Chaos;HEAd Episode 5 Overview – All Crew, Prepare for Crash Dive
Author: nova
If you thought Nishijou Takumi was already on the solid rock bottom of the misery of hikikomori life, think again – because we’re going down, and we’re going down fast. Haunted by nasty delusions, murderous girls and police investigators, Takumi continues his desperate search for the Di-Sword that might be a key to get things back to normal.
As you might remember, in the previous episode the mysterious female student/gothic punk (does that genre even exist?) singer Kishimoto Ayase/FES told Takumi to find a sword so he could be saved. Seeing this as his last chance to save his precious hikki ass, he begins a desperate search which ends up miserably in him finding a cheap toy sword – which he manages to bust into pieces by accident.
The episode starts with a brief dream conversation between Takumi and Rimi, after which Takumi is gloriously awoken by good ol’ Seira-tan. After another shot of Sena eating a popsicle and carrying her big-ass Di-Sword around (doesn’t she ever get tired of that thing. And with all that popsicle consumption, she’s gonna end up fat as a whale), we jump straight to school where Takumi once again demonstrates being something else than a generic harem male. After seeing a silent, shy pseudo-loli falling over and hurting herself in the stairwell, does he immediately rush to her aid being all “omg daijoubu desukharrr?” which would end up with the girl looking up to him with sparkly eyes saying “daite, oniichan“? Hell no, he does what any normal person would do – give her a quick look from distance to see that she at least didn’t bash her brains all over the floor and walk away. As fucked up as he may be otherwise, at least he can act as ignorant as any respectable citizen.
In class Misumi gives our main man a bit of interesting information – apparently the cops Takumi ran into earlier visited the school and have been browsing through the student index. Also, it seems that Takumi isn’t as terrified of Rimi as before, probably because of she saved his butt from being ran over downtown earlier. Oh dear, is it going to be another walk up the Yua-alley Takumi? Get your act together dude! Kozue, our clumsy little DFC, shows up and gives Takumi a present – a funky-colored piece of plaster. Wow, now that’s really nice and moe. Wait, no, that’s just creepy.
On the way back home Takumi suddenly notices a huge blue sword among the crowd, meaning that Sena is around. Deciding that following her around might help him find the Di-Sword and employs maneuvers Solid Snake would sell his mom for. Meanwhile, Nanami is having hard time on the tennis field. Unfortunately Takumi ends up having himself lost in a huge crowd which gives his hikki-insticts an opportunity to surface. Before they do, however, Takumi notices a metal chain running on the ground between his legs. Not very surprisingly the chain leads to an empty tram car where Sena is chilling around eating another popsicle.
Of course, just when Takumi realizes that he’s been had, the doors slam shut and Sena proceeds with a TL;DR lecture that would make even some of the most hardcore conspiracy theorists cry blood and shit steel chain which might actually explain where the chain earlier came from. What I could understand from her babble, she’s after something called “Error” – a thing that makes the electronically controlled world of ours faulty.
While Takumi is recovering from Sena’s lecture, Yua decides to pay him a visit and sends an e-mail telling that she’ll be at his place at 17:00. From the contents of her mail we can observe that she’s suspecting Takumi for having multiple different personalities, some of which are committing the crimes and some trying to make his dominant personality to become aware of it. Of course, after what happened in the park in the second episode Takumi has lost his trust in Yua and decides to take heed to Seira-tan’s advice – hide in the net cafe until the coast is clear. The weak point of this strategy is, however, that Yua happens to know the place and of course she busts right in when Takumi gets time to become comfortable. Spilling her multiple persona theory at him and asking him to come to a hospital with her, she only manages to freak Takumi out. I mean hell, just look at HER personality changes, the way she speaks in the net cafe and back in the park, quickly alternating between polite and imperative tones. If anyone has problems with personalities, I’d say all bets are on Yua herself. Takumi seems to come into this conclusion as well and apparently performs a FALCON PUNCH before making a quick escape.
When stopping to catch his breath in a park, Takumi sees Yua appearing and talking to a police officer, who then starts approaching him along with a bunch of hobos. Although this seems a lot like another delusion, Takumi decides to make a run for it while cursing his miserable fate. While on the run he comes across Ayase, who leads him to safety inside an underpass. The two stop to catch their breath and Takumi has another nice delusion involving a school swimsuit. Without giving him time to enjoy the views within his perverted mind, Ayase tells Takumi that she’s been chased by the police as well, because of her song lyrics that match the murder scenes of the New Gene incidents. Takumi tries to explain that he was set up by Yua but as usual when talking to a stranger, his words come out in a barely comprehensible babble.
Starting a lecture full of head-shattering metaphysics, Ayase tells Takumi once again to find the sword and confirms that Di-Sword is exactly what she’s talking about. She seems to know about his pathetic attempts to buy one and affirms him that the sword he broke was just a useless toy. To demonstrate, she punches thin air and a shattered hole appears, as if she just punched a hole into the reality itself (man writing that made me feel deep). Reaching inside, she grabs her purple Di-Sword and the hole recovers, disappearing into nothingness.
What I could understand from all the mystery-talk, the sword is something which interferes with what can be called destiny and is created from another dimension of a person’s own delusion, or something along those lines. Apparently the sword can be made to appear by wishing for it, which would make sense when another Ayase appears behind Takumi – the one he saw in a delusion a while back, wearing a school swimsuit. Takumi realizes that this is the figure of his delusion that he wished for.
We take a short break from all the moonspeak and get a look at the two police detectives familiar from the previous episode, who are inspecting the cruifixion murder scene. I don’t know if it’s a common inspection method of the Japanese police force to look for differentiations in the gravity with a coin pendulum but this is exactly what the Feds are doing. The older policeman notes an unexpected oval motion of the coin, which seems to be just as planned. To make his young partner stop spewing stupid questions, he asks why Shibuya attracts so much young people. Meanwhile Ayase is on the same topic, telling Takumi that Shibuya is indeed a special place that attracts the youth – a guidance that is the will of a Greater Being, similar to the Di-Sword. Elsewhere, the older policeman explains that in Shibuya there are several places where the gravitational field has strange unbalances called G-Errate that cause unexpected behavior of the coin pendulum. Furthermore the G-Errate phenomenon is the strongest of its kind in Shibuya, although apparently there are other places in the world where it occurs. According to the inspector’s theory the gravitational differences guide young people to come to Shibuya without being consciously aware of this attraction and that, most importantly, the New Gene murders take place in where the G-Errate-phenomenon is the strongest – which would theoretically allow them to predict where the next murder takes place.
Takumi decides to cut corners in all the metaphysical nonsense and asks Ayase how he can find a Di-Sword. Of course getting an answer to such thing wouldn’t be as easy as just asking right? So he only gets a well-expected “It’s not something that can be explained” and that he should “Feel the Will of the World that has chosen you“. Now that was liek so helpful. However, it seems to be certain that only people who have a certain power are able to summon a Di-Sword – which appears to include Takumi since he is able to see them.
Back at the container Takumi gets a mail from his old raid buddy Grim, with a link to a MewTube-video taken by the perpetrator of the New Gene murders. In hopes to find out who the murderer is or at least confirm that it isn’t himself like Yua claims, Takumi opens the link. In the video there is a group of people on the rooftop of a tall building, one of which looks a lot like Yua, staring at the camera and apparently sobbing. Next we see them standing in a row on the edge of the roof, holding hands and before they expectedly jump down, one of the victims turns to look at the camera and blurts out the familiar words: “Sono me, dare no me?”
After the first shock passes Takumi suddenly remembers something and starts replaying the video. Indeed, the metallic rattle while the camera, mounted on something low and steadily moving, approaches the victims is a familiar sound. A wheelchair? Yep, you got it right folks. Takumi’s online menace, wheelchair-riding old man Shogun is at it again.
Just when you thought there was enough mystery for 12 episodes to cover, Chaos;HEAd comes and slams some more in your face. However the efficient use of air time is one of the show’s greatest strengths, as fillerish intermissions about cute girls doing cute stuff are left thankfully short and sparse. I’m sure a lot of people would wish to see more of them, but considering the sheer tonnage of mystery and supernatural happenings in the show all crammed into mere 12 episodes I can only think of cutting them out as an effective and justifiable decision. The character art continues to be disturbingly inconsistent and clumsy at times but manages to stay tolerable on average. I’m just hoping Chaos;HEAd anime doesn’t bite more than it can swallow.
