12 Comments

1. Passerby posted on February 2, 2011 at 1:25 am | Permalink

   Those two certainly have gotten really good at this since episode 18 of the first season.

   I’m also going to just second Dustin’s recommendation of the manga. Rather than a sequal along the lines of the second anime season or the OVAs, it is more like more of season 1. It has a lot of the good stuff from the first season (though I still miss Huang). Lots of new characters too, and wow, some aren’t even dead yet. The plot has gotten a bit convoluted, but if you managed to hang on to season two’s you should be fine for Shikkoku no Hana.

2. Passing through posted on February 27, 2011 at 4:08 pm | Permalink

   Just finished marathoning the complete show (for the first time), and then re-watching a bunch of S1. It’s amazing how much depth this show has behind the surface, and how well it hides it on a first run through. Even this manga’s really good, and I’d like to think that the general awesomeness of the manga is indicative that there’s at least some *enthusiasm* for the show amongst the people at or affiliated with BONES. Probably wishful thinking, but we need Season 3.

   It’s nice to find a place with good thoughtful analysis, especially at this point since it’s an older anime and had a short run overall (~2.5 seasons, being nice, or ~1.7, being accurate). I’ve been through most

   Not sure this is the right place but I’ll put a few things here that I haven’t seen pointed out anywhere else.

   Dollification + Contractorification: we learned slightly more than we thought by the end. It seems like you get blasted with gate particles and become a doll (if it goes right) or a contractor (if it doesn’t). You might also spontaneously become a contractor through random exposure to gate particles (eg: perhaps that’s what happened with Tanya, or perhaps the team that apprehended her knew where to be b/c they’d blasted her the night before). Dollification seems to be a more artificial process (in the cult arc in S1 we see a “manufacturing facility” and overhear Amigiri saying the cult isn’t supplying enough dolls). So, probably, the dollifaction knowledge is something “out there” (like knowledge of how to manufacture narcotics is “out there” today) and doll manufacturers “recruit” people in various ways (the cult isolates devotees, various state agencies probably recruit orphans, and so on). I doubt we’ll ever see how Yin got recruited to become a doll, but it’d be possible to do interesting things with that in S3.

   Amber probably isn’t the true “first contractor”: given her abilities, and her remarks about how often she fought the war in south america, I’d get good odds she’s the “first” only b/c she’s traveled that far back in time. A very minor point, but I’m sticking with it.

   Mao: in an early episode the ramen house girl is feeding Mao, and calls him Hernandez. Hei hears this and mocks Mao (“How’s it going, *Hernandez*?”). Late in S2 we learn Mao’s real name is Ricardo, and he’s apparently latin, so this is a good example of misdirection (telling us something true but framing it as nothing to take seriously). Small and insignificant, but another nice little touch.

   Mao, pt 2: Mao was seemingly a real ladies man, or at least a smooth talker, back when he was Ricardo. In S1 he makes a lot of comments about Hei + Yin that seem kinda jokey and teasing, but with Mao-the-former-latin-lover they also support the “Mao knows *exactly* what’s going on with Hei and Yin even before either of them do”, and in that light most of the questions are even a bit manipulative (forcing Hei to come to grips with his feelings). On its own this isn’t that big of a revelation — might even be a bit obvious — but in light of the next point it might be more significant.

   Mao, pt 3: it actually seems pretty reasonable for Mao to have been some kind of double-agent in S1; this would mean either working for Oreille or working as a high-level member of the syndicate (higher than Huang) but doing so under deep cover. It’s also possible he’s working for both. There’s two main bits of evidence here: (1) is that Mao had some backup server somewhere, and I think enough is implied that we can safely guess it wasn’t operated by the Syndicate (the Syndicate shut his server down in response to his hacking near the end of S1) and (2) Mao’s mix of semi-irrational behavior (all the covering for Hei, occasional backtalking to Huang, etc.) with weak reasoning (this type of behavior is usually explained in terms of how interesting or entertaining Hei is, which doesn’t seem all that rational). If Hei has a secondary mission that requires him to protect Hei and/or Yin while pretending to be subordinate to Huang, then most of the semi-irrational behavior Mao engages in has clean and simple explanations.

   Mao, pt 4: if Mao is actually a double agent of some sort, his mission almost certainly has something to do with Hei and/or Yin. If it’s just “protect Hei” or “protect Yin” it doesn’t tell us too much, but perhaps the his Hei/Yin commentary is a form of soft-manipulation in service of his mission. If there’s a S3 we’ll probably find out for sure, but for now it does put Mao in a very different light.

   Amber + Yin: another small point. When Amber meets Yin she says something like “It’s been a long time” (at least in the English dub). This is never actually explained in the series as far as I can tell. It could just be Amber joking around, but I could see at least three such scenarios: they met in the past (perhaps S3 will have flashbacks to when Amber was in the Syndicate, maybe she had something to do with dollifying Yin?), they met in the future (but Yin being Yin isn’t going to ask “when did we meet?”, and it *was* a long time since then for Amber). That’s two possibilities. Third possibility: suppose Amber is the stargazer, and that at some point Amber-the-stargazing doll and Yin-the-doll were being dollified in the same facility or something like that. A bit of a stretch and a lot of different ways it could have gone down, but it’s one of the main “what did that mean?” statements left over from S1.

   Golden Entity == Izanagi or Izanami? I have no clue, but I think the fountain-statue at which Yin first met the golden entity is a statue of Izanagi; as far as I can tell it’s a bearded guy with a spear, so it’s at nominally in accordance with the myth. I tend to lean towards “golden entity == Izanami, Izanagi never seen on-screen as such”, but I really just wanted to point out the statue seemingly fitting the mythological themes referenced in S2.

   Male-Yin == Izanami? I think this is hinted at stronger than it seems if you just look at S2E12 on its own. When we finally learn Suou’s real story, it’s basically that Shion was camping with his dad and then this meteor came out of nowhere and almost killed him; Shion seems to have panicked — he thought he was going to die — and created a copy of himself, but got the gender wrong. That copy wound up becoming the Suou we know, but again consider the motivation: copied the body as a way of avoiding death. It could be coincidence, but given how *careful* BONES tend to be I think not; my gut here is that given how “scientific” Shion and his dad were in general, if they wanted him to create a copy of himself for research purposes they would’ve done it coldly, not just due to impending death. So it’s quite possible the Shion-Izanami deal was: Shion gets Izanami’s help building the earth copy, and Izanami gets her own body (rather than being tied to Yin’s body, admittedly a very “flimsy” tie but still a tie of some kind).

   Specters == Cause of Dolls Being Doll-Like? In S1′s Yin arc it’s clearly the case that Yin’s re-humanization starts in earnest once that contractor steals her specter. At first she’s dazed and confused (even by doll standards), but then freed from her specter she (very rapidly, compared to the tiny hints earlier than that) starts to recover her memories and her feelings (or at least notice the lack of them). The re-humanization process does continue when she gets her specter back, but the real catalyst seems to be much more “temporarily didn’t have the specter” than just “Hei” (though Hei certainly helps). As a nice bonus, this theory makes Yin’s end-of-episode tears that much more poignant: she’s crying b/c she can feel the moonlight again, and crying b/c of all her sadness, but she’s also crying b/c she knows that she’s about to get her specter back, and having a specter is a big burden (as it is largely responsible for the doll effects). This is kind-of interesting as stand-alone speculation, but dovetails nicely with the next point.

   Izanami == Yin’s Specter? I think this is implied as obviously as possible throughout the Gaiden, but is something BONES may not have 100% figured out while making S2. In S2 there are a handful of scenes with Yin’s specter that make it seem like Yin’s controlling it (the ghostly-Hei-hug). However, in the Gaiden it’s implied as bluntly as BONES ever implies anything that Yin’s specter is now separate from her (it’s now “she”) and has something of a mind of its own (early in the big G2 fight she’s in an alley and dips her finger in some water, and expresses surprise that her specter’s not there). It’s a minor point on its own, but in light of the previous point it’s (imho) very interesting: in Gaiden we saw a Yin who was much further along at being re-humanized, and we saw a Yin making much faster progress at re-humanizing than she’d made at any point in the series. If “having a specter == why dolls act like dolls” then having Izanami take over Yin’s specter might’ve taken a huge load off Yin’s back, and given her some breathing room to rebuild her personality.

   Izanami wants to Merge With Hei? I think this is implied in the Gaiden, she does the femme-fatale seduction thing in G2, and gives Hei at least one other chance in the Gaiden, and maybe more (I wasn’t counting). It’s possible this is just Izanami interpreting Yin’s desires in her own way, but it’s also perhaps a hint that maybe actually Hei is Izanagi (and thus the prophecy more or less happened but the people who thought Shion == Izanagi were wrong, wouldn’t be the first time someone in the show was wrong about something important). It could also just be that Hei’s powers are just special (like Shion’s), and there are things Izanami can’t do on her own (and would need Shion or Hei to do). Why bring this up? See the next couple points.

   S2E12 Final Hei/Yin/Izanami/Suou dialogue, pt1: at least as subtitled I’m pretty sure that the things Hei tells Suou as she’s losing her memories and dying are *exactly* the same things Hei promised Yin in the Gaiden: to be with her forever, or not to leave her alone (the exact wording’s already vanished, but I remember it being almost word-for-word). I think this is pretty clever writing: he’s comforting Suou, of course, but he’s also essentially *mocking* Izanami-Yin to her face, by making sure she hears him make the same promises he made to her to some other girl. It’s a nice touch, but wait there’s a tad more.

   S2E12 Final Hei/Yin/Izanami/Suou dialogue, pt2: suppose Yin’s wish is the obvious choice — to be with Hei forever, as per Gaiden — and that Izanami herself wants to merge with Hei (for whatever reason). In that case, the ending dialogue has brilliant subtext running through it, and here’s a play-by-play from when Hei shows up:

   - Hei shows up, sees Suou angry and about to shoot Izanami.
   - Hei disarms Suou gently,
   – Subtext #1: Hei hasn’t 100% given up on Yin (if he had, he’d let Suou shoot)
   – Subtext #2: Hei somehow already knows what’s happening with Suou, and what will happen to her (how? just guessing?)
   - Hei sees Izanami, who seems to be somewhere between bemused observation and ignoring him.
   - Hei makes the same promises to Suou he made to Yin in the Gaiden
   – Subtext #1: Suou is someone Hei cares about very much (enough to take the time to comfort her, rather than immediately deal with Izanami)
   – Subtext #2: Hey, Izanami-Yin, look over here! Look how deeply I care about this other chick. Maybe I forgot all about you!
   - Hei’s gambit gets Izanami’s attention, of course.
   - Izanami-Yin says “it’s not too late”
   – Subtext #1: “…to merge with me”
   – Subtext #2: “I know what you really want (to be with Yin), and you’re not fooling me with that game. It’s not too late (to get what you want).”
   - Yin shows up and says “kill me”
   – Subtext #1: “I’m still here.” (which wasn’t a given, at all, by that point in the show)
   – Subtext #2: “I’m still me, and still want what I wanted before” (to get killed, so as to stop Izanami)
   - Hei smiles. Important:I don’t think we *ever* saw that particular smile in the show, ever.
   – Subtext #1: “I’m so happy you’re still here, Yin.”
   – Subtext #2: “I’m actually happy (this is the smile Amber said she’d do anything for)”
   – Subtext #3: “I’m a man with a plan” (just a guess, but it has that look to it, like when he had a plan @ the end of S1)

   …overthinking it? Of course. But I think it works. In particular, if you accept the outline of subtext above, it makes Izanami more interesting and gives a nice bit of symmetry to Yin’s role at the end. Izanami’s more interesting b/c she seemingly respects “free will” (to a point): she promised Yin she’d grant her wish, but didn’t just snap her fingers and whisk Hei and Yin off to someplace they can be happy together, forever; all Izanami seems to do is tell Hei “It’s not too late (to make your decision)” and then leaves it up to Hei to make his choice. The symmetry is b/c Yin doesn’t show up until the very last possible moment; in the same way that Yin’s appearance shows Hei “Yin’s still here, after all” it was Hei’s actions before she showed up that arguably convinced Yin “Hei’s here, after all”. Much better than the damsel-in-distress version of Yin. Definite overthinking but hey, why not?

   Suou, The “Magical Girl” Genre: Parody, or a Meta-Joke: it’s pretty clear S2 is at a minimum riffing on a lot of “magical girl” genre tropes, with Suou as the magical girl. Given that, I can see it in a lot of different lights, in particular a commercially-driven decision to try and broaden the audience (with, perhaps, some of S2′s tackiness being the result of a bit of rebellious, “malicious compliance” from the creative team). One interesting possibility is that the whole thing is “meta-joke”: S2 is Suou’s story; Suou literally “doesn’t belong” in the Darker Than Black show or its world; when the show ends, Suou is where she does belong (in Japan, living a typical anime life for a girl of her age). If true I personally find it a bit of a bust, but at least it helps me rationalize away a lot of the things I don’t like about how the writers used Suou.

   Wow, that’s really long. I know what it’s like to receive an unsolicited “wall of text”. I thought I only had a few things to say, but we both can see how things turned out. I really appreciate all the effort you’ve put into this site over the years; it’s been really wonderful to stumble across this after discovering and then watching this series. Hopefully there’s a S3, and hopefully one with Yin in it, too.

3. Passing through posted on February 27, 2011 at 4:19 pm | Permalink

   I always forget something.

   We know one more thing about contractorification: when Mao hears that Shion was a contractor at birth, he seems to express surprise. Could be accidental, but I think it does fit in with the “contractors are mostly made, and typically don’t just ‘happen’.”.

   This isn’t as solid as dolls and dollification, however; there are many ambiguous stories of people before and after they became a contractor, and so it’s harder to feel as confident. Oh well.

4. Passing through posted on February 27, 2011 at 5:40 pm | Permalink

   Actually this is the last one. A last note on the ending of S2.

   (1) “It’s not too late”: when Hei and the Section 3 guy are in the room with Yin’s body the Section 3 guy says “It’s too late. You’re too late.” (in the subs I saw). The Section 3 guy also tells Hei that Yin’s body is just an empty shell.

   So Izanami-Yin saying “It’s not too late” probably also has the subtext of “I heard what you said back there (when you were near Yin’s body)”.

   This is so elegant and obvious it’s easy to overlook (I almost missed it entirely). It also explains why the line comes out of nowhere, and at a big big stretch gives us a slight bit of insight into Izanami’s character (she’s nice to Yin? she isn’t all bad?).

   It also allows for more wishful thinking about the future and Season 3 and so on, so it’s all good.

5. Dustin posted on February 28, 2011 at 8:05 pm | Permalink

   Holy Crap that is a wall of text! A wall of text that was a lot of fun to read on a bus ride home :D. Thanks for adding your thoughts.

   I know a few of your thoughts we’ve actually talked about in comments on a few of the Gaiden/Season 2 posts scattered way back, but a few of the things that you might have over thought were new and interesting. I liked the in depth view of Mao as an agent working for an even higher power. It does make quite a bit of sense, he did just randomly survive season one where so many other contractors failed to (and why was he with Suou if he wasn’t part of some mysterious plot).

   Unfortunately I do not have the time at present to do your insights justice, but if you hang around a little while it’s possible someone else will :D.

6. Passerby posted on March 1, 2011 at 1:17 am | Permalink

   Who is this imposter!? And with a wall of text! Gah!

   Ahem.

   I usually appreciate huge slabs of text but I don’t think this one’s for me. Just personally, I don’t usually go out of my way to analyse the plot or mechanics of Darker than Black (especially DtB) because 1) it’s usually superfluous 2) it’s futile. Plot-wise, it seems to me DtB deliberately (and perhaps even revels in) keeping a lot of things in the dark, true to it name. Doing so maintains a lot of the mystique of DtB, and also makes sci-fi a lot easier to write. Thematically, Gate mechanics are obscure because the Gate (and its contractors etc) are yet another force that humans, upon discovering, immediately try to master.

   Also, it’s simpler to just pretend everything is symbollic rather than plough through the techno-garble.

   All this said, there’s two things in your comment I would like to reply to, and I’ll leave the rest to more worthy hands.

   1) On Mao
   It’s funny how reasonable minds can differ so wildly on something like this. I actually consider Mao the quintessential contractor; a cool hand, yet extremely risk adverse. He, along with November 11, act as foils for Hei; the two are very well-adjusted contractors, comfortable with what they are.

   In season 1 Mao definitely considers his allegience as being to the Syndicate, certainly not to Huang. Huang’s not the boss, he’s the contact. In episode 20 we see that Mao gets orders from the Sydnicate too, behind Huang’s back.

   (I’m pretty sure his server (which he got disconnected from) was operated by Pandora (the Syndicate). It’s simply that the Syndicate dissolved after season 1. It’d be easy enough for Madame Oreille to get her hands on it, considering how she gets her hands on everything in season 2.)

   2. On Suou and Season 2
   It appears you, like Dustin, didn’t like season 2 all that much. I’m sure I said this before, but I really think season 2 doesn’t get a lot of credit. For example, Suou as a magical girl certainly isn’t something as simple as a parody or joke. The genre subversion was, to me, very deliberate. I’ve wrote about this at length in some other comment, I’m sure, so I’ll try to avoid beating that horse too much. But you’re right; Suou didn’t belong to that world. She was the normal high school girl shoved violently into the unforgiving underworld of Darker than Black. It was about the loss of innocence, the cruelty of reality, and the the cynicism of adulthood. DTB2 gave the magical girl genre a treatment that will not be seen again until this season, actually, where Shaft takes a stab at it.

   If I had more time I would write more but I have to cut it off here. That’s not to say I don’t welcome more discussion. By all means, demolish me with a reply, if you wish.

7. PT posted on March 1, 2011 at 10:24 am | Permalink

   I changed my name to PT for less confusion; wasn’t trying to impersonate you or confuse anyone.

   Thanks for taking the time, I also don’t have tons of time myself so I’ll keep it brief.

   On Mao: you’re right in episode 20, and in general too. There’s a lot of places in S1 where it’s softly implied he’s lower-ranking than Huang in the syndicate, but no explicit statement of such ever gets made. Doesn’t matter much if he was a deep cover high-ranking guy or just a really good contractor, and without S3 (or similar) no way to know for sure.

   On S2: I don’t think it’s terrible, but I think they were generally over-ambitious (plot-wise, and genre-wise), had to rush too many things, made numerous small mistakes (of taste / tone / style), and muddled the overall heart of the show (Hei’s personal growth, with Hei-Yin as that growth’s motivation). That makes it ultimately a mixed bag.

   My biggest gripe is actually Izanami; on rewatch of S1 it’s clear the writers are selling Hei-Yin much harder than comes across the first time through, and both the manga and the Gaiden episodes take the Hei-Yin direction even further. Izanami seems very artificial, doesn’t fit into the world very well, and in retrospect is essentially a transparent and kludgy way to advance the Hei-Yin story (which is seemingly the “boy meets girl, boy loses girl (due to personal issues), boy overcomes personal issues, boy gets girl back (maybe)” template). The new mythology in S2 and the Gaiden to try and splice Izanami into the DtB universe just seems out of place and forced, which taints how almost everything else comes across.

   Sci-Fi + Plot: I don’t think there’s much point in the deep mechanics of the sci-fi stuff; I do think it’s hard to know where to draw the line, b/c the sci-fi mechanics are often used as part of the symbolism, and it’s hard to know when to stop looking into it further. The deep backstory / mythology is similarly vague and unknowable (except maybe for Mao?), but the episodes themselves have pretty consistent internal chronologies that typically stand up well to scrutiny. Still hard to know where to draw the line though, it’s easy to overdo.

8. Passerby posted on March 1, 2011 at 4:58 pm | Permalink

   Oh no, don’t mind me. Go by any name you wish. I was just overreacting for comedic effect.

9. PT posted on March 1, 2011 at 5:34 pm | Permalink

   As was I, but I’lll stick with PT.

   Actually, Yin lore question: I watched HD versions of S2. In the final WTF ending seen (the one where Misaki’s hovering in the sky, Yin is standing there, and Hei’s hand is glowing super bright), there’s actually a momentary clear, close-in shot of Hei and Yin. It’s literally only a split-second shot, b/c the glow in Hei’s hand starts expanding immediately after the zoom-in, and it’s obscured the details after only a handful of frames.

   But, you can clearly see that it’s the same Yin he winds up carrying off in the ending montage:
   - she’s drawn as naked, not wearing one of the goofy Izanami costumes
   - she’s got the ending-montage hairstyle, not either of the sailor-moon-ish Izanami hairstyles

   I haven’t seen any of the blogs / etc. that’ve gone over this pointing it out at all. Has this been remarked upon at all? It makes the ending seem a heck of a lot less ambiguous.

10. PT posted on March 2, 2011 at 10:52 am | Permalink

    A handful more thoughts then I’m out for reals, maybe reconvene once the rest of the manga’s been scanlated? There’re like 2 more chapters right?

    Why DtB? I’m not a big anime guy but started watching on netflix instant. It grabbed me a lot but I couldn’t figure out why at first: it seemed like it ought to be cookie-cutter / generic / meh, but at the same time there was something about it that seemed really unique but I couldn’t quite figure out. On a second watch I did figure it out: the surface-level plot is still a bit mediocre and meh, but the way the show is *constructed* is amazing:
    - it’s packed extremely densely with symbolism / foreshadowing / allusions / internal cross-referencing / hinting-but-not-saying / meta-commentary / etc., to the point it’s almost a narrative fractal
    - but all that higher-level stuff is so well-integrated into the show’s surface level you have to look for it to catch it; it’s the exact opposite of “beating you over the head with it”

    …or in short it’s just something amazingly better-made than it had any right to be, and I was glad to find sites like this one where people had arrived at the same outlook (so it wasn’t just me thinking that way).

    S1 vs S2 Comparsion: the differences in feel between DtB, Manga, Gaiden, Dtb2 remind me a lot of what happened with Star Wars. Lucas is brilliant and wildly creative but also has extremely poor aesthetic judgment; aside from the SW universe and core characters, just about everything people like about SW is the result of people other than Lucas, and just about everything people hate about SW is the result of Lucas getting his way. If I had to guess S2 is what happens if Okamura is given free reign to direct his own stuff, and S1/Gaiden/Manga are what we get with more 3rd party oversight/input/etc..

    S2 is analogous to what’d have happened if there was no “Empire Strikes Back”, and “A New Hope” was immediately followed up with “Return of the Jedi”: series is done, all known mysteries solved and conflicts resolved, the character development is complete, but it’s too soon (missing that all-important midsection) and has a lot of questionable decisions (like Ewoks). I don’t know exactly what’d have happened but I doubt SW would be as big if it’d gone down like that. Oh well.

    Been fun, thanks for the input. Thanks again for making the site, too.

11. PT posted on March 17, 2011 at 11:56 am | Permalink

    Manga translation to English is finished, fyi. Like the show it is much better marathoned than done piecemeal, I think (I certainly noticed a lot more going through it that way).

    Good stuff, overall, though of course all very linear and not nearly as complexly-woven as S1. Even so, it definitely seems like the manga must’ve been at least outlined around the same time S2 and the OVAs were outlined, b/c on a careful read it seems like there’s some stuff in the manga that helps explain some of what we see in the OVAs and S2.

    Hopefully will get away from this post without having left you a big wall of text, but some possibly non-obvious things that jumped out:
    - (a) taken as a whole, the manga helps contextualize why Hei is so very paranoid in the gaiden episodes
    - (b) taken as a whole, I think the manga helps add some color to why Hei is often so distant in the first gaiden episode
    - (c) we get a small dose of insight into what Yin sees in Hei (see below)
    - (d) the manga clarifies that the syndicate didn’t really give up on its goal of “killing all contractors” after S1 (see below)
    - (e) the manga sheds some more light on the behavior of the meteor fragment (I think it’s a big deal in S2, see below)

    (a) and (b) are small things, really: Hei’s almost-creepily paranoid b/c he let his guard down early in the manga and then Yin got kidnapped; aside from general trepidation part of why Hei’s so distant is b/c his life with Yin had been quasi-domestic (cf the early manga, they do laundry etc.) and that probably contributed to his letting guard down. Again, small touches mostly.

    (c) is a very nice touch, and much more apparent when reading the manga as a block. There’s what’s essentially an extended conversation between Hei and Azusa (and overheard by Yin) that goes:
    - from here http://www.mangafox.com/manga/darker_than_black_shikkoku_no_hana/v03/c026/15.html
    - to here http://www.mangafox.com/manga/darker_than_black_shikkoku_no_hana/v03/c028/15.html

    …and at the end Hei says something that makes Yin look as genuinely pleased / happy as I can remember seeing her drawn in official artwork (outside of the fingersmile and the final “power of love” manga chapters).

    (d) Is a small point but one that makes me think there’s more room for a good S3 (thematically). In S1 the syndicate wanted to kill all contractors; in S2 and the OVAs the topic is dropped, b/c the syndicate is in disarray and the Izanami situation takes center stage. Midway through the manga there’s a conversation between Hei and the military guy that makes it clear that there are those who are “at war with the gates” (and thus for whom the contractors are enemies or unavoidable collateral damage). You could have a very nice Season 3 in which the boy-yin really is “end of the world” and one faction’s strategy is to try and destroy the gates, leaving it up to our favorite heroes to find a better way to save the world (which will probably require human-contractor-doll collaboration of some kind). In any case, it’s nice to see the writers thought it through; “killing all contractors” doesn’t seem like a goal you’d really give up on all that easily if you thought it was necessary.

    (e) Is a big deal for one of my pet theories about S2, but a small deal otherwise. We get confirmation of some of the stuff Amber mentioned about the meteor fragment — it really does reassemble itself, etc. — and learn a bit more (it seems to have some kind of will of its own, and may choose to help / not help someone who wants to use it depending upon what that person wants to do).

    All in all it’s a good manga. Hopefully everyone over at BONES is ok and once things settle down again we’ll get an S3.

12. 0EBA9x posted on February 16, 2012 at 5:27 am | Permalink

    I really like the way you present the pictures!