Did I miss an episode? When did Mikuni’s disaster relief efforts become a heinous offense? If I’m understanding it correctly, he’s been spending his mountains of Midas Money to mitigate the harmful effects of the reality warp. Somehow, he’s trading the potential benefits of his and all these people’s futures for the safety of their presents - - although the specifics are honestly a might confusing. Even if it’s only a temporary solution that might lead to hardship later, isn’t that still preferable to, you know, being wiped out of existence immediately? Yet Yoga’s righteously-indignant tirade before their fight would make it seem like he’s selling out the whole world for his personal again or some such. I have the creeping sense that this might be just the beginning of some frustration I’ll experience as the series wraps up.
And, you know, as much as I like how this world and its arcana parallel the principles of economics, my knee-jerk reaction to the weaponization of inflation in this episode is that it’s a flourish that pushes the whole conceit too far. The entre combat feels like some kind of cute board game, now. I don’t know, this is another one of those series where I am almost wish that I could see it after another rewrite that focused the plot a little more. There’s so much I enjoy about [C] – CONTROL, but I hate to say that it feels like it’s reaching too far to accomplish this amount of allegory in less than half the length of a regular series.
Of course, while we’re on the subject of allegories, my eyebrow raised some over the emergence of American financial market as something like the éminence grise of the [C] shockwaves the rest of the world experiences. Sure, we’re an economic super power and all, but if the intention of this show ends up being a none-too-subtly veiled criticism, I’d question how merited it is. Hasn’t Japan been enduring “lost decades” of recession on its own?
It was fun to see Masakaki get rocked by his Engrish-speaking counterpart, though.
Watch this episode “Collision" below, decide for yourself and then read my comments on the previous episode here.
Tom Pinchuk’s the writer of HYBRID BASTARDS! & UNIMAGINABLE. Order them on Amazon here & here. Follow him on Twitter: @tompinchuk
