Both of these shows just turned corners and got a lot more interesting. Spoilers, loads of, below the fold.

In Houkago no Pleiades, we find out what's going on with the alien spaceship. They're handwaving a bunch of stuff from quantum mechanics, and let's see if I can make it intelligible:

They're embracing the "multiple universes" interpretation of quantum mechanics. The aliens lost their world and were looking for another, but even in all the universes they couldn't find one. So they built a gigantic ship with something akin to the "Infinite Improbability Drive" and used it to put the ship (and their entire population) into a state of quantum uncertainty, right out of Heisenberg. As a result, it doesn't have any current location (because they're using the power of the engine to prevent the wave function from collapsing) and that gives them all what amounts to suspended animation because while they're in that state time doesn't pass. I think that was how it went.

In that state they're waiting until a suitable planet appears, somewhere.

But when the engine blew up, the ship ceased to be able to prevent its wave function from collapsing -- and in this episode it started to appear, initially in the form of a ring around the Earth. By the end of the episode, the blue blob used as many of the pieces of the engine as they already had to put the ship back into quantum uncertainty, so the crisis is averted for the moment. They have 8 of them, and there are five more.

As to the red-headed boy? Well, there are two of them. The one with the horns is not the same as the one in the conservatory that Subaru keeps meeting. So far the one in the conservatory has been keeping out of events, beyond his occasional meetings with Subaru, but in this episode he finally does get involved. And at the end of the episode they meet each other. The next time Subaru finds the conservatory it's black and dead, except for one flower which is blooming. She takes it away, in tears, and plants it outside the school.

The five girls we've been following are all from different realities; that's established. The alien, or something, has pulled them all together into the same reality so they can accomplish this task. I think they're hinting that the two boys are different versions of the same person from different realities, but it's possible that they're hinting at them being God and Satan. The next episode ought to clear a lot more up, but maybe not.

And one dangling question that won't be answered until the last episode: Once the task is complete, will the five girls return to their own timelines, or stay together? That's particularly poignant for Subaru and Aoi, because in their respective timelines they became estranged.

Punchline 6 revives my interest in that series. The comedy and fan service in the first episode was a fake-out; that's not what it's about. It's a good old-fashioned time travel story, my friends, and in this episode Yuuta makes his last trip backwards.

I think this is pretty cool: Yuuta is caught in a time loop trying to prevent the Sweet Meteor of Death from destroying the planet. On December 21, Yuuta is ejected from his body by some spirit falling from the sky, that takes over his body. Who was it?

It was Yuuta himself, and in this episode he just did it. We have a bit of nomenclature problem here: there's a critical conversation at the end of this episode between Yuuta-spirit and Yuuta-flesh, who can see Yuuta-spirit and talk to him. Yuuta-flesh gives Yuuta-spirit that book he was told he needed in order to reoccupy his body. This happens on December 31, with the meteor glowing red in the sky, minutes before it strikes.

Yuuta-spirit has learned what's going to happen, and now he goes back to December 21 and occupies his own body, with the goal of using the next ten days to prevent the catastrophe.

So why was it that his getting excited in spirit form resulted in the planet being destroyed? Because it prevented him from completing the time loop, I think, though why that is the case isn't at all clear. But they may have more surprises in store for us; the series is only half over. However, it looks like what's coming now is him living through that week-and-a-half again, this time in his own body but with knowledge of the future, and trying to prevent the catastrophe.

The big mystery at this point is, who is the cat? I'm still betting it's the spirit of that old man who built the robot, but it remains to be seen.

After Yuuta-spirit leaves on December 31, Yuuta-flesh makes comments that imply that this loop has happened a lot of times, never successfully stopping the meteor. But it's implied that it runs differently each time, and the hope is that eventually it will come out well. By presumption we're following the version of the loop which works -- but that's not guaranteed. (I cite Magikano.)

Like ep 5, ep 6 had no fan service and no comedy, and I suspect that we won't get any more in this series until after the meteor is stopped, if even then. I'm not sure why they even bothered putting it in the first episode. If it's a case of bait-and-switch it's particularly cynical. At least in Divergence Eve they played the fan service straight and didn't let it affect the story.

The whole business of Yuuta-spirit getting sexually excited and the next thing we see is a wasteland; that appears to be a complete contrivance solely for purposes of allowing them to insert blatant fan service in the first couple of episodes. If so, that's bad writing.

Both shows could still turn into trainwrecks, especially Punchline. Time travel stories are notoriously difficult to get right if you embrace the grandfather paradox, which this one is doing. But I am encouraged by what I'm seeing and I think they'll both turn out OK.

I have a feeling Punchline is going to turn out like Divergence Eve, where we all say, "It was good, but it would have been even better without all the fan service."

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 03:43 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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