badger11’s take on anime

Akihabara@DEEP 5

This is a rather dark episode. We see a group of people wishing a guy “Bad luck”. One of them is holding a laptop and we can barely see that it’s Yui’s website. We see a quick shot of the laptop’s screen which also says “Bad Luck” right above Yui’s usually positive message of “The only way is up”. The next day, Izumu is writing about their experiences on her computer. It looks like she’s actually writing on Yui’s website. Akira comes into the shop and Izumu hides the website. Akira just bought two huge bags worth of Umaibos and she wanted to drop them off for Izumu and the guys before heading off to the maid cafe, Akanechan.
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The guys are out of the office in a toy shop, drooling over a display case of limited edition Onegai Teacher figurines. A pretty girl passes by the guys in the toy shop and they become nervous like any stereotypical otaku is supposed to. As the girl is buying a toy figure, Page recognizes her as a new waitress at the maid cafe that Akira works act. In an alley, Mizuki, the girl opens the doll and pulls out a bag of pills. She runs into the same group from the start of the show. They congratulate her on becoming a life member of their group and the leader holds up a laptop showing Yui’s website. Yui asks Mizuki if she received the drugs.

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Izumu and the guys are back in the @DEEP office where Box is reading about a string of recent suicides in Akihabara. As they talk, Daruma points out that the suicides started happening after Yui’s website disappeared. He suggests that there might be people who depended on her help, just like all of the members of Akihabara@DEEP. At the maid cafe, Mizuki starts to get sick so she heads into the dressing room for more pills. Akira startles her and Mizuki drops the pills. At the same time, she gets a text message from the group that she joined earlier in the show. They’re calling an emergency meeting. Mizuki leaves early, using her sudden dizziness as an excuse. After she left, Akira finds a pill that Mizuki missed.

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Over at the Nakagomi’s corporate building, he calls Tohsaka, apparently the top hacker/programmer, into his office. Nakagomi wants Tohsaka to investigate the sudden reappearance of Yui’s website. Outside of a Karoake place, Mizuki shows up to the emergency meeting of her group. A member of the group has decided to commit suicide with Yui’s support and everyone’s help. Apparently, this is the purpose of the group. Mizuki watches as the girl swallows a handful of the drugs and the rest of the group cheers her on by saying “Bad luck”. After dealing with the body, the group gets a message from Yui about the next person to die. The message suggests that the youngest girl will be the next one. The group congratulates Mizuki and gives her a few days to decide when she wants to die.

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Akira finds out from Azita, the street vendor, and Satty, his wife, that the drug is a new and popular illegal drug called “Mary-san”. Akira heads back the @DEEP office where she finds Mizuki standing outside. Mizuki shows the group Yui’s website. They’re stunned that not only does this website look the website they all visited before meeting Yui, but there’s also a Yui who runs it. She tells them that she went there after several visits, Yui suggested that Mizuki start taking Mary-san to help her get over the breakup she had with her boyfriend. The team realizes that this is a fake Yui. They’re outraged that some is using Yui’s name and a similar looking website to sell drugs and kill people. Izumu tries to hack into the website but fails. She suggest contacting another hacker to help her. The other hacker turns out to be Tohsaka, the same guy who is working for Nakagomi. He also couldn’t break into the fake Yui’s website. Izumu and Page meet Tohsaka at his office where they see the fake Yui’s website on his monitor. He tells them that Nakagomi wants him to find out who the fake Yui is.

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As Izumu and Tohsaka hack the website, the rest of the team tries to find out who the fake Yui is. They place an order on the fake website under Mizuki’s name. The pick-up for the drugs is at the same shop that the guys first saw Mizuki at. They get to the shop and find the same doll that Mizuki bought earlier. After they buy it, the open it, expecting to find the drugs, but it’s empty. They get a message from the fake Yui asking if they got the drugs. They tell her no and ask for a second delivery. A meet is set for the next day. After waiting for a log time the team realize that their plan has failed. Unknown to them, they’re being watched. Izumu and Tohsaka are still hacking into the site when they find a message from fake Yui to the members of the suicide group. Fake Yui’s message tells the group that Mizuki has betrayed them and they need to execute her. Fake Yui orders them to throw her off a building. Izumu lets the group know and they rush over to Izumu’s apartment where the members from the suicide group have taken her to the top of the building. Two members are about to throw Mizuki off the building when the team burst through the door. The @DEEP team can’t get any information about the fake Yui from the suicide group as they don’t know anything. The team realizes that they’ve been set-up. Page develops a suspicion about who the Fake Yui is and the set out to capture the fake Yui.

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As I mentioned earlier, this was a dark episode. And I’ll admit it, I didn’t figure out who the fake Yui was until the team revealed who the fake Yui was. I can understand the reason why fake Yui set out to ruin the real Yui’s name, but that doesn’t absolve the responsibility of causing several deaths and selling drugs. I’ve also got mixed feelings about the decisions that the team and Nakagomi made. Interestingly enough, I think those decisions are true to the characters.

I enjoy this show. It seems that the actors bring an enjoyable humor to their roles and that’s one of the reasons why I like it. Let’s admit it, this isn’t exactly a complicated show, but that doesn’t mean that its a bad show.

I’m curious, though, as to what’s Nakagomi’s interest/relation to Yui.

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