Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 - Episode 7

With Mari having recovered from her dual crises of conscience and anemia, it looks like it's Yuuki's turn to take the brunt of the hardship in episode seven of Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, in the face of reports that the earthquake in question here has now surpassed that of the Great Kanto earthquake in terms of deaths and casualties.

However, for a while in this episode the entire thing seems kind of fun, as Yuuki finds himself meeting another robot enthusiast in the form of a middle school student the same age as Mirai named Kento Nonomiya, a guy who Mirai labels as a robot "otaku" on account of his interest in said machines.


Kento and those robots appear repeatedly throughout the episode, although this is offset against Yuuki apparantly suffering, and collapsing from, heatstroke, giving us something else to worry about as the authorities finally seem to be getting the city's fires under control while the aftershocks become less intense.

In a sense, Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 seems to be finding it harder to discover angles to cover by the week, with this robot-centric episode proving to be interesting withough managing to convey the same sense of reality as previous instalments and feeling a little more like a flight of fantasy thanks to its use of middle school kids chasing after robots. That said, the overall treatment of the earthquake scenario continues to be plausible, and the more practical human issues surrounding such a major disaster continue to be about as compelling as you can make them in dramatic, animated form, complete with a cliff-hanger to leave us worrying until next week - A sense of worry which is perhaps a good a validation as to the quality of this series as any.