Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge - 8

"Party Chopper"

That was pretty visceral, even for Dansai.

I'm not sure what it was that I was expecting from this episode; danger, yes, intrigue, more so, but while all of that delivered this week, I wasn't really expecting it to be so... sharp. Excusing the bad pun, this was really quite a bit more emotional and stark than I thought it would be, though that didn't make it any less beautiful of an experience. Even when funny (such as that ominous music playing over the food porn shots), there's hardly a moment lacking elegance this time around, and considering the fact that Iwai and Kiri are at quite the fancy party, that makes perfect narrative sense. Regardless, I'm sure that if I told anyone not following this series that I just watched a breathtakingly gorgeous hanging scene, I'd be marked down as a psychopath ASAP; yet there's really no other way to describe the violence in this series. Disturbing it may be, but it's no less emotional or striking a series because of it.

What strikes me most during the first half of the episode is the play that Iwai and Kiri watch. Iwai mentions that it's a play about herself as the Hair Queen, but the context of it all seems confusing (and probably important to some greater means later on in the series); for example, why is the Hair Queen groveling at the feet of another "Queen"? Is this simply symbolism for Iwai's pathetic plight, or is this some hint to the true nature of the mythos surrounding the Authors and Insteads? And I have to note the uneasiness I felt at the whole thing; at some point I truly believed that Gossip was not above a public execution passed off as a play (that guillotine looked quite ominous indeed), which only goes to show how immersive an experience Dansai always is, particularly when it comes to atmosphere.

Of course, the real meat of this episode comes in the showdown between Nakajima and Kiri. For a while now, Nakajima has been lurking in the background as a threat, and none so much as when he almost strangled Kiri during the Pet Whip arc, but now he truly comes into light as an antagonist. To call him a hypocrite is almost an understatement; he denounces the Crime Edge's selfishness in using his role as Iwai's protector as a way to enjoy using his Good, but he himself declares that nothing brings him more joy than fighting and sentencing an Author he deems corrupt. Is it not worse to coerce Authors into positions from which he can then kill them himself? Watching Iwai and Kiri struggle against him (Kiri quite literally while Iwai is stuck behind bars, though she's not lacking a bite when needed) is quite harsh, and though Kiri has plot armor to keep him from dying, watching him slowly suffocate as he fights frantically is damned intense. We're in for a ride these last few episodes, and I'm more than happy to stick through it all.

N.B.: Thanks to Ivan for the caps!