Chaos;HEAd Episode 7 Overview – 7th Conspiracy

Author: nova

Once again it’s time to check the weekly antics of Nishijou Takumi – a container-dwelling otaku with little interest in things 3D. In the previous episode an unnatural earthquake shook Shibuya, accompanied with a screaming sound that had people all over writhe in pain. A lot of nasty stuff went down, and episode 7 is taking its time to finally explain some of it in a way us viewers can understand. While Takumi is close to perhaps reaching the deepest depths of misery in his life, he is finally starting to catch the trail of the mysterious Di-Sword.

An hour after the earthquake Takumi wakes up in his container. Just like any nerd worth his salt, the first thing he does is check out the status of his computer – which is bad news. Greeted by RSoD, Takumi falls into despair, believing that his precious Empire Sweeper data has been wiped out for good. In Shibuya things are already back to business as usual and a local news broadcast informs of an earthquake and lightning caused by undetermined factors. A randomly occurring natural disaster? Hardly.

Much to his relief, Takumi discovers that the server has saved all his character data on Empire Sweeper – life can go on. But what was the earthquake about then? Shogun sending out an EMP-attack? Of course, just thinking about it causes Takumi to have a short delusion of a chat message from Shogun saying “I will erase you” (thanks to Lupus for translation, D-R did not sub this line for some reason). Getting fearful once again, Takumi decides to give Rimi a call to have her keep him company – but looks like her cellphone is off. He decides to go check if she’s hanging around at school – little does he know that he’s in for another nasty surprise.

Something’s going on in the school yard – a bunch of students has gathered around next to the building. Meeting up with Misumi, Takumi looks where he’s pointing at and spots Ayase standing on the edge of the schoolbuilding’s roof with a Di-Sword in hand. As she starts having her final monologue about how she cannot block the evil of the world no matter how hard she tries, there’s little doubt about what she’s up to. Asking for the Greater Will to take her soul, she takes a step.

But before we see her dive, the scene quickly switches to another location – what seems to be a textbook underground conspiracy meeting. Remember those N.O.Z.O.M.I-logos from before? Seems like we are finally getting a glimpse on what this organization is. Not that it would make much sense though. We get slammed with gibberish such as “I never heard figures in 3rd digit die from the second melt“. Confused? Don’t worry, we all are. What one can deduct from this is that whatever this N.O.Z.O.M.I is doing, it’s quite likely a shadowy organization bent on doing something very nasty – controlling the world, it seems. What is this Noah II that is mentioned? Some kind of evil device of doom? We’ll find out soon enough.

Meanwhile Takumi has decided to scram from school grounds and stops to catch his breath at a lakeside park. However, before he gets a chance to sort things out, Sena appears with a rather hostile attitude. Apparently she witnessed the suicide-scene and what happened after Ayase dived down – apparently a bed of flowers appeared to break her fall softly enough to save her life. Sena suspects that Takumi caused this to happen by “Real Booting” – don’t worry, it will be explained further on. Sena also seems to believe that Takumi has a connection with something called “Tenseishinkoukai“, whatever the hell that is, but is soon convinced of his innocence.

Before she leaves, Takumi asks her about the power she thinks he’s possessing, explaining that he really did wish there to be a bed of flowers at the time Ayase dived. Sena confirms what he had been thinking about in the previous episode – that he did indeed make a delusion to appear in physical reality. According to her the world can be explained in three digits: 0, 1 and -1. From what I could understand, Di-Sword is a mechanism that allows one to create -1, which might mean a delusion drawn into the reality – but Takumi was able to do this without possessing a Di-Sword. It’s obvious that Sena knows what’s going on, but this is all we get from her for now. Meanwhile Ayase is being rushed into a hospital and we see a glimpse of Rimi.

At the container Takumi is hoping for Rimi to pay a visit and soon enough someone bangs on the door – but it’s just his little sister Nanami, who comes over to tell him what he already knows about someone attempting a suicide at school. She also happens to mention that she had a bad headache during the earthquake, which seems to interest Takumi. Is his sister connected to this whole mess too? Nanami seems to feel that there’s something strange in the city that might have been caused by the earthquake. Indeed, there seems to be a spree of crimes and fights going on downtown and the demonstrations about New Gene, one of which we saw in the previous episode, seem to have escalated into riots.

On the next day at school things have taken a turn for the worse. Because Takumi is known to be the only person Ayase has had any social contact with at school, students believe she attempted to kill herself due to some relationship issue. Rimi is still absent and Misumi seems to have something against Takumi now – probably because of the nasty rumors about Ayase and him. While everyone’s staring and laughing at him, Takumi hears a sudden young girl’s voice in his head, calling herself Kozupii. Yep, it’s the silent pseudo-loli sitting right behind him.

While on the way back home Takumi’s already miserable fortune takes a nose-dive as he’s bumped into by a delinquent, whose posse then beats the shit out of him on a dark alley. The bastards mention some “nii-chan” who hired them to beat Takumi senseless. What’s going on? Some FES-fanboy who found out about the rumors? Shogun? Hell, even Misumi? Who knows. Lying there helpless while getting his ribs kicked to pieces, a sudden burst of rage takes over Takumi’s mind. He opens his palm and lo and behold, something looking much like a Di-Sword appears.

Takumi wakes up seeing the pseudo-loli from school staring at him. He hears groans of pain and takes a look behind him – the bunch of delinquents lie around beaten half-conscious by someone. Without taking his time to find out who saved his ass, Takumi follows the pseudo-loli Kozue to escape the scene. He is soon convinced that the voice he has been hearing within his head was indeed Kozue, who appears to be unable or unwilling to communicate verbally, instead relying on telepathy-type of communication.

Walking around downtown with Kozupii, Takumi gets quickly used to her mind-messaging and doesn’t seem to think of it as weird at all. Well, considering the bunch of freaks he’s been encountering lately, it hardly is anything out of the usual. When Kozupii asks him about these freaky people, he describes Sena – the grumpy, nasty girl with an unusual appetite for popsicles, head full of conspiracy theories and dragging a huge sword along wherever she goes. It turns out that Kozupii knows what he means with the big sword, as she possesses a Di-Sword herself – drawing it out to demonstrate. Of course, one might conclude that in that case it was Kozupii who opened the can of whoopass on the delinquents, but she doesn’t seem to admit it directly. Looks like Takumi has no memory of drawing out a Di-Sword of his own.

Before the discussion gets any more serious, Kozupii notices Sena and runs over to greet her – turns out the two have been friends since Kozue moved over to Tokyo. Kozupii tells her that Takumi can see her sword, which Sena admits to know already and calls him a Gigalomaniax (what a term, oh god) – Kozupii explains this to mean a person who can see Di-Swords. Sena is on the way to buy some more popsicles and Kozupii decides to join her – of course dragging Takumi along too.

Back in the lair of N.O.Z.O.M.I we finally get some information on what the hell has been going on. It seems that a system called Noah II has been developed, which allows pseudo-imagery to be projected upon people – exactly the kind of system Takumi was thinking about earlier. While the system cannot project actual, concrete reality but only illusions, the illusions created have a sense of actual existence. Putting it simply, the system uses pulses that imitate optic nerve information to gain control of a part of the human brain called “eye’s blind spot“, causing transmitted illusions to appear to people as concrete reality, although they do not actually exist in physical space. A video taken in downtown Shibuya during an experiment on this system demonstrates its effect – an image of a runaway excavator is projected into people’s minds, causing them to run away from something that actually isn’t physically present. However, to the people it seems like a real danger, because of their senses are being controlled and feed false information. Once again the term Gigalomaniax is brought up – apparently N.O.Z.O.M.I has created an artificial version of Gigalomaniax which normally occurs as a natural ability in some people.

But how to get the pulses spread around well enough to control the minds of people? Simple – utilize a special force of some kind looking much like general otaku, called “Porters“! Now we get a clear connection to what we saw in episode 6, when Sena encountered a backpack-carrying otaku in a park. The backpacks contain mobile transmitters that automatically broacast the signal from Noah II to their immediate surroundings.

Sena, Kozupii and Takumi hang around downtown enjoying some ice cream and thanks to Kozupii we finally start getting some explanations about the nature of Di-Sword and whatever “Real Booter” means. Kozupii explains that Real Booter is essentially what causes the delusions such as Di-Sword become reality – a Di-Sword that isn’t on Real Booter is invisible to everyone except people who have the ability of Gigalomaniax (man I just hate that term). But before we get too deep in the terminology, the funky-colored runaway excavator from before appears! Sena seems to be completely aware of what’s going on and quickly spots some Porters with their transmitter packs hanging around. Sena explains that Gigalomaniax means to hold a power to interfere with Dirac’s Ocean (also known as Dirac constant or reduced Planck constant, D-M makes a mistake in romanization here). What this actually means is something beyond me. Planck constant is one of the central theories in the quantum mechanics and I can hardly claim to be an expert in the subject. However, it seems that the Di-Sword is able to channel energy from Dirac’s ocean and thus cause Real Boot to take place. Furthermore, it appears to act as a device to cause the similar effect as Noah II – to affect people’s senses to make them perceive a false reality.

Sena and Kozupii Real Boot their Di-Swords and leap into action, making short work of the transmitter backpacks and the excavator vanishes. However as the two are recorded on the demonstration video, the conspirators at N.O.Z.O.M.I become aware of their identities, although it seems that they have been knowing of opposing Gigalomaniax-users already. Meanwhile Sena confuses Takumi even more by explaining how futile it is for an individual to prove the reality of a single object – instead to confirm whether something is real or not other people are needed. Of course this results in a ton of very confusing dialogue, but luckily we have Kozupii around to explain everything in layman’s terms.

From what I was able to tell, the Di-Sword is indeed just a delusion that cannot be perceived by any normal people and it does not exist in a physical state. This is demonstrated by Kozupii as she tries to slash random people with it – nothing happens. However, if she Real Boots the sword – in other words, send the similar kind of false neural pulses to people’s brains like Noah II does – affected people will be able to perceive it as a real, concrete object. When asked about how the sword can be summoned, Sena finally gives out a somewhat clear answer. The Di-Sword will appear when a sudden emotional power such as an intense sense of danger, hate or happiness stirs – like the fury Takumi experienced when he was being beaten by the delinquents earlier.

Meanwhile in the batcave, the bigwigs at N.O.Z.O.M.I are discussing on what should be done to prevent further interference by Kozupii and Sena in their experiments. Something about “three samples” is mentioned but it is unclear what this refers to – my guess is that this means Gigalomaniax-users, possibly including Sena and Kozupii, but then again, who is Yua been reporting to in her suspicious phone calls? In any case, N.O.Z.O.M.I seems to have a plan that requires at least five samples to succeed – whatever the plan is, it sure is not discussed in any detail so all I can do is guess, but if a large organization has the power to manipulate the minds of common folk it might not be much short of world domination.

It appears that Kozupii and Sena are well aware of N.O.Z.O.M.I’s intentions and experiments, and have some plan of their own worked out to use against them. Sena explains Takumi that he’s an abnormal existence, because he appears to be able to Real Boot without possessing a Di-Sword, and suggests that because of this N.O.Z.O.M.I might come after him sooner or later. Finally we get some explanation on what this organization is; a gigantic industrial group that holds multiple monopolies. She is aware of the Noah II device which is used to artificially create effects that Gigalomaniax does and confirms that the earthquake earlier was an effect caused by this device. Kozupii wants to have Takumi in their team to fight against N.O.Z.O.M.I, although he doesn’t appear to be very enthusiastic about it, nor is Sena for having him in the team.

What can I say? At last we have some idea on what’s going on. We know what Di-Sword is and what N.O.Z.O.M.I is doing, although I wouldn’t go as far as labeling them as the main evildoers just yet. I have no further comments for now, check back next week.