English Dub Review: Chaos;Child “Her Words”

The episode title isn’t very specific on who’s words exactly…

Spoilers Below

The opening starts with a random scene of what looks like pink-haired pigtailed girl subjected to a SAW-style death trap in a straight-jacket and a ball-gag in her mouth trying to say “help me” before it cuts to the main Intro.

As a major call-back to episode 2 that was strangely ignored in episode 3, Takuru, Serika, and Shinji received an anonymous tip on the whereabouts of the artist who made the Sumo Stickers and this lead is to a hospital where the artist is supposedly in a coma but instead of actually visiting the place in the daytime during visiting hours, They instead “Solid Snake” their way into the building late night.

Predictably, as it happens in a cliche spooky & empty hospital, they quickly get lost while looking for the emergency stairs and out of nowhere Serika says she might know where to go and they end up finding them but when they enter a random hall, they see what looks like Zombies chasing after them and run into the “Autopsy Room”. The three get into an argument on where to hide as the sounds of moaning zombies is getting closer, and Serika suggests they hide in the body freezer with Takuru sharing a space with her so she doesn’t get scared.

Takuru & Serika decide to share a space while Shinji hides in a separate freezer slot and in a legitimately tension-filled scene, the Zombies for some reason are smart enough to open the autopsy freezer slots opening one after another until one of them finds Shinji which is heavily implied by his screams of terror.

As it turns out, none of it even happened! Takuru’s sanity comes into question because there was no Zombies whatsoever and just normal people walking around with him seeing a small young girl guiding a group of people into what looks like a hidden door. As they get Shinji out, he’s understandably freaked the fuck out because there was a corpse with him.

They approach the hidden door trying their damnedest to figure out how to open it in search of answers, Serika out of dumb luck notices the door isn’t all the way closed due to a piece of fabric from closing properly and they open it leading to a dark set of stairs downwards with Takuru proceeding to tell Serika & Shinji to wait for him as he’s going first because he thinks whatever secrets are hidden down there are tied with the warnings Nono pleaded to him.

Takuru treads carefully, he starts to have random hallucinations showing child versions of both himself & Serika and then the SAW-Style imagery from earlier with Takuru screaming in pain which in the process causes the other two quite freak the fuck out. It’s easy to assume that Takuru is undergoing the most pain as his breakdown has quickly elevated to disturbing visions with shocking & horrifying imagery of his friends being killed & Maimed in combination with what looks like seizures that vaguely hint a history between Takuru & Serika.

Since Takuru can’t stop spazzing the fuck out due to the overwhelming nature of these hallucinations, he unintentionally gets on everyone’s nerves but most of all Mio’s, who just happens to be following them in secret during their stealth mission in the hospital.

Mio does her best to quell Takuru’s loudness and after explaining that she has her own reasons for being in this building, she leads them down a hallway full of dark & gritty David Fincher-style prison-cells lit with green fluorescent lighting and a random old unhinged woman with unkempt hair pushing an empty baby carriage (Damn that scene was creepy!) Mio finds the room they’re all looking for and leads Takuru’s crew towards a highly-advanced computer room containing with neon blue lights & multiple monitors containing all kinds of records.

Mio then goes into an exposition/infodump about the hospital showing random images which turn out to be Rorschach imagery and as Mio digs deeper, she learns that the place they’ve sneaked their way into is a base of research that performed clinical trials on “brain science” in order for the subject to develop “psychic powers” with one of the side-effects includes “An effect induced by the amplification of delusions” Wait, Doesn’t this seem a lot like what Takuru eerily has?

Mio explains that these experiments have been going on for quite sometime and the Hospital was built to hide their unethical experiments but were shut down after a certain incident “six years ago” on the specific date of that oddly specific Earthquake everyone keeps talking about.

Mio explains that this hospital was largely unaffected when the shit went down but the incident that fucked with the hospital’s experiments involving the “11th Rorschach” image. As they look to see what this “11th Rorschach” looks like, it turns out to be the “Sumo Sticker”
which causes Takuru to scream again but Mio quickly turns off the Monitors which stops his pain.

Mio then looks up the test results of this Rorschach and it says ” It was learned that those with potential to cause ‘event variations’ react differently”. The first who reacted to that was the ball-gag girl in the beginning who’s name is revealed to be Senri Minamisawa, Test Subject 79, whose records deem her in a “missing” state.

While Mio expresses her disdain towards Takuru, she’s aware that Takuru has some sort of connection with the girl who apparently had a different response to the “Sumo Sticker” Rorschach and supposedly went missing during the earthquake which consequently lead to the rest of the facility to shut down.

Shinji asks how are there’s still people in the building despite the facility no longer doing experiments and Mio responds explains that the facility is now used as an “underground prison” for the failed experimental subjects who’s brains got scrambled with a number of them being forced into “solitary confinement”.

As Mio explains that there’s approximately 20 inmates, Takuru notices the girl in the Image and Serika & Takuru are quick to recognize her while they were hiding in the morgue who’s name turns out to be “Uki Yamazoe” and Mio figures out Uki herself was one of the survivors of the experiments who didn’t lose her sanity with her job now being a caretaker for the inmates.

Of course before they can go further into the plot, Mio quickly has to leave because she figures Security at some point will show up to stop them so she declares that they’re going to get Uki before leaving.When they encounter Uki she’s understandably alarmed by the presence of strangers grabbing her and the patients proceed to freak the fuck out in the background while Uki turns down Mio’s offer to leave the building.

Mio isn’t having it and proceeds to head-lock the poor girl into submission knocking her out and they all plan to leave but Mio says to them that it’s on them if they get caught telling Takuru and his crew to “Keep up”. As they leave Mio estimates that they’ll be searching at some point due to the uproar of the screaming patients being unattended and they finally get to her mini-van with Mio’s assistant surprisingly waiting for her.

As they drive away, Mio vaguely mentions something called a “Di-Sword” saying they were unable to create it with the experiments being codenamed “Gigalomaniacs” which was deemed a failure so she’s curious on how someone like this little girl (Uki) could survive them. Shinji suggests that Uki should stay with the Journalism Club and the episode ends with Mio taking them up on their offer while Uki quietly cries to herself.

Overview:

The hallucinations that Takuru are receiving vaguely hint at this but it’s heavily implied that Takuru at some point in his past was a patient in this hospital but we’ll see what this will lead towards in upcoming episodes.

If I had any minor complaints, It’s that this episode should’ve picked up where episode 2 left off because episode 3 was a bit distracting due to Nono’s quick recovery after being shanked from behind. Also what the fuck is a “Di-Sword”? Hopefully, we’ll find out as the plot progresses.

It should be interesting to see how they’ll handle taking care of a pre-teen with potential psychic abilities and I wouldn’t be surprised if the cops receive a kidnapping report from a hospital without the hospital trying to implicate themselves. Above all episode 4 was very intriguing. Plus the horrific imagery that we’re seeing through Takuru’s eyes sets the appropriate tone & gritty atmospherics which is arguaby the textbook example of psychological horror, done right.