Shangri-la - Episode 17

The end of the last instalment of Shangri-la left us with Takehiko pointing a gun at Kuniko's head - Surely this would be a waste of a bullet, when most of the world would be calling for him to point it at Momoko's head instead?


Anyhow, we soon learn the reason for this treachery, that being that Takehiko is... well, a traitor. Rather unconvincingly, we learn that this manly man was in fact working for Atlas all along, employed as nothing more than a security guard to keep Kuniko out of harm's way. Why would they want this? We've known this for some time now of course... Kuniko is a AAA citizen. No no, she isn't a battery, it means she's a possible successor to Atlas. Takehiko wants to kill Kuniko because Atlas sacrificed her sister (I assume to become Hiruko at some point), although really this makes absolutely no sense in myriad ways from this being absolutely nothing to do with Kuniko (who has been fighting against Atlas all along, remember Takehiko?) down to the fact that Takehiko would also have to kill Mikuni and idiot boy... err, I mean Kusanagi... to truly topple Atlas' plan. Speaking of Kusanagi, it is he who saves Takehiko, who then takes a topple into a nearby river, no doubt to reappear when a deus ex machina is next required.

Meanwhile, Karin has moved into a new role as the owner of Akihabara, which also sees her putting up Lady Mikuni and her assorted freak show. This does at least give us the amusing scene where Karin hires staff from Akihabara's maid cafes to use as Mikuni's servants, which doesn't really all that well - It seems that our Lady has forgotten about being a nice kid and has gone back to screwing up women like bits of paper if they annoy her. Most pressing all of all though is the growth of the Daedulus mushroom things, which are starting to render parts of the country (including a Metal Age base) uninhabitable with their toxic payload. Considering how easily Kuniko seems able to cut them down with her boomerang, and I can't help but wonder why she doesn't buy some more boomerangs - Instead however, she's looking to purchase another bomber, so no doubt we'll get to enjoy seeing another stealth bomber flown in broad daylight just to mess with my head again.

I suppose you can't argue that there's plot progression aplenty on show in this episode of Shangri-la, although on closer inspection it seems rather more like simply a reshuffling of some chess pieces over any genuine movement; or, as I prefer to think of it, it's more like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. It seems that no matter how hard they try, the script writers for this show just end up looking stupid - Their attempt at building any kind of emotion vis-a-vis Takehiko fails miserably, just like Takehiko's assassination plan which is so poorly thought-out that I suppose you can argue that it was at least in keeping with his oafish character. Still, Karin's comic turn amused me somewhat, so I suppose at least this episode wasn't a complete wash-out.