Maybe for the first time, this week I really felt conscious of the manic pacing this adaptation has to incorporate. Longtime readers will know of my penchant for scribbling notes over the course of an episode. Well, I can’t remember the last time an ep ate up so much of my notepad – wow. There was just so much to download. And not only that, the dreaded EBE (Exposition By Explanation) made its presence felt. I get is – we’re talking about a volume per episode here, basically. That’s been artfully hidden up to this point, but a bit less so here.

I’m still fully invested here, make no mistake. But my hope is that this was an earthquake made necessary by the buildup of tectonic plot pressure, and will release some of that pressure and allow things to settle down a bit. We start where we finished, with Hebinuma’s father. As noted last week he’s played by Miki Shinichirou, though the “father” part needs to be in parentheses for now. It’s immediately clear that a lot of tension exists in this relationship. It doesn’t take much longer to be clear that Miyuki is not the old man’s natural son (or rather, legitimate son). There’s talk of “normal” clones, Zirconians, and Miyuki being too vulgar for his father’s tastes.

That part seems to refer to Hebinuma’s relationship with Gwen. The old man more or less lays out an ultimatum for Miyuki to end it. And despite clearly being in love Gwen, he does (for the moment). There’s all kinds of infodump about this over the course of the episode – Gwen is clearly a pivotal figure, not least because he intersects both with Hebinuma’s world and the protagonists’.  He accuses Miyuki of living for revenge – a claim that will be repeated later by a Dr. Wong (Nakano Yutaka). Hebinuma seems to see Wong as something of a mentor, but he’s against the Gene Terra project because of its “real purpose”.

That real purpose seems to be connected to bringing back the elder Hebinuma’s “dead son”. And that’s also at the center of the revenge quest that drives Miyuki’s existence. Just what is Miyuki? A hermaphrodite, for one – though one who can’t carry a child, Wong says. A clone? Clones are at the heart of all this, but only a part of it. The other new figure we meet is Yuulong (Kawanishi Kengo). Yulong works at Wong’s clinic and seems to be partnering with Miyuki in trying to ascertain just what Kowloon is.

And what a puzzle that is, too. It appears that there were two Kowloon walled cities, both demolished, and the current one is a recreation of the second. But only some people can see it (and presumably, live in it). Yulong implies it’s a place for dead people to live on, presumably with Gene Terra memories – Miyuki implies it’s much more. Yulong suggests some people “resonate” with Kowloon, others (like himself) don’t. There may even be an alien component here – one could spin some of that dialogue to imply that “Zirconians” referred to a race of beings rather than a type of clone (a subtle difference).

Again, all that probably should have taken at least 2-3 episodes to be laid out, but it is what it is. The lives of the major cast get squeezed a little bit as a result but they’re certainly a presence here too. Kujirai-B refuses Hajime’s gift of the second volume of “The Landing Case Files“, on the grounds that she liked the first one, and doesn’t want to risk being disappointed by the second. She also pointedly tells Gwen “My story is not going to end, nor will it continue”. We also get a lot of Yaomay talking about “absolute selves” – people stopping with the little lies they tell themselves and being true to their nature.

Gwen (who Yaomay has snared as he picked up her packages) makes it clear to Reiko and Yaomay that Hajime didn’t kill Kujirai-B (which I never thought was meant to be taken literally). But he cautions Reiko against learning how she really died, lest she suffer the same fate. Reiko seems to be growing into her role as an individual here, and in fact that process has been happening for a good while. She even offers to leave Kowloon so that Hajime can be free of his memories of Kujirai-B and move in, but he’s absolutely insistent that she do no such thing (why is an important and unsettled question).

Lastly, we have that explosion which happens as Hajime and Reiko are off buying replacement cup noodles for the ones she pilfered in the office. A fitting end for a pretty explosive episode, though perhaps an earthquake would have been even more so. We’re seemingly at a nexus point with Kowloon Generic Romance. Will this ep in fact be that earthquake, releasing tectonic pressure and calming things down, or is it rather the start of a locomotive going out of control, with nothing in the way to stop it for the rest of the series?