Darker than BLACK: Ryuusei no Gemini - Episode 5

As per usual, Darker than BLACK: Ryuusei no Gemini wastes little time in getting straight to the important stuff for its fifth episode, as Kirihara quickly stumbles across some important information. Perhaps most interestingly, this information includes mention of an "anti-contractor" weapon, as seen at the end of the original series of Darker than BLACK and seemingly a similar technology to whatever was used against Hei at the point where his star dropped out of the sky. That aside, Kirihara also learns about something codenamed "Izanami", and no sooner does Section 3's newest member learn this name she finds herself as part of a team tasked with its transport.


Meanwhile, Suou continues to train, improving and honing her contractor skills as much as possible, while even Hei appears to have picked up on her decidedly un-contractor-like behaviour at times as she continues to display some surprising moments of emotion far away from the ice-cold logic expected of contractors. Hei tries to help Suou "grow up" along these lines by getting her to kill a living thing with her rifle, but even this reduces her to tears that she can't quite understand herself. This is probably the last thing Hei needs right now, as he finds his employers requesting that he use Suou for a job - One which seems to also involve the mysterious "Izanami", although even this task has to be tempered with Hei and company escaping the attentions of a contractor and her associates, a contractor whose existence is surprisingly close to home for their cross-dressing host.

As we've come to expect from Darker than BLACK, this latest episode of Ryuusei no Gemini delights in building up yet more layers of mystery over the already quite hefty tome of curiosities which exist within the franchise. Similarly as per usual for this series, we're also dished up an expertly crafted mixture of occasional but spectacular bursts of action set against a backdrop of cold, hard logic ramming up hard against human emotion and the importance of such feelings for both contractors and "normal" humans alike. It's a heady mix, but once again it works effortlessly here, as this series continues to become more compelling to watch by the week.