The Daughter of Twenty-Faces

[Kraco]

We don't exactly even know how many cars away he was from the one where most of the fighting happened. On a train, especially an old-fashioned one, I doubt you hear handguns a couple of cars away at all. Why he wasn't with the others, is another question of course. Still, in the previous eps we often saw him alone, in his library or otherwise, and not really partying with his men, so in that sense it's nothing special. But all in all I hadn't got the kind of impression he would willingly let all those people die just to teach Chiko a lesson on the hardness of life... I'm inclined to think he found out too late.

[Yukimura]

Daughter of Twenty-Faces - 07 (H264) - [Live-eviL]

Daughter of Twenty-Faces - 07 (XviD) - [Live-eviL]

Did he survive?!? Who the heck is the sketchy guy in the traditional outfit, why is Chiko so trusting. WTF Mecha?!

So many questions....

[Kraco]

While it was expected Chiko would be shocked due to everything that happened, I still didn't foresee her eating the poisoned soup. Fortunately she seemed to get over her coma as soon as the detective suggested Twenty Faces might not be dead. I guess thinking he died is something that fits a kid, and likewise when some adult says he might not be dead a kid can change her opinion in a second. Believable in that sense.

I can't see her spending too much time in that toxic house anymore, though. As much as she avoids eating the soup, it's only a matter of time until she must avoid eating anything at all there, unless she prepares it by herself from secure ingredients. It would be such a bother. Besides, staying there wouldn't help her find Twenty Faces, of course.

[Ryllharu]

Could these episodes possibly feel any shorter? Just as the story begins to heat up they cut us off.

I was kind of hoping that her revival would have her tricking her stepmother into eating her own poisoned soup, but I guess that will have to either wait or Chiko is above that kind of behavior.

My favorite maid in Geass and my favorite maid in this share VAs. I just wish Satomi Arai would get more prominent roles, she has incredible range despite her voice having a few distinctive characteristics. A few nice scenes at the school too, some fun with the Queen Bee of the school, etc.

I wonder if the Iron/Clockwork Man (since it's not really a mecha) is what Twenty-Faces was trying to stop. A lot of the things they dealt with were war high-technology that he never wanted to see on Earth again.

I wonder what connection the Miyuki Sawashiro character has to do with the Clockwork Giant, who they spent plenty of effort to show him with very sad eyes, and burns everywhere underneath. It's way out there, but there is the outside possibility that Clockwork Giant is Twenty-Faces.

[Kraco]

It's way out there, but there is the outside possibility that Clockwork Giant is Twenty-Faces.

I don't think so. The brutish robbery didn't really look like anything Twenty Faces would do and I doubt he got burned in the train fire. He has enough skills to get out of such a situation unharmed. I don't know what he's doing now, though. Probably some other projects until Chiko is mature enough for whatever he has in mind for her. Clearly Chiko needed an extra lesson, seeing how she even ate the poison soup. Her dependence on the gang was way too high for a thief of any significant merit.

[BioAlien]

Daughter of Twenty-Faces - 08 (H264) - [Live-eviL]

Daughter of Twenty-Faces - 08 (XviD) - [Live-eviL]

[Death13a]

I really like how they didn't made Chiko into super hero and rest characters into just spectators. It more fun to watch when she needs to rely on others but not be totally useless.

[Kraco]

I think she seems to be relying a bit too much on others. I didn't expect her to turn into a super human o/n, but aside from the high acrobatics, she doesn't really show that much promise. Well, maybe it's more realistic this way, but I really hope she will leave the home rather sooner than later. I mean, she's still living with a person who wants to kill her by poisoning. Even if she avoids the soup, she won't soon be able to brush her teeth without feeling paranoid.

[Ryllharu]

If the series hadn't done so already, this episode would have cemented the series as one of the best I've seen in a while. None of the episodes leave you screaming for more because they end on a cliffhangers every time (Code Geass) nor are any of the episodes totally wrapped up. Little tidbits leak out of each episode, revealing a little more of the mural that this series encompasses.

I think it is to be expected that she rely on others. She's still only what, 14, 15? The high flying acrobats are a pleasure to watch. This just wasn't a foe that she could match.

Kayama is a interesting character. If her co-conspirator was any indication, the two were looking for Twenty Faces in order to reverse the damage they have done to themselves. At the same time, we can't be entirely sure that Kayama herself is after the "completion" of the work to not only save herself, but also to market it and get name recognition out for doing so. We definitely have not seen the last of her. But there's no way of knowing what side she's actually on.

We also get a better idea of Twenty Faces motivations. He wants to eliminate all the monstrous (figuratively speaking here) creations of the war because he helped create them. A change of heart for certain.

Koito is quite the interesting personality herself. A bored Little Princess. She abruptly and completely switches sides to being friends with Chiko solely on the basis that she won't be bored up to the very moment she's forced into marriage? I love it.

Akine's scene right at the end completes the episode for me. Crying and carrying on because of a papercut-sized wound. This series just oozes nostalgic plot events. I don't know how many times I've seen that done, but it certainly has been a while and brought a smile to my face.

[Munsu]

And here's 9 by Live-eviL:
http://a.scarywater.net/live-evil/%5...5D.mkv.torrent

Really enjoyed episode 8, hopefully 9 will be even better with this new found friendship (who didn't see it coming?).

[Ryllharu]

Koito certainly led a sheltered life.

Even though she saw the Iron Supersoldier, she really doesn't seem to have much of a grasp on how dangerous a situation she's gotten herself in allying with Chiko. Though you have to give her a lot of credit for showing Chiko a simpler, happier side to life, and giving her the clue she needed to go to the island. Chiko would never have seen the movie preview on her own.

Not to mention that once Chiko was out of the way, Koito has really good aim. She got the glasses on the guy's face, and rolled the abacus right under his foot as he was charging. That doesn't make her any less naive.

Ken went a little emo too, but given the glimpse of his past, I guess we can see why.

I keep expecting Tome to have some secret skills she's been hiding from the family, something to make her invaluable in Chiko's search for Twenty Faces. Blame it on the voice actress' role of Sayoko in Code Geass I suppose.

[Munsu]

Here's 10 by Live-eviL:
http://a.scarywater.net/live-evil/%5...5D.mkv.torrent

Still haven't had a chance to watch 9, hopefully I'll get to these two tonight.

[Kraco]

They certainly nicely built it to look like Ken had snapped and become a murderer. I had hard time believing so but I was actually beginning to until the... whatever it was that showed up in the ruins.

However, since this was basically a trap, I guess it means Chiko is pretty much back in square one.

[shinta|hikari]

I wonder if she would delve into depression again.

[Yukimura]

The look she gave her mom was awesome, I almost thought I was looking at a shounen hero who'd just been told something was impossible.

There's something that's been bugging me though, this show is supposed to take place in a modified post WWII Japan right?

[Ryllharu]

This show is supposed to take place in the late 1950s, early 1960s, our reality.

All this events that Ojisan was involved in and the things Chiko keeps getting pulled into were top-secret developed by the military that might have turned the War if they were perfected and came out (from all manner of countries). There was the Japanese Supertank, the Aerial Flying Fortress sunk under the ocean, the Human Tank genetic experiments that Twenty Faces actually worked on, and the one Kayama and her assistant used on themselves in an attempt to complete the research, and now this doll-woman that had allegedly been cut into by Ojisan himself.

With Kayama's retelling, it's very likely this doll woman was telling the truth about Twenty Faces working on her. He was into the medical side of this research.

...and none of this is really all that far-fetched. There was a lot of nasty military research and experimentation going on during both World Wars, and some pretty brutal medical experiements performed. The Japanese and the Nazis are well known for doing horrible "medical" experiements on the Chinese and Jews respectively. There was plenty of high-tech stuff too. The Germans were developing jet turnbine aircraft that would have turned the war around...had they not been defeated before mass production could occur. There were also tons of rumors that many German nuclear scientists ended up in the Soviet Union. The Americans just beat them on the development of that one. WWI had its fair share of attrocities in weapons technology as well.

So a lot of these things are exaggerated (and the supertank would have sucked in real practice) but there is a fair amount of truth behind them. As the one episode in China showed, there was a lot of hatred for the Japanese in China right after the war ended.

[Kraco]

Face 11 of 22:

Episode 11 - Live-evil



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The story is getting just a bit thick with the total hypnosis power of the immortal magician bitch. I don't feel like she really belong to this story at all with such fancy powers. I wish they had kept this closer to earth. It shouldn't have been impossible to come up with believable enemies without too much unrealism.

Well, in any case I'm happy Chiko finally left the building. It was getting ridiculous already how she kept living there with a person who didn't want anything more than her death. I hope she will now put her thief skills to good use and get to business for real - and get rid of the murderous bitch as well, if there exists a way to kill her at all.

[Ryllharu]

[I wrote this excellent post about how this series falls into the genre of pulp crime novels with a bit of the 60s literary vibe, comparing the "Dark Science" we've seen in it to the Post-War Era literary shift that Science Fiction suffered as a result of the fear surrounding the creation of atomic bombs (noting how this is particularly poignant to the Japanese), and it was all lost in a browser crash. C'est la vie.]

Anyway, while it won't be nearly as persuasive as what I had previously written, I respectfully disagree with most of what you wrote responding to this episode Kraco.

I don't find a problem with the "white haired demon" now that her powers are revealed to be some manner of hypnosis. We really cannot trust anything we've seen of her in prior episode. She's able to make people see what she wants them to see, and react in the manner she pleases. Do we even know that she was ever in that room with the murdered man? Perhaps she merely took care of everything in a short meeting (making the target murder himself) and intervening with the police in the hallway while making her way to the roof. They'd see her "murder" the man, and then leap out the window, only to have that vision fade.

Were any of her physical feats in the last episode performed in the same illusory manner? Perhaps it's too soon to say.

I think everything we've seen fits very well into the realm of 1960s sci-fi, as I tried to reiterate above.

I'm also not sure Chiko has left the house for good. It's possible that she is leaving permanently so that those she cares about will not end up getting hurt, but it may just be a special case for this woman. I think it's too soon for her to end her still-budding relationships in Tokyo.

I also think Chiko could have offed or neutralized her aunt several hundred times by now if she truly wished it. But revenge is beneath Chiko, she just lets it all glide over her.

EDIT: ugh, this post is far from my best work. Too discouraged to write something properly persuasive.

[shinta|hikari]

I bet that post is not as persuasive as your first one, but l will agree it nonetheless.

I think that the magician girl is a combination of biology and illusions. I think the earlier episode concerning the mutant tank guy was to ease in the idea of body manipulation, thus making the magician girl's body and superhuman feats possible. The rest of her unbelievable actions are probably achieved through sleight of hand, illusions and hypnotism (it is quite obvious that all of them are magic show related, like escaping while hung by the feet, disappearing, the flying hand and the like).

I agree with Ryll's last statement. While it seems stupid to live in the nest of a murderous snake, it is not as dangerous if you are a snake handler (of sorts). To put it simply, the aunt is simply unable to kill Chiko because of a difference in intellect etc. I mean, she was unable to kill her before she was trained physically and mentally by 20 faces. She could have lived there comfortably with relative safety, and has enough reason to do so, such as being able to stay with her maid, friend, and of course simply having a roof over her head.

Now, it is quite different. She might consider it her fault that things turned out this way, and leave for the sake of her newfound friends.

[Kraco]

Just to make sure you didn't get me wrong, I never meant Chiko would kill her aunt. Maybe my last paragraph was a bit mixed, but nonetheless I meant she would now, having left her home, concentrate on getting rid of the magician woman as well as finding Twenty faces. After all, the magician is an imminent danger to everybody, even random people, while her aunt only wanted to kill Chiko.