. The pronunciation was fine (at least for me. I'm not from the English-speaking country). But the acting itself wasn't good. I was reminded on English audio cassetes with tasks that were sold with the textbooks back when I was in school.
And that's understandable. Speaking on another language is one thing, acting on it is a much more difficult task. I don't know why creators thought that characters definetely should speak English in that scene.

[Dop]

I thought the English conversation sequence was, on the whole, pretty well done. Certainly a lot less ear-mangling that some English I've heard in anime before.
I'd agree it's a bit stilted from time to time, but I found it perfectly easy to follow the conversation and the dialogue seemed pretty natural even if the delivery didn't always match up.

I would imagine that the reason for the characters speaking English in that sequence would be because they do that in the original novel, and the anime is just following that.

[Kanon]

Originally Posted by AntonKutovoi

The english scene was unneded. The pronunciation was fine (at least for me. I'm not from the English-speaking country). But the acting itself wasn't good. I was reminded on English audio cassetes with tasks that were sold with the textbooks back when I was in school.
And that's understandable. Speaking on another language is one thing, acting on it is a much more difficult task. I don't know why creators thought that characters definetely should speak English in that scene.

That was my issue too. You could tell the seiyuus put a lot of effort to produce decent English to the ears, the problem is that they had to focus so much on getting the pronunciation right they couldn't act properly. The delivery of the lines was lifeless, robotic even. Felt like they just input the script into google text to speech.

Originally Posted by karice67

^
They did have Kaida Yuko voice her, so I doubt she felt "tortured" (Kaida complete a four year degree in the US, apparently majoring in musical theatre, so she's fluent in English). Though I do agree that it still would have been better if they had her speak in accented Japanese, or if they'd hired someone who spoke American English fluently...

I never would have guessed from this episode. She didn't sound like someone fluent in English at all. Did they tell her to match Saikawa's performance or something? There's no way somebody who spent four years in the US would only be at this level.

[janipani]

Why can't they recruit fluent English speakers, if they do chats like that? It wouldn't even matter if that voice actor wasn't professional, it would still sound better. Of course it is okay that a character of Japanese origin speaks in Japanese accent, but these always sound really bad...

The episode in general was very good.

[SeaDoor]

For me, the problem with the english section was that the near absence of any acting such that that part sounded wooden. The spoken english was quite good but just lacked any emotion.

[AntonKutovoi]

Originally Posted by karice67

^
They did have Kaida Yuko voice her, so I doubt she felt "tortured" (Kaida complete a four year degree in the US, apparently majoring in musical theatre, so she's fluent in English). Though I do agree that it still would have been better if they had her speak in accented Japanese, or if they'd hired someone who spoke American English fluently...

Hm... That's the first time I hear about that. Could it be that you're mistaking her with Yuko Minaguchi?

[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by Dop

I thought the English conversation sequence was, on the whole, pretty well done. Certainly a lot less ear-mangling that some English I've heard in anime before.
I'd agree it's a bit stilted from time to time, but I found it perfectly easy to follow the conversation and the dialogue seemed pretty natural even if the delivery didn't always match up.

I would imagine that the reason for the characters speaking English in that sequence would be because they do that in the original novel, and the anime is just following that.

I guess the fact "Miki" isn't supposed to understand Japanese will be a clue she isn't who she says she is, but... eh.