Ah, the dreaded breather episode.  I’ve no doubt some will have found this episode of Kokkoku a bit less gripping than last week’s barnburner, and there’s no denying it was a step back in terms of pure drama.  But good series have episodes like this for a reason – well, several reasons, not least of which that you couldn’t sustain a story if every chapter was like last week’s.  But with as much as actually happened in that episode, there was a compelling need to step back and flesh out where things stand in the story, in order to understand where they’re going to go from here.

For now, Majima Yousuke (Shouko’s “big” brother) seems to have fulfilled his part in the story by surviving.  And yes, it does seem as if he survived his ordeal – which will almost certainly be important in the aftermath of whatever resolution we have in the main plot.  His survival gives Shouko a reason to care what happens next, to live on herself – and I’m not sure she had one before.  With the departure of the specters from his body Yousuke is now one of the stalled, and once all this is over Shouko is going to have a very difficult explanation to make at a hospital reception desk somewhere.  But he’s alive, that’s the main thing – both for Shouko and for the story.

It seems as if Yousuke’s survival might have implications for Sagawa-san too, though he seems to understand Stasis enough that I don’t expect he’d have been surprised by it.    The pieces are being rearranged on the chessboard here, no question about it – Majima is more or less officially on Team Yuzawa now, and Sako decides to make his defection formal too (though the Yuzawa understandably have some skepticism about that).  As for the True Love Society, they have seven members left in Stasis – though Sako informs his new allies that only four of them are actually members, with two being hired hands.

That’s where things begin to get quite complicated, because this struggle is far from a simple bipolar affair.  It’s really Sagawa who’s at the center of most of what happens this week, which is a good thing because while he’s been pulling a lot of the strings here, the man himself was largely a mystery.  His four followers may be true believers, but Sagawa makes it clear to Shiomi-san (Uchida Yuya, who I don’t believe I’ve credited yet) that the TLS is just a tool for him – he intends to use Stasis to live an extended life in order to “observe” humanity (that feels like a half-truth to me), and he has evidence that the founder and author of their scriptures did just that himself.

What’s fascinating here is that on some fundamental level, Team Yuzawa and Sagawa are in agreement – neither one seems to believe that Stasis is something that should be used.  Shiomi declares that it would simply fall into the hands of a stronger bully eventually, and should be sealed – and Sagawa agrees, to the point where he says he’ll leave the Society in Shiomi’s hands while he goes on his temporal journey.  But there’s dissension in the ranks on both sides – one of the true believers has overheard Sagawa tell Shiomi this, and decides to rebel after the other hired thug finds the stone in the tree where Juri (now sporting casual wear) has hidden it.

Even more troubling, Takafumi-san is quietly seething at Juri and Ojii-san’s plan to destroy the stone – and at being left out of the battle to look after Makoto-kun.  Takafumi genuinely loves his family but resentment and feelings of inadequacy have taken him to a dark place, and it’s hard to know what he might be capable of – up to and including potentially teaming up with the surviving True Love Society members against his own family and Sagawa/Shiomi.  This is really the larger issue that underpins Kokkoku, more so than ever this week – what to do with Stasis, and the responsibility having such power imparts on its bearer.  So far I haven’t seen any indication anyone in this cast should be trusted with it – which I suspect is all the more reason to believe it should indeed be sealed away forever.