Given that the village has had a previous history of Karma Demons, I'm with agreement with Shinta that the poison cocktail would have worked on your "average" karma demon. Even Shun was surprised that it didn't actually kill him.
Given that the village has had a previous history of Karma Demons, I'm with agreement with Shinta that the poison cocktail would have worked on your "average" karma demon. Even Shun was surprised that it didn't actually kill him.
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
Yeah. That seems very reasonable. Although even if only a third of the karma demons could die by poison, it would still be worth to give the bottle. Not that I'd assume there to be a steady supply of karma demons for good statistical calculations. It could be once in decades occurrence. The village has centuries of history, after all.
It was pretty obvious they try everything, and given what we saw they're capable of, it's pretty obvious why. There is definitely a protocol to ensuring karma demons can't do irreparable, lasting harm.
1) Instill in the children from a very young age that even a karma demon has the ability to willfully recognize they should not exist, and attempt to kill themselves. Years of reinforced training, conditioning, and outright propaganda.
2) Attempt to get them back under control through meditation and isolation.
3) Give them poison pills. If they are committed to letting themselves die as assisted by 1), the pills will work. Shun admitted to Saki he apparently wasn't ready to die yet, so he subconsciously purified himself.
4) Send queerrats to kill them.
5) Send cat(s). The so-called "last resort."
Can't send another cantus user, because the brainwashing feedback will kill whatever cantus user was sent as well, so:
6) Hope the karma demon will recognize what they have become, again instilled by 1), and will themselves to death, overcoming their subconscious desire to live.
7) Despair, for all is lost.
Shun wasn't any more or less powerful than any other karma demon (or telekinetic) who was as far gone as he was. Converting the pills was nothing. He wanted to still live for some reason (some closure about his feelings for Saki perhaps?), and so he did. During the course of their discussion, Shun recognized how close he was to distorting or killing her, the same way he accidentally killed his parents, and mutated Subaru. Given his strong feelings for her, and desire to keep her from being hurt, he was at last willing to submit (or so we are led to believe).
As Kraco said, they made quite the effort to explain, in detail, how powerful the subconsciousness is. Power is easy for a Cantus user, control is hard.
I like the idea of Cantus being very strong from the beginning.
It might also be that Cantus is strong and gets stronger as with age and use.
It's a bit like uranium.
There's great power stored inside and it gets more and more dangerous when you refine it and density grows. And at some point you get past a point where a chain reaction starts and there's a power surge and explosion. Thing is, even in nature it can happen.
So for Cantus, even if you do not do anything about it, it will eventually evolve to a point where it's too dangerous.
The only alternative is to try to control it, even if the risk is having children that become dangerous because they control it with bad intentions (hence elimination...)
All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening. And then: Golf.
Other karma demons aside (because admittedly, it cannot be proven whether Shun was stronger or not because we have not seen any other ones), there is definitely a difference in power between Shun and the rest of the students.
If you say that control is what allows one cantus user to be more powerful than another, and that their base cantus power/potential is the same, then why would Shun lose control first? In that premise, the ones who are weakest in class (because they lack control) should become karma demons first, and Shun, who displayed amazing control, should never go to the dark side.
Just to be clear, the term power I am using is not mere force or strength of the cantus, although that is part of it. It is the overall active and latent ability of the individual. Rearranging molecules using the subconscious should fall into this category. The point of the subconscious is that they are not able to control it in the first place, so it would be weird to say that Shun was able to do that because he had better control of his cantus.
Last edited by shinta|hikari; Mon, 12-03-2012 at 07:43 PM.
Peace.
I was trying to say that if you give your conscious self tools to try to shape/control cantus, then you tend to refine your Cantus too.
Why?
Because then your subconscious can use those same tools and shape the Cantus in whatever ways.
So teaching children also has them becoming more dangerous sooner, as the raw Cantus refines itself with the tools children learn at school.
Since the balance beetween brainwashing and abilities is so hard to get right, there's a high "defect" rate resulting in children disapearing.
And once in a while, there's a chain reaction in some child were the Cantus can refine itself autonomously and control feedback can't do anything against it->Karma Demon.
And Among those Karma Demon, we have Shun that might be at the top, able to escape all the failsafes that should have killed him before he becomes what he is to become: a menace to the remaining mankind.
My guess is that the mnemonic that kept Shun from death was Subaru. The unconditional love of this tiny animal was a lifeline Shun was able to connect to. That was just before Shun met with Saki again.
But at the end of the episode we can assume Shun is dead, or will die shortly should his conscious mind be powerful enough to commit suicide in whatever form.
That will enable Maria's growth for the next arc, as we've been hinted Maria will kill many.
Maria will probably be the next top tier Karma Demon, helped by Saki trying to protect/save the ones she loves.
But it might be a little more complicated than that, as Maria is not as important in the show as Shun is till now.
Back to Saki and her handling of the Cat. Well, as said she should be dead without that necklace.
Now I'm a little surprised Shun knew about that protection. He's powerful, has wits and all. But it's hard to think he thought
of that protection and created all by himself. It could be he was help by his family.
Or was it pure luck?
Wasn't that necklace Subaru's at first?
Like the Cat was coming for Shun.
Subaru was with him.
Shun's power already had transformed Subaru. Instead of attacking Shun first, the Cat attacked Subaru and failed because of the necklace. The Cat attacking Subaru first could be the result of 2 things: Subaru's transformation and the Dog/Cat base instincts. Or just the fact that Subaru was extremely quick in reacting, attacking first, forcing the Cat to defend itself.
This giving time to Shun to prepare an attack against the Cat, putting the necklace to protect himself from the second Cat.
At this point, he's already too strong to be defeated by the cats, he then meets Saki and gives her the necklace.
All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening. And then: Golf.
It's kind of funny, in a good way, that when he was floating the marbles during that scene, I was thinking he's a bit of a show-off... But now it was revealed he was likely scared he might accidentally affect Saki with his cantus, and so he did that as a diversion for his own subconsciousness.Originally Posted by David75
I didn't see him like that during that scene. I was already sure that he was going out of control and he was using the marble to allocate his excess power at that point.
If Shun always loved Saki, why was he together with Satoru? If he wanted to protect Saki by not getting close to her, wasn't he a bit too cold to Satoru, using him just so he can have a partner?
Peace.
Because he was a shy teenager, despite being a genius! It's easier for guys to get closer to each other (in normal friendship), as well as girls get closer to other girls in similar fashion, and if they have plenty of bonobo genes, I guess that relationship can develop further. I doubt Shun ever had romantic feelings toward Satoru, but maybe he couldn't supress his genes completely and kind of drifted into such a relationship, not having the courage to approach Saki. I don't think he was simply worried about hurting Saki with his cantus and totally unconcerned about mutating Satoru into something unnatural. He's not really that sort of a person. And who would want to believe they are degenerating into a karma demon until it's so obvious they can't deny it anymore? He probably desperately tried to live a normal life as long as he possibly could at all.
@David: I think the charm was just lucky. It was too thin for something with a primary purpose of protecting the neck. It's actually a miracle that the metal was exactly where it was.
As for it belonging to Subaru, didn't we get some scenes with him after Shun gave the necklace to Saki? That means he wasn't mutated at that point, and I can't see why Shun would take it off Subaru.
Regarding that scene, I had thought the flying balls were marking the physical boundary that Shun wanted to keep from people. I also thought that Shun's reply suggested he gave the only copy of the charm to Saki, who made the assumption that Shun would have given one to Subaru as well.
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
The "wasp balls" were to keep Shun so focused on floating and spinning the glass balls that his subconscious wouldn't be able to warp things around him. If 95% of his concentration is used maintaining those in mid-air, he can use the other 5% to maintain a discussion and not worry about the world warping around him, or Saki getting twisted.
There wasn't a physical boundary, they were all around Saki, at the periphery of his present focus, where the subconscious might do the most damage.
I love the idea that Cantus does not simply destroy those you care about. It warps them too. The latter is probably the more cruel consequence, especially for Subaru who retained his heart.
Even the random Saki butt focusing this episode did not bother me at all.
Peace.
Episode 11v2 - UTW
- - - - - -- - -
It's kind of nasty how they are able to shape memories like this. I guess it would be even worse objectively speaking if it was perfect, but now by having flaws it's subjectively worse because the victims feel they lost something and their memories aren't all real - yet they can't know what they have lost and which ones aren't the real memories. Quite a stressful atmosphere in this this episode all in all. I couldn't help but repeatedly in my mind tell Saki to get rid of the unknown dude during the early portion of the ep. Fortunately he did. Fortunately she still has a gut feeling she lost something precious, even if she can't remember Shun's name or face.
I was first annoyed by Maria, but it turned out she was nothing compared to Mamoru's rejection of the reality. He really didn't want to leave his comfort zone for the truth's sake. I guess he only came that far because Maria was there. I'm glad he was removed from their company before the last part. It was also funnier it was only those three present when Saki and Maria ganged up on Satoru. Well, Satoru's stocks rose a bit during this episode.
Who was the ghoul in the preview? Looking at his environment, it didn't look like the world the townspeople are living it. It was like a ruined hospital from our world (or their very distant past).
There's probably a special reason they're calling out Saki now. I'm guessing Mamoru tattled on the three of them, mentioning Saki specifically. The Ethics Committee is finally starting to understand that Saki is unique. They grabbed all three, but I get the feeling that they just want to talk to Saki. They'll probably just rebrainwash Maria and Satoru.
Each subsequent time, the deeper they try to tear out or overwrite memories from Saki's mind, the further back she can remember and with greater detail. Each attempt they make to modify her recent memories, she gets more of the older ones back. Before, she remembered her sister's apperance, now she remembers a keepsake. More importantly, she recalled someone far less important to her. Not her sister, not Shun, but their old 6th member, culled for her weakness. They had no reason to even try to remember her, but the discordant memories associated with Shun's replacement triggered her suspicions, and she got the vague idea fairly effortlessly. There wasn't even really a reason to remember the poor girl.
Worse still (for the Ethics Committee), Saki's refreshed memory undoes some of the work on her other friends.
The way Maria is talking lately, it seems more like she knows more than she's letting on. It doesn't seem like she's just protecting Mamoru. Maybe that's just the lingering wariness thanks to the warning of her mass-murder spree so many episodes ago.
edit:
Satoru mentioned that the mirror didn't seem to be that badly made. Saki guessed that it was because her sister was weak, but what if that wasn't the case? What if Saki's cantus didn't awaken when she thought it did? I can't help but wonder if Saki made the mirror, perhaps as a present for her sister. Then her parents, out of fear for having Saki awaken so early, had her cantus temporarily sealed? Her mother's joy in seeing it appear could have been more than simply fearing her daughter would be weak for life (and therefore killed). Saki's mother seems to have a huge influence due to her position as historian and keeper of the books penned by karma demons during the degeneration.
Last edited by Ryllharu; Sat, 12-08-2012 at 09:16 AM.
Possibly, but assuming they really are keeping an eye on them, the fact they wandered to the deserted village for no reason (under their fake memories) should have been a big signal there was a breach in the reprogramming. However, it's not impossible Mamoru would try to get rid of Saki to protect his big love, Maria. What comes to Maria herself, I'm not sure she's necessarily hiding anything, but her personality is kind of fickle, selfish, and high-school queenish (or whatever word you'd use for that sort of female characters). She might be of the opinion that should would willingly trade a vanished past and friends for a good current life. You could have hardly called her the most compatible person with Shun anyway.
The preview was hard to interpret, but it looked to me like the ethics committee (of some members of it) might have some other plans for Saki than just trying to wipe her memories again. Maria and Satoru are naturally another matter. It's possible they would have lived a normal life without Saki's interference.
ok, STOP.
Am I the only one who´s feeling like there´s an episode missing`? Damn, I hate those jumps.
Girl kiss at the end was super weird, especially with Satoru hugging them on the meanwhile.
bonobo genes...
All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening. And then: Golf.
That was 100% on purpose. There's no way to make the audience forget, so making the audience confused for a little while is the best that could be done to convey something of what Saki was experiencing.
Okay...
Subaru = Bulldog/mutated dog
Satoru = gay dude.
Last episode I thought Satoru got mutated into a dog and posted with that in mind, so umm... sorry for the confusion.
Gotta love'm.
Ryll's theory seems to fit all the pieces, but I just can't imagine what all this achieves (All this means ep1 till now, since the preview suggests that everything up till now was to prepare Saki for a certain task..).
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
I don't know what they are making you drink in Hong Kong, but it must be potent!
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
