Rolling Review – Concrete Revolutio: The Last Song (22)

Episode Synopsis:

A movie is being made in December, the 49th Shinka Era.  It claims to tell the violent tale of Jiro and how his role as the atomic bomb cause death and destruction wherever he went.  Jiro’s memories are returned to him after he puts on the mysterious helmet that the Ad Agency is running around placing on Superhumans.  Inside the helmet, Jiro comes face to face once again with Claude!  Who is Claude and what is Jiro’s true fight?  What is the Ad Agency playing at by trying to eliminate all Superhumans?!  The battle for justice is about to explode!

Review:

Jiro puts on the helmet obtained from a drunken Michiko (after her Women’s Liberation) and sees his own memories inside.  He sees a young him playing with Emi, and the doctor (the man he calls father) discussing his origins with the leader of the Ad Agency, among other things.  In these helmet flashbacks, we also learn valuable information about Jiro’s blood and how it can enhance Superhuman abilities but cause beasts to go berserk.  At the end Jiro comes face to face with Claude who begins to show him something that frightens him to the core….

As Jiro’s memories unfold we begin to understand why the Bureau has been so soft on him.  One of the issues I’ve had with this season is how weak the concept of “Jiro vs the Bureau in a battle of ideals!!” has been.  Every time Jiro shows up, the ladies (Kikko and Emi) want him so they let him do what he wants or run false interference.  Everyone else tries to talk Jiro out of his plans but on the whole there was no real commitment to the idea that Jiro is “against” the Bureau per say.  This episode closes that issue up.

I’ll refrain from spoiling too much but it’s important to note that this is the episode where Jiro’s ideals come CRASHING down.  His memories comes together piecemeal and they are followed immediately by a scene from the in show movie featuring the truth of Jiro’s deeds. He caused the beasts to go berserk in previous episodes, he killed Rainbow Knight, and all this time certain members of the Bureau were protecting him.  It’s heavy stuff for our leading man and it opens up what is hopefully a dramatic shift for the last couple of episodes.

What Claude represents is not a total twist per se but for Jiro, it  shakes the foundation of all he’s stood on after his break from the Bureau.  What’s more interesting is what Claude’s influence in the mass produced helmets does to other people.  When it affects superhumans, it pushes them to the extreme of their desires for justice, peace, and freedom  It digs into their memories and doesn’t force but seduces or persuades them to fight.

Adding to that we see Claude’s influence on a normal human (Michiko) which causes her to push her limits in a different way.  It asks her what she values and then tells her that her power is to fight against the superhumans that betrayed her real sense of justice.  With this newfound power she could be a God.  A God in….a ridiculous giant robot built by a government plan, code name “NUTS”.  No…I’m serious.  The coolness of all this is short lived though so while this was an awesome theme it’s here and gone because of how much else the episode wants to accomplish.

The plot of this episode was interesting but cluttered as it unraveled Jiro’s memories and set them against the backdrop of a film that is being used to influence humanity.  All of this leads to valuable plot regarding Claude and cracks the facade Jiro has placed around himself with regards to justice.  It all comes to a head as the pilots of the NUTS robots go…well…Nuts…(I had to do it…you know I did) and Jiro’s “team” along with the Bureau members are forced to psuedo work together.

This isn’t to say that this whole episode is brilliant.  Concrete Revolutio has been wasting a lot of time in this season and this episode takes a beating because of it.  Jiro’s realization of what Claude is all about and his guilt ridden conscious crying out to the sympathy of the Bureau all feels terribly rushed.  I think you are supposed to be shocked that so much of the previous plot was Jiro’s doing or impacted negatively by him.  The issue the creators didn’t factor in is that Jiro himself is not that sympathetic of a character.

In terms of Jiro’s dark deeds, aside from the Rainbow Knight sequence very little else felt solid.  Oh, that one off Beast Episode…yeah…let’s be serious…I barely remember what that was about.  The plot of Concrete Revolutio is more mind clogging that trying to eat a whole Red Velvet cheesecake by yourself.  The show throwing one or two off incidents around and linking them to Jiro could have been heavy and meaningful, but this episode ends up just info dumping because it took too long to give us all this information.  Jiro also finds his motivation way too fast because the episode needs to close out.   Here’s to hoping the issues he’s having are a complicated for him to deal with as they should be.

Summary:

In the end this episode is pretty awesome but it cause run away from the fact that’s it cluttered and rushed because the show hasn’t been doing the best job with plotting.  The Ad Agency’s endgame seems to be coming and now Jiro has big things to think about with regards to his quest for justice.  Oh yeah…he’s also a SUPER FUGITIVE now.

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