It’s a week of finales in anime, even if we’re not sure how final some of them are. But happily we don’t have that worry with Gachiakuta. It’s going to be around for two cours – I’d say the odds are good it will wind up being more than that, but we don’t even have to consider that for another season. Popular yes, but it’s a series that tends to fly under the radar a bit – it’s never the most popular, and the pacing is such that it tends to sneak up on you rather than bowl you over.
There are “Bleach” episodes of this series. And then there are the “Soul Eater” episodes, its other great influence. And this is one of those, for me. I like that series more than love it (as is the case with Bleach) but it does have a very distinct aesthetic that’s hard to mistake for anything else. That comes from Ohkubo Atsushi of course, so it’s only natural that his former assistant (though not on that series) Urana Kei should recall it in her own work. And I think Amo has a lot to do with that.
Gachiakuta, like Soul Eater, has a fondness for characters who are pretty unhinged (and gender-indeterminate ones too for that matter). Amo strikes me as someone who could absolutely have come from Ohkubo’s pen. She’s nuts in a different way than Jabber Wonger (which is good, since two Wongers wouldn’t make a right). But that she is nuts becomes obvious pretty quickly. I mean, she’d almost have to be to choose to live where she does. Through a bit of rewinding we’re shown how we got to the cliffhanger from last week, with Enjin out like a light on Amo’s floor.
One thing Amo makes clear is that she very much wants to see everyone’s faces – though she has an ulterior motive for that. But it’s smell, she says, that really floats her boat. She seems to be trying to engage Rudo in romance talk (“What do you look for in a crush?”). Enjin spins this transactionally – if we give you romance chat, will you give us info – and that really seems to set Amo off (no pun intended). And something is clearly wrong with Delmon – he and his Vital Instrument (a garden hose) are responsible for Enjin’s condition. He seems to be under Amo’s sway, and soon enough Rudo is being drawn into a flashback to a traumatic moment in the Sphere.
It’s the boots that seem to be the source of Amo’s power – and they bear the same “Watchmen” mark that Rudo’s gloves do. Tamsy is very clear – he knows Delmon well enough to know he’d never use his Jinki on his friends unless he were being controlled. But Tamsy and Zanka are the only ones who get their masks on before Amo’s spell can take hold. She is right among one thing – smell is the most primal form of memory trigger (science has proved it), and her methodology of using scent memory to entrance her “fans” is sound.
There is a flaw in her premise though. As Zanka observes reminding people of someone they love is not always going to be a positive experience for them. It could trigger a memory of a betrayal, of hatred (and indeed, Rudo is the proof of it). It’s the sort of mistake someone very inexperienced at life might make. And that makes Amo’s existence in this place all the more difficult to explain. Who is she, all alone in this treacherous and inhospitable wasteland – and why is she there in the first place?
