English Dub Review: Scarlet Nexus “The Design Children”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Yuito and Kasane are trapped in Togetsu, and they strange religious extremists are after the red strings they both share. Yuito almost gets his brain hijacked by the BABE computer, but Kasane steps in to save him just in time. Determined to escape, the groups strike out to find each other. Kasane’s platoon runs into Kyoka, however, and a near-fatal battle ensues. Luckily, Kyoka realizes that she’s not acting right and has a bit of a mental crisis. Afterwards, the two platoons unite and Kagero gives them yet another unexpected revelation.

Our Take:

How do you know you’re watching an episode of Scarlet Nexus? When unknown assailants are trying to hijack Yuito’s brain within the first sixty seconds of the runtime. This show just keeps getting crazier! The Design Children isn’t really a very exciting episode in that there’s not a whole lot of action to it, but there’s a ton of weird facts and strange twists crammed into its length.

The first scene of the ep takes us back where we left off a few weeks ago. Yuito has been led to a supercomputer by the helpful Togetsu folks, and he’s frozen in place as someone or something tries to, and I quote, “hijack his brain”. Curse those red strings! Kasane uses “brain talk” to give him a heads-up, and he’s able to escape just in the nick of time. Those red strings are important because they allow them to travel through time.

The rest of the episode’s first half finds Kasane locked in a battle with Kyoka. It’s probably the most interesting part, since there’s both action and mystery here. Kyoka was a captain with the OSF and Kasane tells her that she’s the one who taught her about leadership. A fond feeling isn’t the only thing they share, though, because we find out by the end of the episode that they’re both so-called Design Children—clones of the Togetsu faith founder, a neuroscientists named Pope. Kyoka apparently has some of Pope’s memories, which becomes important in the final scene.

Kasane and Yuito finally reconnect and his squad members demand an explanation for her apparent assassination attempt, which, fair. It’s a little weird though, because she assures them she isn’t going to kill Yuito, and then lets them know that she was about to kill Yuito before because his future self demanded it to save humanity. The two of them opened the Kunad Gate while traveling on the Kunad Highway, and it’s only going to keep expanding unless something happens to Yuito. But I guess Kasane has decided to ignore his future warnings for now?

In that final scene, we come back to Kagero. I’ve always said his hasty retreat and return seemed a bit suspicious, and know that’s confirmed by the fact that Kyoka has him in her Pope memories. That means he’s super old, and in fact, he goes ahead and tells everyone that he was one of the first humans who came to Earth from the moon. What’s his game? Who knows, but he’s got both of the red string brains on a space ship called an Ark, so I’m sure he’s feeling pretty happy about how things are playing out at the moment.