English Dub Review: ID – Invaded “Thunderbolted”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Matsuoka arrives to investigate the premises of The Challenger (AKA Denshin Katsuyama), picking up Cognition Particles easily from both him and Narihisago, who killed him on sight, indicating his immense drive to kill from that moment on which could have been influenced by John Walker. They use his particles to give Hondomachi her first Id Well dive as her own brilliant detective, Miyo Hijiriido. Like Narihisago and Fukuda, she also sees Kaeru (who she is handcuffed to) upon entering the well, which is represented as a long stretch of numbered panels which are struck by lightning every nine seconds, including whichever people are standing on them. Each person has a personal connection to Narihisago, with a version of him already killed while his wife and daughter are still alive. Before moving on to solve the case, she inspires the Muku in the well to make their world a better place.

While Inami questions Fukuda about his head hole and its connection to Kazuta, Narihisago is somehow aware that his well is being used, worried that Hondomachi might encounter John Walker. While she doesn’t see that, she DOES find a Kura cockpit within the well, which shouldn’t happen. Its user is listed as Kiki Asukai, known as The Challenger’s last victim. Not knowing any better, Hijiriido uses the cockpit to enter a well within a well. And things only go from bad to worse as investigators rush in to accuse Momoki of being John Walker based on a body buried in his yard identified as Nishio Shirakoma, the inventor of the Mizuhaname. While no one on the team buys this accusation for even a second, they have to continue the operation even with Momoki arrested, placing Togo as the new director. She meets with Narihisago about their findings and Momoki’s arrest, which just sends him into a rage and demand he enter Momoki’s well when possible. Finally, the remaining members of the team figure out that the number order being struck by lightning is in the order of a sequence in pi.

OUR TAKE

Hondomachi dons the detective’s cap for the first time and the results go…about as well as predicted really. She’s not nearly as damaged in the had as Fukuda/Anaido, so it doesn’t seem like her head hole is effecting her that much, but she’s still quite the novice and an idealist. Then again, I doubt anyone could have really expected another cockpit to appear within a well. Given that Narihisago has used the cockpit the most out of any of the characters so far, it would make sense for a representation of it to show up…but the problem is that this well is meant to be made up of particles from before the project started, or at least before he was instated into it. Not to mention he was seemingly aware of their use of his well, which may be just because he deducted it being used with his own detective skill OR that the connection between killers and their wells is more complicated than we once thought.

Regardless, it was neat to see inside HIS head for once, with a bit of an expected result of his body being burnt (likely representing his old life being taken from him once he killed The Challenger) while his family lives on in his mind as representing his still living hope. Also interesting that his younger self, resembling Sakaido, is now dead alongside Kaeru and probably put her next to Hondomachi before dying himself. It’s a pretty interesting subversion of the patterns we’ve come to be adjusted to within this show (and with how weird things have been, finding patterns to grab onto is pretty impressive). Now we’ve had Sakaido in Hondomachi’s well and Hijiriido in Narihisago’s well. We just need for Hijiriido to go into Fukuda’s for some reason and we’ll have every combination! And I think I’d want more exploration of Hondomachi’s well would be good too, as well as paying off that “don’t cross the streams” moment of not going into your own well that they’ve set up.

And things look to be only getting more entangled as we tackle this show’s first Well-Ception next time. What will that look like? How is it connected to everything? What’s with all of these twists coming at once? Does anyone really think that Momoki could possibly be John Walker when I still have my life savings bet on it being Narihisago? More things we can hopefully cover in the back half.