English Dub Review: Chaos;Child “Duel”

This show just went from Se7en to Fight Club with lots of murder…

Spoilers Below

After carefully re-watching the previous episode, It took me a while to figure out that the strange sound that both Senri & Takuru investigated in a video was from Serika’s toy-frog keychain, meaning Serika is the killer! Takuru sneaks to use a school computer but finds out the desk has a drawer full of the Sumo stickers that hinder him a bit before closing the drawer.

We then cut to Senri confronting Serika for her murders while figuring out she’s a telepath. As Senri demands more answers they duel with “Di-Swords” but the clashing sounds get Takuru’s attention. As their duel intensifies, Senri figures out she can read Serika’s mind as a side-effect of the D-swords which make them share each other’s memories each time the swords clash and learns that Serika goal is to appease Takuru’s personal desires. However Senri gets under Serika’s skin by pointing that Takuru would never want anyone to kill a helpless child but Serika’s excuse was to “make the game more exciting” so Senri deactivates her Di-sword and dares Serika to stab her.

By the Time Takuru makes it up to the rooftops, he’s too late to stop Serika as Senri is now wounded so out of sheer rage, Takuru’s Di-sword manifests but starts to experience an intense headache which buys Serika time to escape. Afterward Senri gets hospitalized while Takuru wakes up in Mio’s office after hearing news coverage that he’s the prime suspect for the murders he’s told to hide but takes comfort knowing that not everyone blindly thinks he’s a killer since Hinae, Mio, her assistant and Detective Shindou are helping him in secret.

When Takuru calls the clinic, Yuuto & Uki explain that the media is further surrounding their house and cops are raiding his room to collect evidence but worst of all their foster Dad who runs the clinic left without a trace.

Hinae advises Takuru to hang up so the phone convo doesn’t raise suspicion but tells them to “hang on abit longer” telling Hana to look after them. As Mio & Detective Shindou ask Takuru of Serika’s whereabouts but grows frustraited when Takuru can’t give an answer. Strangely this is intercut with scenes of Serika wounded & limping through the city streets but receives a phonecall.

We cut back at Mio’s office where where she figures out the bright white light that covered everyone during the earthquake and theorizes that’s how the Gigalomaniacs were created when she uncovers a link between the hospital that did those experiments and a Planetarium during the earthquake which awakened people’s Gigalomaniac powers, It turns out they also make people’s desires & thoughts become reality under moments of extreme stress as exemplified with Senri in episode 8.

As it intercuts with Serika still limping from an unexplained injury, Mio asks Takuru about his past with Serika and seeing how his memories are inconsistent with published medical records, But after finding an old school report from the 3rd grade, Mio suspects that Serika wasn’t real at all but Takuru’s Imaginary friend from his childhood made manifest from his powers the whole time!!

Our Take

Damn, the twists keep topping themelves! There was alot of ground to cover this episode but much like an episode of Drifters, I can see this as setting up the proverbial chess pieces for the writers to strategically make their move because we now have 3 episodes left and so far they’re choosing their movements carefully to keep the story compelling & suspensful. I can’t even tell if the writers are paying homage to Alfred Hitchcock or Chuck Palahniuk at this point.