Shangri-la - Episode 21

The end of the last episode of Shangri-la saw the United Nations drop a huge amount of explosives onto Akihibara (and more precisely Karin's home), instantly killing everybody within range of the blast. Oh, and apart from pretty much everybody, and in particular all of the show's important characters who somehow manage to survive entirely unscathed.

These survivors include Mikuni, who is protected by Miko (who is pretty much the only person who does die here) before finding herself whisked away to Atlas on the whims of Ryoko and Karin, who somehow manages to escape despite her building having taken a direct hit just before the whole thing collapses.


As Kuniko and the ever-annoying Momoko arrive at the scene, so the former bumps into Karin and convinces her that she can't give up in her attempts to stop Medusa. While Karin is adamant there's nothing more she can do, Kuniko knows just the kind of annoying idiots who can help them, and lo and behold said irritating otaku stereotypes just so happen to have a secret, hidden underground layer packed with all the hardware and network connectivity required to try and hack Medusa. Really, they should have just called it "the deus ex machina" room or something, but then again maybe they're saving that for the other trick they have up their sleeve which is hinted at towards the close of this episode. Speaking of Medusa, it's obviously been watching far too many re-runs of the Terminator movies, as it's decided that taking control of all the world's atomic weapons to create a nuclear apocalypse is the way forward. Jeez, you'd have thought this super intelligent AI would at least think of something original, wouldn't you?

While this wasn't such a bad episode in pure entertainment terms, once you take the dangerous step of actually starting to think about the whole thing you soon realise that it's packed to the rafters with nonsense and those aforementioned dei ex machina; surviving characters who should by rights be deader than a very dead thing, hidden server rooms that could have resolved this series about fifteen episodes ago and other various moments that make you want to slap your forehead with your palm and shout "gah!" out loud. It's this complete lack of thought that has gone into the nuances of Shangri-la that's ruined it utterly, although to be honest I'm well used to it by now. No matter how much I try to ignore it however, I simply can't.