English Dub Review: Megalobox 2 – Nomad “Una sola mano no basta para vivir, pero aun así la forma de vivir prevalece”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Joe and the kids continue work on restoring the gym, though Sachio still hasn’t come around. Yukiko has ROSCO investigated, though Sakuma tries his best to cover his tracks. Mac reads the story of the Nomad and the Hummingbird to his son, but is concerned about what the chip in his head is doing to him. Sakuma tries to get his spirits up and pushes him to challenge Joe to a title match.

OUR TAKE

Where last episode was about shifting to the next part of the story, mainly signified by Mac very suddenly taking the champion title from Liu, this episode is about gearing up for the next big development. Joe is still rebuilding his connections with the kids, even if Sachio is a bit of a hold out, but that will get its own time next episode. We do get some attention on it here, with the two of them having a tense visit to Nanbu’s grave and Sachio remembering Nanbu’s last words to him about Joe, but it’s mainly set up for next time. The main gist here is that Joe is trying to find inner peace and rebuild his bridges as best he can, even maintaining a friendship with Liu, who is inspired by Joe and plans to recover quickly for the match between them that was promised, even if he was told he wouldn’t recover fully. Yuri’s not really thrilled about that, but it was Joe’s unshakeable hope and spirit that inspired him too once upon a time. And probably most importantly, that hope isn’t about trying to hold onto the past but about striding towards a better future, even if it doesn’t seem likely at the moment.

Mac, meanwhile, is not in nearly as healthy a place. He’s finally become the champ like he had wanted and made his family proud, but he can tell that something is up with the BES if he’s losing time and having odd fits. And he’s not the only one, as Mikio’s research and raising a big stink about it is starting to show the cracks in ROSCO’s armor. We get confirmation that Sakuma is fudging reports to cover up for these defects, the reason for that being in order to maintain viability to military contractors, as Yukiko susses out. Sakuma is actually a lot like Yukiko in the first season when she was hellbent on using Yuri to show the power of her family’s gear, though in contrast, I think if the gear Yuri wore had any of the dangers the BES chip has on Mac, she probably would have cared enough to stop that instead carrying on without regard for his safety. Sakuma proves to be much more insidious, listening to Mac’s concerns with a kind face but instead pushing him to take on another match for publicity, putting Joe in his crosshairs.

And finally, we should talk about the fable Mac reads his son, The Hummingbird and the Nomad. In it, a wandering nomad is on a journey to die but a Hummingbird finds him and says that if it can get the man to lie, he’ll have to listen to the bird’s song. The bird asks why the nomad wants to die, to which he says he has lost everything. The bird says that this is a lie, as the man is still alive. The man agrees to listen to the song, which briefly gives his soul warmth. It is a story about finding hope again even everything has seemingly been lost, something that is reflected in many of the characters in this season including Chief, Yuri, and Liu, but most importantly for this episode, Joe and Mac. At the beginning of the season, we saw Joe seemingly at the end of his rope, but then pull himself back together bit by bit. Mac, based on his backstory, has also hit rock bottom but has been able to rebuild himself, though it seems to be with a fatal flaw. And now these two men are on a collision course to see who is truly rebuilt. Find out next time how Joe responds to this latest challenge.