Real Drive - Episode 20

After last episode's beyond miraculous developments, the twentieth instalment of Real Drive becomes something of a "Yay, Haru can walk again!" celebration. Mind you, I think I'd be throwing paper aeroplanes around like a mad thing after something like that too.


Aside from Haru's ability to walk once more, as he struggles to regain the ability to move around properly, Minamo finds herself thinking about the future - Will Haru need her once he can do everything for himself? Her friends answer to this dilemma seems simple enough... Why not get a cyberbrain? Here we learn that having a cyberbrain implanted only requires a couple of injections thanks to the joys of nanomachines - Sign me up!

So, Minamo goes for a medical to see if she's a suitable recipient of a cyberbrain, and while waiting for her test results meets a stranger who is oddly familiar in many ways... At the end of it all Minamo decides to stay as she is, which I suppose we're supposed to applaud as another triumph of nature over technology.

Once again, this wasn't a hugely deep or exciting episode, although it does highlight the kind of "digital divide" that already exists in the world we live in, only taken to greater extremes. Right now you and I reading this have an obvious advantage in many facets of life thanks to our knowledge and ability to use the Internet to its fullest potential, but will the next generation leave us behind and struggling as technology improves? It's these little questions and thoughts which spring into my mind which gives me a little appreciation for Real Drive as a series - It hasn't been a particularly fantastic show at any point during its twenty episodes so far, but at least it has provoked some thought and discussion in my case, so that I don't have to class it as a complete write-off. That is however meagre pickings compared to the potential which this show has had to offer, so in a wider sense it continues to disappoint me.