English Dub Review: The Millionaire Detective – Balance: UNLIMITED “The Sinews of War are Infinite Money”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Haru meets Kikuko Kambe, Daisuke’s grandmother after getting back from their Hong Kong trip. Later Haru informs Daisuke that he’s going on a business trip to Nagoya and tells him not to cause any “undue stress” with his methods. On the train, Haru sits next to a young guy and strikes up a conversation with him before getting off the train. Suddenly everyone is requested to exit the station and Haru goes up to a station employee and asks about the situation. The station employee informs him that someone has taken a group of people hostage in the train.

Haru goes to the train and realizes that the person taking the passengers hostage is the same guy that he sat next to on the train earlier. Unable to persuade the man from letting the passengers go, Haru is forced to leave only to run into the First Division and he is forced out of the crime scene where Daisuke waits for his arrival. Then the two sneak onto the train with the help of Daisuke’s smokescreen and Haru attempts to reason with the young guy again. Meanwhile, the passengers are ladies motivated to see their favorite band, Yokoights and they form a crowd around the hostage-taker until Daisuke pays for the band to perform near the train while gets the ladies to scramble to the windows. Daisuke tells the man that he’s under arrest and that he’ll see that her sister’s surgery is taken care of. Afterward, the chief and Haru’s former colleague thank the duo for their assistance before Daisuke drives off.

 

Our Take:

Admittedly I was expecting a big crime to happen on their trip to Hong Kong, but we’re shown our duo with Suzue visiting Daisuke’s grandmother, Kikuko Kambe after the trip. They bring dessert as their souvenir while Kikuko makes matcha tea as she asks how Daisuke’s doing at his new workplace. Haru tells how Daisuke’s creative methods tend to give him stress which Kikuko berates Daisuke for. Haru gets a kick out of it even though Daisuke gets a bit of payback by driving really quickly much to Haru’s panic.

In this episode, we get more on the incident that pushed Haru out of the First Division. When Haru meets his former colleague in the First Division after exiting the train car of hostages. He’s reminded of the hostage incident at a bank that forced him to take a position where he couldn’t fire a gun. Then the transition from that memory to the train car was a subtle method on how both of the situations are similar. In that bank, he accidentally shot one of the hostages in a bank robbery after they picked up the gun that the robber was holding. The brief flashback to that memory during the scene where he’s pointing the gun at the hostage-taker was a great display of how that incident cripples his ability to use the gun.

Additionally, the episode shows that Haru is softening up to Daisuke’s methods when he asks for his help to make sure that no one dies. Haru’s instincts tell him and Daisuke by extension that the young hostage-taker isn’t the type to kill anyone. This is the first episode where he uses HEUSC to find out more about the hostage-taker’s situation by going through his emails on his sister’s surgery. It helps Haru in getting the hostage-taker to falter in comparison to his former colleague’s methods of negotiation. Haru’s gut is proven right when the hostage-taker’s gun is revealed to be a model gun. Then Daisuke tells the young criminal that he’s being arrested for his actions like how an officer would normally do.

Now the episode shows a great persistence in the passengers that were taken hostage with their love for their favorite band. It unexpectedly turns the tense situation around with the arrival of the Yokoights performing on the side of a building. Furthermore, the hostage-taker’s purpose for his crime was to get ten million views on Chaintube in order to pay for his sister’s surgery. It’s interesting to see the lengths people will go to for their goals in that situation along with how social media is used.

At the end of the episode HEUSC, Daisuke’s AI deleted all the footage from the stream just as the young guy was shown in the cuffs being escorted by the cops. The implication with the transition could show that Daisuke is starting to care about the wellbeing of others. His reassurance that the sister’s surgery to America will be cared for also shows that development. Furthermore, when Haru asked him why he placed himself in danger at the hostage-taker’s gun, Daisuke quotes Haru from earlier on how the young guy wasn’t someone that would kill. He’s starting to learn from Haru just as his grandmother said to in the first scene.

Overall the episode shows both Haru and Daisuke developing with this case. I look forward to what crime they solve next and more of them interacting with each other. Now that we’ve seen a bit of Haru’s past, perhaps in the next episode, we get to see Daisuke’s luxurious past and his reason to join the department.