Today is a travel day so this post is going to be a short one, but this was definitely a return to the highly eventful narrative style Kokkoku employed in Episode 6.  That episode was about setting up the pins, last week’s was about figuring out the placement, and this ep all about knocking them down.  And it’s definitely Sagawa who’s doing most of the bowling.

There can be no question that Sagawa is the one who knows more about what’s going on here than anybody else, but even he’s still doing a lot of guessing.  Shouko would probably be the only other figure who’s close to his understanding of the Stasis system, but Ojii-san knows things no one else does – even if on the whole, he knows less than either of those two.  It’s like a puzzle where no one has all the pieces, but Sagawa is clearly past the stage of worrying much about allies.  He’s pretty much decided to go all-in based on what he’s pieced together, and it appears that he’s awfully good at piecing stuff together.

The first ones Sagawa disposes of are this remaining acolytes from the True Love Society, though by this point they were pretty much all in horrified open rebellion anyway.  Sagawa has – he hopes – figured out how to control the specters so that he can become a sort of human-herald hybrid.  This means super physical powers plus the ability to sense others in Stasis, but without giving up his sense of self.  This is how the founder did it, apparently, and Sagawa seems to have mastered the technique.  As for Shiomi, he appears to be a practical man above all else – as long as he sees Sagawa as his best chance of survival (and getting paid) he won’t turn against him.

Shiomi, in fact, rejects Shouko’s attempts to flip him and is now effectively the last man standing in Sagawa’s army.  Meanwhile Takafumi remains the wild card in all this, roving the town with Makoto in tow (Makoto shows he’s been raised right at that toy store – good for you, boya), seething over being marginalized yet again.  His obsession with being relevant is almost certain to push him into trying to cut a deal with Sagawa at some point, and it’s hard to imagine that working out well for anybody on Team Yukawa.  Tsubasa, at least, is back in safe hands after Sagawa decides it’s not worth prolonging a confrontation over him now that he’s gotten what he really wants.

And what is that?  Ojii-san’s blood, apparently.  He has an idea (or at least it seems that way) that he can use it to eject the old man from stasis, thus dramatically weakening the opposition.  But the blood appears to do something completely different when it’s sucked up by the Master Stone – it’s directly linked to the old man’s heart, somehow.  Shiomi is a very clever man, but I don’t think he’s privy to what Sagawa’s ultimate goal is here – and I think that blood is going to prover powerful in ways neither he nor Ojii-san expect..