No.6 Episode 1 Review

No.6 starts out captivating enough, with a boy running through what appears to be sewers, with two other men chasing him and bullets flying past his head.  Suddenly, after he reaches a dead end, the scene changes completely.  Now, a high-rise classroom and a brown haired boy stare back at us.  As the teacher drones on, his attention wanders to the window, and the forest outside. Suddenly, he's suspended in air- floating, with leaves being whipped passed him, and the wind's force growing.  As the clouds grey over, in preparation for a storm, his body begins to dissolve. His arms and legs rapidly turn to sakura blossoms.

And then the dream is shattered. The classroom returns, two students are fighting with another student who has been in the middle of a presentation. They had apparently been talking, and she became annoyed. The shouting match progresses to a physical assault until two teachers arrive to restore order.

Later, on a ferry, the girl, Safu,  and the brown haired boy, whose name we discover is Shion, discuss the incident. This is the 1st time the truly thought provoking side of this anime comes into focus, as Shion goes into a very brief discussion of mankind's limitations and those we impose on ourself-

 Mankind only recognizes itself as such by the conception of self placed upon it by society.

And so he continues, until the boat reaches it's moorings. From there the two briefly talk about a typhoon that passed through sector six that day.

Safu and Shion go and visit their grandmother, who presents Shion with a birthday present- a sweater that matches the one Safu wears but with introverted colors.  After a small party, as Shion is leaving, he and Safu are outside, when the "Moondrop Cries".  The Moondrop seems to be a large building with a net like framework around it and antenna.

Then, after a quick flashback to the boy being shot at (when are we going to find out why?!), we change to Shion's house.  Shion throws open the windows, and along with rain and wind, comes the Moondrop's cry.  Then something inside the house rings, and Shion goes in to answer. Using a bracelet that seems to control most everything in their world, he turns the alarm off. When he turns back around, the boy, gunshot wound and all, is standing in his open doorway.

Immediately, he attempts to strangle Shion, warning him not to move. Shion is only released after offering to help him treat the wound on his left arm. The strangle hold returns when the phone rings again. Using the bracelet to answer, Shion begins a conversation with his mother. Using a report as his excuse, Shion hangs up.

While he is treating the wound, their topic of conversation turns to Shion's education. At age 2, Shion apparently passed his IQ tests with astounding scores, entered a prestigious academy, and now, at age twelve, he will be entering a Special Course class.

Nedzumi, or Rat as it translates, reveals that he had been shot as part of a "hunting club". There's a catch; this club hunts humans. As Rat is changing, we see that he has something like burns on his back.

Later that day, an escaped prisoner report comes in. The subject escaped in the Lost Town area while being transferred. It is thought he fled toward Chronos. And of course, our dear friend Rat is the same escaped prisoner.

 

Rat has a VC chip inside him, it's basically a tracker, so the search system should be easily able to track him down.  Rat tenses to fight when he is confronted with his true identity, VC103221, but instead, Shion hands him some soup and cherry cake.  Shion asks him about the VC chip, which Rat claims has long since stopped working. He equates all of Sector No. 6 to a toy.  Rat tells him most of what he heard in the safety report was a lie, and then warns him of the dangers of housing a criminal.

So naturally a police car shows up at their house the next morning. And that's where the episode cuts off. Even though No.6 had a slow start, things seem to be picking up. The next episode will be worth watching, I think.