Summary
In her letter, Maria urges Saki not to look for her and Mamoru. He
wouldn’t make it on his own, and she’s certain she would’ve been deemed a
failure too before long. If they’re going to be labelled defective products
that have to be destroyed they’d rather run, regardless of what their fate might
be. But Saki’s not like that. She’s discouraged easily and cries a lot, but she
has it in her to pick herself up and keep on going, and Maria believes that
that more than anything is what will allow her to survive and why the town will
need her.
It’s not normal, Maria thinks, the way their society kills children to
maintain stability, and even knowing the historical forces that brought them to
this point, she still doesn’t think it’s something to be proud of, but she
believes she understands the root of the problem – the adults fear the
children. Probably there’s always been some anxiety that the next generation will
reject everything you’ve worked for, but when they have to worry if each child
will that one in a million who becomes a literal monster, it’s far easier to
justify disposing of those they feel uncomfortable about. It made her sad that
she had to leave her parents, but then she realized they’d forget about her,
like how Saki’s parents gave up on her
sister, and she knows the bond she has with her friends is stronger than that
and they’ll remember her as long as they can. She’s convinced her and Mamoru
can use their Power to survive, and they’ll go somewhere so far the town can’t
find them. She asks Saki to tell everyone they’re dead.
Saki and Satoru decide to do as Maria wants and ask Squealer/Yakomaru
to go along with it, which he agrees to, perhaps a little too readily. He
suggests they say the two were caught in an avalanche, which would make it
harder to look for the bodies, and even offers to prepare some bones to
corroborate the story. No, not like that – some Monster Rat bones are
indistinguishable from those of the ‘gods,’ so those of a taller specimen could easily pass for an
adolescent god’s if rubbed down with stones a bit. This is where Saki breaks
down and agrees to leave everything to him.
They continue to look for Maria and Mamoru the next day, to no avail.
As they search, Saki realizes that other than her parents the only people she
truly cares about are her friends in Group 1, and now only Satoru is left. He
insists they won’t forget Maria and Mamoru; if the Education Committee tries to
tamper with their memories again, they’ll just leave town, and they promise to
find the others if they do.
Saki has a dream. It’s very trippy. A faceless boy gives her a warning
– she mustn’t help Maria escape; rather, Maria has to die…
Thoughts
Well, this episode outright confirmed that the narrator is Saki, what
with her using the first-person pronoun while talking about what’s currently happening
in the story. I mean, I never doubted that it was her, but now the evidence
supports that more strongly than ever.
And Maria is totally wrong about her parents forgetting her, literally
or in the sense that they’d decide ‘eh, she was broken anyway’ and toss any
attachment to her aside like a pair of old shoes. With the former it’s because
adults seem to be interfered with a lot less than kids, if at all, and that’s
limited to exceptional cases like Shun, presumably because they’ve passed the
‘safe to exist’ test – that they made it to adulthood implies as much. How else
do you explain why Saki’s parents remember Yoshimi, let alone enough for Saki’s
mom to say “I don’t want to lose another child!” and sounding upset at the prospect? They don’t dwell on her loss, but there’s a
difference between outright forgetting someone and coming to terms with your
grief and moving on with your life. That’s why Maria’s wrong for the latter
reason, and also the reason, more than anything, why we’ve constantly seen Saki’s
parents. For all their apparent nonchalance about her coming home covered in
mud or disappearing with no explanation for an entire night (they had a bigger
worry at the time, but still…) they worried about her Power never awakening,
they warn her against doing things they know to be dangerous, they call her by
a pet name when they want to convey their concern, when she’s sent to see the
Education Committee you can tell how worried they are. We know they love her,
and they’d miss her if anything happened; at least when Yoshimi was taken they
still had her, but it’s pretty sad to imagine what might happen to them if they
lost Saki, even if nothing was done to them. Maria’s scared, and sad that she
may never see her parents again; she may need to believe they’ll forget her to
rationalize what’s she’s doing. It’s understandable, even if it’s not true. The
adults may allow the elimination of children to happen because they accept it
as necessary for the greater good, but that doesn’t mean they don’t care.
And naturally, the reading of the letter is superimposed over scenes of
Saki, Maria, and later Satoru (I guess Shun and Mamoru became friends with them
later) as children. Obviously it’s supposed to highlight the disconnect between
these adorable little kids and how they’re the most dangerous thing out there,
but until now we haven’t really seen much of their backstories or history
together, so this highlights just how long they’ve know each other and how deep
their friendship goes. It really underscores how Saki feels reading the letter.
So, some of the Monster Rats’ bones are identical to humans? Gee, I
wonder why? I remember deciding earlier that the whole ‘they’re actually
humans!’ thing wasn’t plausible, but now I’m not sure why. It was mostly
because Satoru didn’t experience the Death of Shame despite killing what are, I
thought at the time, actually humans somewhere deep down, but that’s assuming
the Death of Shame would apply when
attacking a Monster Rat, and why would that be the case? They’re far more
numerous and much more violent than humans, so there’s a need to be able to
harm them if necessary. The Death of Shame may still be in effect to some
extent, to prevent it from being used excessively, since it requires acting on
the very impulses and tendencies those in charge have worked to suppress, but
not to the point where it’ll kill you unless you really go over the top. When you get down to it, it’s the
explanation that makes the most sense – it covers why they’re sentient, and the
heretofore unanswered question of what happened to the Powerless majority of
the human population; or at least the part of it that lived in Japan, since we
have no idea what society’s like elsewhere in the world.
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