Distant Thunder in Winter, Weak Link
& Reunion
Summary
Pair
selection day is coming up. It’s for things like class duties and organizing
events, but because each pair is a boy and a girl, and you can nominate your
preferred partner, it’s effectively Admit Who You Like Day. Maria teases Saki
about her obvious desire to be paired with Ryou, the boy they still see as a
member of Group 2 even though he was reassigned to Group 1, their group, ages
ago. He takes Saki aside and admits his feelings for her, asking that they
nominate each other to be partners. He says he started to feel that way during
the camping trip two years ago.
That night, Saki has a dream about taking flowers to an unmarked grave.
A voice asks if she’s forgotten, and when she asks to see the speaker’s face it
says it doesn’t have one, though she knows it well. She sees another grave,
with a mirror on it, and the voice tells her if she looks closely she’ll
understand. When she wakes up this makes her follow a hunch and get a mirror from
the storage room. When it reflects light on the wall, it’s revealed that the
glass has ‘Yoshimi’ imprinted on it. At school, Saki takes Ryou aside and asks
him some questions about the camping trip and why he broke up with Satoru, but
his answers don’t match Saki’s memories. Nor can Satoru say why he liked Ryou.
Saki realizes Ryou may appear in her memories, but he wasn’t the one who was
really there.
The pair selection
happens. Saki is paired with Satoru, Mamoru with Maria, and Ryou with another
girl. After school, Saki shares her conclusion with the others, and Satoru and
Maria end up agreeing with her. Satoru remembers that ‘X’s’ house was in the
woods, whereas Ryou lives on top of a hill in Vista Village. They visit Fallen
Tree village, which was abandoned after an accident, and discover a large pool
of water right where X’s house should have been. Maria remembers that even with
X, their group would still be one person short; come to think of it, wasn’t
there another girl…? They wonder what’s going on, but Mamoru begs them to stop.
On their way home, Saki shows Maria and Satoru the mirror. They
conclude that the characters are poorly formed, as if Yoshimi wasn’t able to
use her Power very well. Maria asks Saki to stop asking questions, for Mamoru’s
sake, because she doesn’t think he could take it if something bad happened to
his friends. They agree, but then they’re approached by an elderly man and
woman who say the Chair of the Ethics Committee – who happens to be Satoru’s
grandmother – wants to see them. The girls aren’t impressed by this revelation,
but Satoru pleads ignorance. Convincingly – after all, the names of the Ethics
Committee members aren’t made public even to family members. Then they’re told
the Chair wants to speak to them individually, starting with Saki.
Tomiko, Satoru’s surprisingly youthful-looking grandmother, tells Saki
she’s wanted to speak with her for some time, because she believes Saki should
be her successor. Saki is surprised by this, since her grades aren’t even that
good. Tomiko explains that there’s more to being head of the Ethics Committee
than Power ability; in school they also test students according to the
Personality Index, which measures traits and qualities necessary for a leader,
and Saki’s is exceptionally high, perhaps the highest they’ve ever seen. Even
after they learned the terrible truth about their society and history, hers
stabilized to its former value much more quickly than her friends. She’s the
reason Tomiko asked the Education Committee, which is normally responsible for
such decisions, not to punish them. She tells Saki not to think harshly of the
latter; they’re only trying to prevent everyone’s two main fears – Ogres and
Karmic Demons, and she knows first-hand that it’s a justified fear.
There have been 30 recorded cases of Ogres worldwide, all but two of
them male, and when she was younger Tomiko encountered one, a boy she dubs ‘K.’
He had long shown signs of having morbid and violent thoughts, but because his
academic performance was typical this was minimized or ignored. Then one day,
he just snapped, and because the Death of Shame prevented anyone from striking
back, over 1000 people died. During the night he appeared at the hospital where
Tomiko worked, shivering and covered in blood. He calmly sat down with the
doctor, claiming he had a cold, and when the latter saw his swollen throat he
told Tomiko to get some antibiotics. But this was only to get her out of the
room while he gave K a lethal injection. He was killed, but K died from the
injection. One theory behind Ogre behaviour is that they’ve not only lost all
restraint on their violent impulses but also fear harm from everyone around
them, causing them to lash out until everyone in the vicinity is dead. Another
is that killing releases endorphins that cause a state of intoxication,
preventing them from stopping.
It took a long time for the town to recover, and in the process drastic
steps were taken to prevent another occurrence. The recognition of an
individual’s rights was changed from 22 weeks to 17 years of age, and
individuals who looked like they might become another K were eliminated, the
Death of Shame circumvented by using the Monster Rats. Eventually they decided
they needed something more efficient for the latter and started modifying
housecats; the end result is obvious. Saki is disturbed by all of this, but
Tomiko speaks dispassionately, seeing them as practical measures. After hearing
another story, about a Karmic Demon from 20 years ago who killed herself, Saki
starts to cry, and Tomiko confirms it’s because that story is related to
something from her memories. She begs to have them restored, but Tomiko
declines. All information on the missing incident was destroyed to protect the
psyche of the townspeople and prevent any more tragedies. Saki may be strong
enough to handle it, but of course she’d tell her friends, and then everyone
would know. She can regain her memories in time, if she does as Tomiko hopes
and follows in her footsteps. Sakis says she could never do that. Tomiko felt
the same way once, but says a time will come when she won’t have a choice,
because she’s the only one who can do it.
The next day, Mamoru goes missing. Maria says he’d been upset lately
because he was having trouble at school. The others sneak out during the
independent research periods to go look for him, giving Ryou the slip when
Satoru makes up a convincing cover story. They find sled tracks, meaning Mamoru
brought stuff with him while running away, and follow them outside the Sacred
Barrier. At one point snow falls on them from the cliff above, and immediately
afterwards they spot Monster Rat tracks following after the sled. They find
Mamoru lying on a makeshift bed in a cave, and he claims he was rescued by a
Monster Rat named Skunk, who turns out to be the one Saki rescued from the
water two years ago.
Mamoru says he ran away because he had to – the Trickster Cat was after
him! He first noticed it four days ago, when he realized something was
following him; Satoru mentions the rumors that it stalks its prey once before
killing it. Yesterday, he stayed late for some extra lessons, and afterwards
the teacher asked him to bring some paperwork to the storeroom, which happens
to be right next to the courtyard. As he left he realized something was
following him. Then a wind suddenly kicked up, and as he turned around he saw
the cat getting swallowed by a blackness. He claims he was targeted because
he’s weak and useless, in the process revealing that he eavesdropped when Saki
showed Maria and Satoru the mirror, but his friends dispute this, reminding
that his grades are good and he’s a mild-mannered guy who gets along with
others, so on the surface there’s no reason to have him killed. Whatever’s
going on, it can’t be good…
Thoughts
Poor Reiko. Shun at least gets a placeholder name, but she’s stuck
being remembered as ‘that other girl.’ And I was wrong when I assumed
disappearances like hers were the not-discussed kind rather than the
memory-erased kind, because they clearly did forget about her; the narrator
mentioning her and that other boy by name right after they disappeared was
because, still assuming it is the
adult Saki (which I’ve yet to see any reason to doubt), she did, in fact,
regain her memories. Yeah, that’s an assumption too, but it’s the obvious
explanation.
Except, she never completely lost them. None of them did. Saki has
fragmentary recollections of her sister, Satoru still remembers where Shun used
to live, Maria’s the one who brought up Reiko; Saki, at least, still remembers
the stuff with Rijin, and presumably the others do to. It’s doubly odd because
those in power clearly can erase
memories completely, since none of them have any memory of Shun’s face, name,
or fate, so why the half-measures? They seem to have half-assed replacing Shun
with Ryou too, since he has no idea who Rijin is. Something like what he told
her while night canoeing, or why he liked Satoru, are the sort of things where
someone could think up a plausible answer, leading the other person to decide
that maybe they are the ones
misremembering, what happened to a person you’ve never heard of less so, so why
not either get rid of those memories as well, or have Ryou ‘remember’ it? They
were able to make him remember the camping trip or his ‘relationship’ with
Shun, after all, at least fragmentarily. Isn’t anyone concerned that those
whose memories they tamper with will notice some things don’t add up and wonder
just what the heck is going on, let alone try to find out? Is it because they can’t tamper completely, despite their
ability to completely erase at least some things? Is it to ease the transition
for those who’ll regain their memories, allowing them to more easily come to
terms with things that were half-remembered or felt out-of-place, instead of a
lifetime of innocuous or non-threatening memories suddenly and abruptly being
displaced by a whole heap of horrible stuff?
I dunno, it just seems confusing how they half-remember some things while
others have been completely erased. Granted, the stuff that was explicitly erased
was, in Tomiko’s words, removed to avoid traumatizing anyone and causing
additional tragedies, but even the seemingly innocuous stuff can cause problems
if there’s anyone sufficiently inquisitive – like Saki. It’s those innocuous
things like memories of a camping trip not matching up or foggy memories of a
sibling who shouldn’t exist that are causing her to start poking into things a
little too closely and drag her friend along in the first place, and fear of
the consequences is exactly what’s making Mamoru uneasy, perhaps what might be
making him dangerous. Before I saw episode 13 I thought we were going to find
out he’d become an Ogre; I still suspect he might, for that matter (it’s always
the timid one who snaps…). Don’t know if that’s the exact reason they’re
sending an Impure Cat after him, but he’s clearly been labelled as a liability
somehow.
And speaking of Impure Cats, boy oh boy have we found out just how
draconian this society is. Sending large predators after kids is pretty bad as
it is, but now we’ve just found out that our teenage protagonists aren’t legally people yet. Yep, it’s
certainly a lot easier to casually dispose of kids when they aren’t thought of
as individuals with rights, let alone when they’re treated as potential
liabilities. What’s even worse is that killing off those who don’t meet
standards seems to be the default rather than corrective or therapeutic
measures. Maybe there’s only so much that can be done in terms of a person’s
raw ability to use their Power, but killing off a kid because he cheated at
sports? Yeah, that was a sign of his underlying aggression, but still – no
attempt to coach him towards better behaviour at all? There’ve been hints from
the start that things weren’t entirely right in this society, but now that
we’ve met the head of the Ethics Committee we know just how bad it is.
The worst part is, what if Tomiko has a point – is all of this,
perhaps, genuinely necessary? Power is dangerous enough without the risk of
people unexpectedly going on a killing spree or unintentionally turning their
surroundings into something out of a surrealist painting, so it’s at least
understandable why they would want to curb the extent of one’s Power and violent
instincts, and condition people towards more peaceful, cooperative, and loving
behaviours, despite the Orwellian and World State undertones. But these are
also the things that prevent them from protecting themselves against threats
like Ogres and Karmic Demons, which can be
predicted to a certain extent, but not with enough accuracy to say who will definitely become one, necessitating the
casual cruelty of removing any child who doesn’t measure up, simply on the
basis that they might be a problem,
even if it’s just that they aren’t as good as others at using their Power – and
it seems like some people simply aren’t as good as others regardless of how
hard they try, so that’s hardly their fault. It’s a fragile balance between
quietly removing a small number of individuals for the greater good and living
with the risk of a far greater number of innocents getting killed by something
they can’t defend themselves against. As long as Power isn’t going anywhere,
there’s the possibility that it’s just like Tomiko says – maybe the latter is,
in fact, for the best. At the very least, it seems like the option that lets
society continue to survive in a recognizable form. Doesn’t make it any easier
to stomach.
Of course, this being a story of kids discovering the terrible truths
behind their seemingly peaceful society, in all likelihood they’re on the cusp
of deciding to take a third
option, convinced there’s a better way. I’m not liking their chances,
though. Consider the nightmare during the end credits – a girl, presumably
Saki, sees three figures, two boys and a girl. Two of them, the girl and one of
the boys, have masks, we don’t see the other's face, and the girl’s hair
looks suspiciously like Maria’s. Hmm, come to think of it, “if [Maria] had
never been born, many people would have lived,” plus the mask the girl’s
wearing does look rather snarl-y…am I
mistaken about which of them is going to become an Ogre? That still leaves one
of the boys unaccounted for, unless he’s supposed to be the boatman, but yeah, the
chances of any of them who aren’t Saki coming out alright look a bit thin right
now. At least I think so. Boy, that’s a cheery note to end on…
No comments:
Post a Comment