Things really keep escalating in every new episode of Dorei-ku. The episode starts off with Seiya and Julia talking while Julia is reveling information to Seiya about her new life. As Midnight suspected in the previous episode’s blog entry, Julia had a duel in process, but she doesn’t start wearing her SCM until after she explains her new lifestyle to Seiya. In the end it goes about as expected and Seiya ends up losing. Julia also takes away Seiya’s SCM.
Yuuga and Eia find out pretty quickly that Seiya isn’t Yuuga’s slave anymore and ownership has been transferred to Ryuuou. The website Yuuga showed them was some pretty creepy stuff, but it reminded me we met Julia in the short after credits scene in episode 1. It’s interesting to see the limits of the device, although I have a couple of comments about those limits that I’ll mention later on.
This time around we meet new characters again. The episode mostly centers on Adachi Shiori and Taiju Nakano. Shiori works at a café where she impersonates a princess from the Rococo period, but although she doesn’t seem to dislike the job, she admits the character she plays is very different from what she’s like in real life. One day, as she’s leaving work, a girl approaches her and asks to be made into Shiori’s slave.
Nakano explains the process of slave-gaining and the SCM to Shiori and as they’re about to decide on what kind of duel to have, they are approached by two guys who insist on hanging out with them. Shiori proposes having a duel until midnight and the girl who gets the guy to spend more money on them will win. I found this really funny as a type of game because I didn’t see any connection between that and becoming someone’s slave, but well, a duel is a duel. 
Nakano was adamant about becoming Shiori’s slave and she even said that she would let Shiori go if she happened to win, but it really shocked me to see Nakano was really serious about winning! Wouldn’t she tried to lose on purpose if she really wanted to be a slave? That was pretty suspicious to me.
Either way, they go through with the duel, eventually one of the guys spikes Shiori’s drink and we see quite an aggressive side to Nakano. Later they’re resting in a park when midnight strikes and Shiori has now become a slave to Nakano. There’s also quite a reveal here: Nakano is actually a guy! I honestly must say I didn’t see it coming, even if his aggress response to the drink thing was a hint, but I really liked that development. Right about then a hooded figure approaches them and they feel their SCMs vibrate.
Zenichi Bukyo makes a grand entrance and thinking that Shiori is the master in this pair, he forces her into a duel through physical harm and threatening to kill them. Shiori accepts and loses so Zenichi now owns her as a slave. He’s under the impression Nakano is Shiori’s slave so Nakano takes this opportunity to get away and try to find help to rescue Shiori. Julia ends up finding him and they make an alliance of sorts, having the rescue as the duel that will seal Julia’s ownership of Nakano. I thought that was some pretty cool strategy to guarantee that both of them will get the results they want. As they get back to the park, there’s another SCM user there currently in a duel with Zenichi and it’s… a dog?! I suppose the dog is trying to repay Shiori’s kindness from before, as she fed him when he was hungry, but why a dog would be wearing a SCM is anyone’s guess until we meet the owner, I assume.
Either way the episode ends with Zenichi losing and a lot of things being in the air as to how the duels will continue. It was a really intriguing episode with some nice strategizing, but also questions keep popping up about how all these characters will converge, if we’ll see previous characters at all again and what’s the deal with Ryuuou’s who we have yet to meet.
As for my comments on the limitations for the SCM, I can’t imagine why Yuuga let Seiya and Ayaka roam around with the SCMs on after knowing that people can be forced or tricked into duels. It’s crazy that people can’t defend themselves from being in a situation like Shiori’s where she was beaten until she agreed. I don’t really understand how the device can make someone obey if they are being tricked, as in they don’t know they’re dueling, the feeling of losing shouldn’t come… well, at least to me it’s kinda iffy and the dog… how can the dog give commands? I suppose dueling without one of the people involved knowing is a duel has to be possible just so the dog duel can happen, but I can’t really imagine how commands and ownership would happen in that case so I’m looking forward to finding out.
No comments:
Post a Comment