Darker Than Black - Episode 07 Discussion / Poll

[yura`]

Originally Posted by Guardian Enzo

I'll also go against the grain and say that was an above-average episode. The most interesting element of this mythology for me is the question of the degree of humanity (or lack thereof) among the contractors and dolls, and we saw quite a bit of development in that area. For all the so-called rules about the emotional limitations of both classes, the obvious evidence is that they're flexible at best. Plus, July is fast emerging as the funniest character on the show so any ep that features him heavily can't be bad.

"Ow."

QFT! I definitely felt that this episode was a par above all the others thus far, and revealed a degree of significant character progression that invariably moves the plot somewhat forward too. I like that there didn't need to be major mind-blowing incidents, but that we get a glimpse more of what might be happening, the little hints and teasers that are still being revealed to us viewers through the interactions between the characters.

July is fast becoming my favourite character! And monir's comments on the rewatching the first season and its relation to this current season compels me to go back for a rewatch myself.

[risingstar3110]

I enjoyed this episode too. Agreed that it's a filler. But we always need a break between the first half and the second half of the series =)
Then people would start to complaint how no one was sent after them as they travelled from Hokkaido to Tokyo otherwise. Also their covers would not be blew off if the second half incident didn't happen

The plot is predictable? Wow surely you guys watched a lots of anime. First i thought the episode end with the doll smuggling turn to something big. It didn't. Then i thought the episode ended as a cliff-hanger: Suou and July are caught, and Hei followed them just like that. Glad they didn't try to drag it into another episode . Before the ED, i was kind of excited with the fact "who need electricity-control ability while you are a badass" , right? Take him short enough to get a guy who was driving a car on the freeway, with a piece of wire

So yeah, Hei showed who is the boss again. July is more likable now (he should keep his current hairstyle); and Suou is really adorable and cool for a gun-slinger girl standard

PS: the only thing which i have to complaint is: i thought Hei's puple coat is random picked, but it seems he bring it with him everywhere now. Also, he should be shaved before he wear his fake beard, right? Also i want my Suou in uniform D:
Damn Hei and his fetist, who else here can force Suou change clothes during a run. Or do he feel less guilty if Suou do not wear something high school-ish?

[Hobbit]

Originally Posted by Flyvedelta

btw, why is it connected with the doll ? o.o

I really don't know.

@__@

It can be just a coincidence. But dolls and contractors appears with the Gates, and with the Gates the real sky is gone. Now it seens that, if not the entire real sky, at least the moon will burst in the sky.

[JackRydden224]

So I just watched the episode again. I still don't understand why Suou and Genma seem perfectly personable and functioning to a point where Ilya didn't know Suou was a contract at first, while Tanya seems completely out of it. I remember the contractors from Ambers group from season 1 seemed like functioning individuals as well. Tanya is more doll like then a contractor.

EDIT : speaking of Genma, who think he is trying to fool Misaki into thinking he is on her side? He could be acting under order to get more info

[Cyrus17]

Originally Posted by jonli

it seems like the whole point of Suou's character is to have her retain her humanity while transforming into a contractor. I think the overall message here is the whole "losing emotion =/= not human anymore". So her killing someone would probably be a BIG thing in the story

Hmmmmm... Now when I think about it...

[DragoZERO]

I really wish Misaki had new glasses. They are old and out of style now.

Anyway, this was an okay episode I guess. I'm glad I got a shock with how Suou's father is "alive" in Tokyo. I hope Hei get's his powers back though. He's been lucky not really needing them so far, but I'm sure he'll get cornered eventually.

[monir]

Originally Posted by hei

My impression so far says the answer is "no". I think the entire story about the syndicate and contractors would have settled in the ODA series and S2's theme is something new. In S2, all the contractors are fodders. Hamburger guy, Magician, Water woman, Psycho guy, ... They are just easy come, easy go. And Hei lost his contractor's ability, too. For me, it looks like saying that “we are not talking about contractors anymore!” Instead, dolls come into spotlight of S2: Yin, July, and probably Suou.

S1 focused a lot on the dolls too. If I remember correctly, there were 3 arcs devoted to dolls. Amber (I'm bringing her up once again ) was the one who impressed on Hei that the dolls were showing all the signs of change. And so were the contractors. Hei as an exception held true until Huang's wife came along. She committed suicide to protect Huang from the syndicate and the contractors were supposed to be too rational to commit suicide. And then there the development in regards to Yin where she broke all norms held by dolls. It was even specifically hinted in the finale that the dolls were the key to bridging the gap for the next phases of human evolution.

Right now the impression I get from the preview for the upcoming OAD episodes is that the 4 episodes will bridge whatever transpired after season 1 concluded. Those episodes should also fill in the gap to what made Hei the "Hobo Hei" who is living the dream.

While I agree with you that this season is about the dolls, S1 had already set it up. S2 will provide the conclusion to the story.

Originally Posted by Lostdreams

Amber!!!
My fav char in this show. Too bad she's gone. .

She is my favorite too. Considering Mao supposed to be gone also, may be there are hope for Amber. I know... wishful thinking.

To Yura`: I definitely recommend a rewatch of S1 if you can afford the time. A lot of things about S2 starts making sense. The only thing that is lacking in S2 is the great scores by Yoko Kanno.

[EadTaes]

First thing: no transformation scene yay gets a 10 rating now.

Okay now on to more important stuff.

Suou goes into killing mode involuntarily. No she was not in a trance if she was we would have been showed her bleak eyes. What most likely happen is that she was very focused on saving July and that she had to neutralize the women but she wasn't gauging the amount of damage she was causing. She was intencely focused on her throwing that she had not sense of what was happening around her and the effect she was having on her target and at the same time it made her forget about her convictions for life that she showed very strongly up till now. When Mao called her it just made her brake her concentration and she was then able to gage she might have over done it. Also Suou was also acting very emotional in this episode as well. Her decision to jump into that truck to try and go rescue July was not rational it was emotional based on her feelings towards July. I’m pretty sure in the coming episodes Suou will reflect on that.

Also I am starting to think of the following. on a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 represents the logical thinking of a normal human and 100 would represent the perfect logical contractors you could say the following:
1: Contractors would all be placed in the 90-100 section of the scale.
2: Humans would occupy the 0-10 portion of this scale.
Now where would Hei be? He wasn’t a very rational contractor in season 1 but he always gave me the felling he was more rational the regular humans. So I would place Hei at say 25. Now Suou is acting a lot more rational the Hei ever did by a long shot, but she is also very strongly driven by her emotions, at times she is extremely logical and other extremely emotional. She isn’t in the same patch as normal contractors. I would place her at 50 since she is quite equally thorn between the 2.

Hei and his hero rave music for the save. Was cool fight I must admit and was awesome to see Hei kicking ass. But 2 things bothered me in that scene.
1: When Hei jumped to the other side of the car and pulled on his string like a mad men he cuts the dude’s fingers with his wire but he doesn’t cut into the neck at all. Seeing that I like WHAT!!! Total realism breaker.
2: When Suou tanks him for the rescue Hei said she should thank July. Most people here seem to think it’s in relation to the apparition ghost. However the bigger question is how did Hei know where to find them? He couldn’t call in information from sources on someone who is moving in a car. I wonder if Hei has not regained his ability to see observer ghosts again. Like Suou saw ghosts before her powers awakened. Because short of that there is no way I can see Hei finding them like he did as fast as he did.

Mao taped to the car window was funny. And he’s also a lolicon, what is he thinking holding onto and looking a 13 year olds skirt.

Now for the body that was actually not the body of the doctor. I do not believe that Shion created a body. If he did he would have had to pay remuneration again. I still think his power is to bring back someone from death as would be suggested by episode’s 1 scene of Shion and Suou getting hit by the star and then Shion calling Suou name when she is nowhere to be seen.
That body is probably created by plain science, they had it plan out long ago that something like this would happen and they would need to escape one day. He probably had a spare body on hand not to mention that ME stuff seems to take no time at all to do. Remember season 1 the first arc of that lady that was associated with the French agents. Well she too was just a body with the memory of someone else. They do live in a world of hover cars, wacky pumped up science and where you memory can be erased, modified, removed, copied, implanted and whatever else. So having a spare body is no surprise at all since he was working in an ME lab and thus probably had equipment to create bodies as well to implant memory into and test his experiments.

This makes me wonder is Suou also just a body with fake memories, like that girl from season1, only Suou is a more advance version.

[risingstar3110]

About how did he cut that guy finger but not his head, my guess is because he have quite a strong initial force when he drop down to one side. The force then decrease due to him try to stay on the car until it get slower

[fedor mma]

This was a pretty good episode.The short battle between Hei and the extremely scary contractor and Suou's brutal attack on that lady were the highlights.Also Hei has really changed his treatment of Suou, a few episodes ago she would have been slapped to shit for that little stunt she pulled on him.

[jonli]

Originally Posted by JackRydden224

So I just watched the episode again. I still don't understand why Suou and Genma seem perfectly personable and functioning to a point where Ilya didn't know Suou was a contract at first, while Tanya seems completely out of it. I remember the contractors from Ambers group from season 1 seemed like functioning individuals as well. Tanya is more doll like then a contractor.

EDIT : speaking of Genma, who think he is trying to fool Misaki into thinking he is on her side? He could be acting under order to get more info

At the end of S1, we go deeper into the Contractor psyche. They're still emotional and functional individuals with curiosity, and feelings. It's just that they limit decision making to rational behavior instead of emotional behavior. At the end of S1 when Amber was talking to Hei about Contractors, she revealed that as time went by bit by bit the Contractors are beginning to behave differently, and eventually they grouped together and want to fight for their rights to be classified as humans again. The more information you acquire (life experience) the more changes you would make to you logical reasoning. So in the end they are functional individuals, just different. We can probably assume that each Contractor's behavior is different from each other, just like a human individual. Some might take a longer time to re-understand human connection, some might take less.

In Suou's case, the reason is not revealed yet (but probably will be later on in the story), Hei and Mao did theorize that it's because she was still young and didn't have enough information in her brain to think logically yet. Which makes sense, if you don't know what's most beneficial to you, you won't know what's the most logical decision. While in Tanya's case it is probably her own individual psyche that makes her differnet than Suou.

Suou's reasoning is that she doens't need to kill when it is unnecessary, It would just cause more problems. It seems to be a very human reasoning, but it is VERY logical too. Hei was just forcing her to kill, it wasn't for food or for survival, killing for fun and for no reason would be the illogical thing to do.

Tanya's reasoning is that she needs to secure herself a safety position in the Russian military or else she would be the one to die. Who ever gets in her way would just need to pay the price. She did have mercy though, since she let Nika live the first time (she even mentioned it), but not the next time .

[Sinestra]

I was actually quite surprised by Suou's glass throwing technique she didnt miss a single one and actually had to be told to stop throwing them. This was one of the few times she actually displayed typical characteristics of a Contractor. This may also just be an effect of Hei's training which she remembered when she saw the glass.

[Intranetusa]

I'd say the "contractors are logical" idea is BS just like the "contractors have no emotions" idea.

Both were probably created by ignorant people who wanted to generalize and stereotype this new group of people.

[Magin]

My theory on this is that newly awakened Contractors are the most removed from being human... after you've been a Contractor for a period of time, Contractors start becoming human again

[Vulcannis]

Originally Posted by EadTaes

This makes me wonder is Suou also just a body with fake memories, like that girl from season1, only Suou is a more advance version.

I'm thinking the same thing. It would also explain why Mao or Hei said she wasn't a complete person or somesuch. Perhaps her memories were saved by her father, since the ME can do that from a body, and then put into the new clone. There may even have been a time lapse of some sort, making Suou mentally younger than she is. Or perhaps the ME can't make a perfect copy.

[orion]

But it seems like Shion is calling the show with regards to his father and there's no way that the 3 could have survived the meteor impact. One had to revive the other 2 first to start the cycle. I still think that Suou revived Shion and the father. Shion gave Suou a body. Suou's memory was tampered with to leave out the traumatic parts. Experiments on Shion were done to copy his ability.

This could be the situation similar to Kara no Kyoukai. If the spare is a 100% copy, then it doesn't matter which one is the original and which one is the copy. A copy is created. A version of the father is dead with one alive to help Shion.

I suspect that the original may be dead and the copy is with Shion. The version with Shion doesn't seem to be worrying about Suou.

[Kaoru Chujo]

Shion seems a bit creepy, even if he is on "our side." Maybe Dr. Pavlichenko wanted Suou not to spend too much time in his room (in ep1) because he's dangerous.

I wonder what all the origami in his room meant.

I wonder what/whom Shion is getting up early to hunt.

[Sinestra]

Is it possible that Suou is a product of another Contractors powers?

[orion]

Originally Posted by Kaoru Chujo

Shion seems a bit creepy, even if he is on "our side." Maybe Dr. Pavlichenko wanted Suou not to spend too much time in his room (in ep1) because he's dangerous.

I wonder what all the origami in his room meant.

I wonder what/whom Shion is getting up early to hunt.

I'd take out the Japanese agency that's causing problems.

That origami seemed to be a big deal in earlier episodes so I too wonder what's up with it.

[DragoZERO]

Maybe the origami is just something they always did when they were younger together and it just ended up being her remuneration.