The Same Problems as Last Week

All of the complaints I made in my Episode 11 review apply to Deep Insanity: The Lost Child Episode 12, as well. Once again, our heroes refuse to use any kind of lethal force against the bad guys despite the bad guys using it on them.

Well, at least Hayden attempts to use lethal force. I can’t really say the same about Nadia considering her weapons of choice are literally just rabbits she’s trained to bite people.

Last week, I pointed out that these rabbits aren’t actually a threat to anyone. And this week, that was proven to be true by Larry “defeating” them by luring them into a cage with some carrots. Truly, only someone who doesn’t feel fear like Larry could have faced off against such menacing beasts.

Also, why does Nadia use her rabbits to fight when she literally has a gun on her? Didn’t she shoot Vera’s double-agent spy with a sidearm just moments before she was captured? Am I supposed to believe she ditched the gun after the shooting to hide the evidence?

Then, we have the whole thing with Hayden killing himself by throwing himself into the Abyss after his plan is foiled. I get the symbolism of him dying in the same way as Leslie. But why were the members of Vera Platoon concerned about him? Let him jump. That’s one less problem to worry about.

Oh, and did you notice that the railing was already broken before Larry crash-landed the plane? I’m pretty sure the nose of the plane was supposed to break the railing. But I guess animating that was too hard.

A Shocking Twist Nobody Could Have Predicted

If we just ignore the fact that I predicted Commander Vera and El-Cee were the same person weeks ago, then the reveal that this is the case was a shocking twist. Honestly, that shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone, even if you hadn’t read any of my previous reviews.

However, how exactly Vera and El-Cee could be the same person was never explained. It’s kind of a massive plot hole in the series. Though, as we’ll see later on in this review, it’s not the only plot hole featured in this episode.

So, let’s go through why exactly Vera and El-Cee being the same person doesn’t make sense based on what we know from the anime. At first, it might seem to make sense since Vera had the ability to turn back time. But, upon further inspection, this doesn’t hold up.

You see, Vera couldn’t simply turn back time whenever she wanted. It was confirmed in this episode that she could only go back in time upon dying like Shigure. And, it’s not just that she’s sent back in time. The whole universe gets reset aside from her memories and the Aruka.

This means that there should be no possible situation for there to be two of her present within the same timeline. When she turns back time, that includes time for herself. If she were to turn back time by 20 years, she wouldn’t run into herself from 20 years ago. She would simply be 20 years younger.

Additionally, we know that there’s a set amount of time one can turn back upon dying with the Aruka. We don’t know exactly how that amount of time is determined. But for Vera, it seems to have been a few weeks, or even months, at most. So how did she travel over a decade back in time to exist alongside El-Cee?

What Happened to Shigure?

The other plot hole I mentioned has to do with Shigure’s death at the end of the episode. Now, since Deep Insanity is based on a mobile game, perhaps this is explained in the game. But simply going off what we get from the anime, it really doesn’t make sense.

Why does Shigure disappear after dying as if he’s going to be sent back in time once again? He’s no longer in possession of the Aruka this time around. And as far as we know, time doesn’t get reset after his death.

By that logic, Shigure shouldn’t have disappeared. He should have simply died and his corpse should have been left behind just as was the case for Leslie. I do have a theory that may explain this. But first, I need to mention the other odd thing about the end of the episode.

The very last scene of the episode shows a new recruit appearing before Commander Vera. This recruit is clearly not the Shigure we know. And yet, Vera refers to him as Shigure Daniel Kai. What’s going on here?

Considering this series is based on a mobile game, I think it’s safe to say that Shigure is a self-insert character. So, what I believe we’re seeing at the end of the episode is a different person self-inserting as Shigure. It illustrates that Shigure could be anyone.

This could also explain why Shigure disappears when he dies instead of leaving a corpse behind. And, Vera’s comment about how they’ll see Shigure again despite him having died makes sense if you consider she’s referring to another Shigure.

For now, I’m still going to consider the way Shigure died to be a plot hole. But, if it was an attempt to show that he’s just a self-insert, I guess that’s pretty meta.

Conclusion

What do you think of the final episode of Deep Insanity: The Lost Child? Did you actually make it to the end of this series, or are you reading this review without watching it? And do you think my theory about Shigure makes sense? Let me know in the comments.

If you enjoyed this review, remember to click the like button down below. Also, follow me over on Twitter @DoubleSama so you don’t miss out on any future content. And come join our Discord server if you’re interested in discussing anime with other members of the community.

Finally, I’d like to thank Roman for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about how you too can become a supporter of this blog, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

My review of Deep Insanity as a whole is available now.

Spies Are Just Like Idols

As a concept, Deep Insanity: The Lost Child Episode 11 is good. I like how the “return by death” mechanic is used. It’s an ability that can be passed from one person to another and it seems fairly restricted in scope, which prevents it from being too overpowered.

But, I disliked just about everything else that made up this episode. The animation was horrible, there were some cringe moments, and the trope of good guys never killing anyone has been taken way too far.

I don’t have too much to say about the animation, so let’s just get that out of the way first. There were some scenes that jumped between stills in an awkward way instead of panning over the background. And there were some action scenes that simply panned instead of being animated.

Now, moving on to one of my favorite terrible moments of the episode, there’s Sumire’s assertion that spies are just like idols. That was probably the most cringe thing I’ve heard in a while.

I think we can all agree that Sumire’s background as an idol really has nothing to do with the rest of the series. It’s only there so that she can be “quirky” with the way she dresses and speaks. It literally adds nothing of value.

But in this episode, the writers decided to thrust Sumire’s background into the spotlight once again by having her claim that she understands what it’s like to be a double-agent spy because she used to be an idol.

That’s like me claiming I know what it’s like to be an award-winning author because my tweet got some likes. Shut up, Sumire.

A Lot of Gun Pointing

It’s hard to top Sumire’s cringe. However, there’s something else in Episode 11 that made me angrier. Vera Platoon caught the bad guys off guard multiple times and instead of shooting them, they just stood there with their guns aimed until the bad guys escaped.

Okay, I can understand why Shigure didn’t want to paint the walls with Nadia’s brains when he held her at gunpoint. He wants to be a “superhero” and Nadia is a child. Of course, Shigure isn’t going to shoot her. But he also doesn’t exactly stop her in any way.

There was also a scene at one point when Nadia unleashed her rabbits on Vera Platoon again and they acted like they were being attacked by bulletproof bears or something. We’ve seen that these rabbits are just angry rabbits. In Episode 5, they were taken out simply by being kicked. Why aren’t the members of Vera Platoon just shooting them?

Another example is when Larry and Kobato interrupt Hayden when he’s about to shoot Commander Vera. One of them shoots the gun out of Hayden’s hand from like 5 feet away, and then they just stand there waiting for him to run off.

If a terrorist is holding your commander at gunpoint and you were able to sneak up on them, why not just shoot them then and there? Why are we letting Hayden escape? Larry, of all people, should have no problem shooting him in the back. He doesn’t feel emotions.

And, I guess I’ll also comment on the fact that both the good and bad guys have the aim of Storm Troopers when shooting at each other. They can hit a Scarred no problem. But hitting a human-shaped target with an automatic rifle? Impossible.

El-Cee and Vera Rustamova

Back in my review of Episode 8, I made the bold prediction that Vera Rustamova and El-Cee are one and the same. The end of Episode 11 seems to lend credibility to that prediction. Shigure figures out that if El-Cee is killed, Vera will disappear as well.

Why would that be the case unless Vera is just an adult El-Cee? They even have the same hair and eye colors. However, I still don’t know how it’s possible for them to be the same person. The limitations of the return by death ability seem to prevent that from being the case.

As far as we’re still aware, this ability resets time on a universal scale. We’ve never seen it used to transport a single person back in time. Instead, when the ability’s user dies, the entire universe is reset back to a set point. This should prevent any time-travel paradoxes aside from the ability’s user having knowledge of previous timelines.

Now that Shigure has the ability to return by death, we’ve also seen that he gets reset to the morning after he was given the ability by Vera. He doesn’t appear to be able to choose how far back he’s reset.

Unfortunately, we don’t know why this is his reset point. Is it because that’s when he formally became in possession of the ability and so that’s his limit? Is there just a maximum limit for how far back the universe can be reset? If he survived for weeks and then died, would it still be reset back to that point?

Such limits could explain why Vera’s hands were somewhat tied and all she could do was continuously throw herself and her team at the problem without success. Maybe she couldn’t reset far enough back to change the outcome at that point?

Also, I guess this means that Leslie won’t be coming back because Shigure resets to a point after Leslie is already dead.

Conclusion

What do you think of Deep Insanity: The Lost Child Episode 11? Do you find the time-resetting ability to be interesting in this series? Did you physically cringe at Sumire’s comment? And what do you think the connection between Vera and El-Cee is? Let me know in the comments.

If you enjoyed this review, remember to click the like button down below. Also, follow me over on Twitter @DoubleSama so you don’t miss out on any future content. And come join our Discord server if you’re interested in discussing anime with other members of the community.

Finally, I’d like to thank Roman for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about how you too can become a supporter of this blog, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

My review of Episode 12 is available now.

Dismissed from Vera Platoon

When Shigure was dismissed from the Vera Platoon at the end of Episode 9, I assumed that Vera did this with some plan in mind. After all, it wouldn’t have made sense for her to dismiss him right after she began to accept him as a comrade.

Deep Insanity: The Lost Child Episode 10 gave us the reason for Shigure’s dismissal, but it doesn’t exactly make sense. Officially, Shigure was dismissed from his position for unauthorized access to the Abyss.

I guess the higher-ups don’t realize that this is a common practice for Sleepers, though, since they dismissed him over it. Or, maybe they dismissed Shigure specifically because he was reported. I’m guessing that while it’s known other Sleepers do this, reports aren’t filed against them.

Commander Vera had her accomplice who works in the armory report Shigure’s actions specifically so that he would be dismissed and leave Antarctica. She would then give the Aruka (more on that in the next section) to Shigure so that he could take it away from the Abyss.

It’s not exactly clear why Vera had to go through the process of getting Shigure dismissed rather than just telling him to leave. I mean, he obviously wasn’t going to listen to those orders either way. But I don’t really see any benefit to doing it in the way Vera did.

And, it would appear that the removal of the Aruka from the Asylum hasn’t actually changed anything. Both sides are still fighting over El-Cee just as they always had been. Removing the Aruka from the situation didn’t solve anything.

Also, let me remind you that there are only 2 episodes left and we still don’t actually know what the goal of either faction is.

Aruka

The Aruka, what is it? Well, we have no idea. We know that it’s not the ring Vera led Hayden to believe it was. It’s actually the vessel that the ring was contained within. But, even if Hayden thought the ring was the Aruka, wouldn’t he just take the whole vessel anyway?

I’m not really sure why putting a ring inside of it as a decoy would be a good idea. That’s like putting a diamond in a ring to distract thieves so they only steal the diamond and not the ring itself. They’re going to take the whole ring.

Anyway, as Vera “explains,” the Aruka is an object that prevents things from happening(?). Her explanation really doesn’t help at all. But, based on some context found within this episode and the rest of the series, we can make some inferences regarding its true purpose.

We know that El-Cee allegedly has the power to destroy the world. And we know that the bad guy faction wants to fuse with her for some reason, and also that they want the Aruka. So, it makes sense to me that the Aruka is needed to fuse with El-Cee.

The only problem with that is that I’m assuming the monster we saw at the end of the episode was the fused El-Cee. If that’s the case, then the fact that the bad guys didn’t have the Aruka didn’t actually matter.

But, there’s something else we can assume about the Aruka — that it was the source of Commander Vera’s ability to reset time. Vera gives the Aruka to Shigure, and suddenly we find ourselves in a timeline in which Vera dies.

And to add to that, Shigure suddenly finds himself reset back in time when he gets lasered by the giant monster.

Return by Death

When it was first revealed that Commander Vera could reset time, I was going to make a return by death joke. However, I refrained from doing so because we didn’t — and still technically don’t — know exactly how her time-resetting ability worked.

But, as I just said, we see that Shigure resets time upon his death once he’s in possession of the Aruka. This seems to imply that death is, in fact, how the time-resetting ability works. That also kind of explains why it wasn’t something Vera immediately chose to use upon Leslie’s death.

Now, I’m not entirely sure what all of this means for the series at large. I mean, I don’t think it’s a particularly well-written story. So maybe it’s not worth the effort to think about it. But, I do have one theory regarding why the Aruka and El-Cee are both important.

Let’s assume that I’m correct in stating that whoever holds the Aruka is able to reset time upon their death. It also seems like the bad guys want to use El-Cee to destroy the world, while Vera wants to assassinate her so that she can never be used in this way.

If the bad guys succeed and do destroy the world, the world will just be reset back to before it was destroyed if someone has the Aruka. So, they want the Aruka so that they can destroy it or something before then using El-Cee to destroy the world.

Vera’s plan to send Shigure away with the Aruka makes sense, then. If the bad guys don’t know where he took it, they can’t destroy it and the world is saved. But, Vera still wants to assassinate El-Cee just in case her first plan doesn’t work out.

That’s my guess, at least.

Conclusion

What do you think of Deep Insanity: The Lost Child Episode 10? Can you think of a good reason why Vera got Shigure officially dismissed? Do you understand what the Aruka is? And what’s your theory on how the Aruka and El-Cee are connected? Let me know in the comments.

If you enjoyed this review, remember to click the like button down below. Also, follow me over on Twitter @DoubleSama so you don’t miss out on any future content. And come join our Discord server if you’re interested in discussing anime with other members of the community.

Finally, I’d like to thank Roman for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about how you too can become a supporter of this blog, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

My review of Episode 11 is available now.

Vera’s Time Control

It’s unfortunate that I’m reviewing my least favorite anime of the season on a Friday, but here I am. But to be fair, Deep Insanity: The Lost Child Episode 9 wasn’t a terrible episode. The series does continue to introduce somewhat interesting plot developments.

In Episode 8, we learned that Commander Vera has the ability to reset time. That was kind of a big revelation. And in Episode 9, we learn a bit more about how she views this ability of hers. Unfortunately, we still don’t know how the ability actually works.

Vera appears to view her ability as if it’s completely natural. She knows she has the ability and it’s why she isn’t worried about failing her assassination mission. However, she doesn’t use it as liberally as I would have expected her to.

For example, we saw glimpses of many different timelines in which Vera failed and then reset time. So we know she has no issue with using her ability when necessary. But, she doesn’t rely on her ability as I would expect from someone who gained it somewhat recently.

When Leslie died in the current timeline, Vera was in no rush to reset. She hasn’t even considered resetting. This tells me that she’s confident that when the time comes, her ability will work as intended and she’ll be sent back to the start (whenever that is).

Vera’s use of her ability is pretty strange. I would have expected her to use it whenever anything went wrong and then attempt to change the future. That’s not what we’ve seen. In fact, she seems to not like when the future is different. She has a specific endpoint in mind and she’s working toward it.

BBQ with the Commander

The whole part of the episode about inviting Commander Vera to a barbeque party with the rest of the platoon wasn’t exactly the most exciting content. But, it did allow us to see how Vera views her subordinates and her role as their commander, which was nice.

Vera has a complicated relationship with the rest of her platoon. She doesn’t want to get close to any of its members, and she claims this is because if she becomes too friendly with them, they’ll stop viewing her as their commander and following her orders.

I still think there’s another reason for Vera distancing herself from the rest of the platoon. Since she’s going to see them dying a lot as she resets time whenever they fail their mission, she doesn’t want to be too attached to them. This is why she’s able to go on even after Leslie’s death.

At the same time, Vera also doesn’t want to separate herself too much from her subordinates because that could affect their morale. She wants them to follow her orders, but also have faith in those orders so that they succeed.

What I’m curious about is how she determined that this was the right way to operate her platoon. Did she arrive at this conclusion through trial and error? Were there times she was too close to her subordinates and it caused them to feel comfortable questioning her orders? Were there times they became disheartened due to her cold treatment of them?

And, if she’s determined that her current balance is the right one, why did she allow Leslie to get closer to her than the others? She wasn’t exactly open with him, but she also didn’t push him away as he began to suspect something was strange about her knowledge.

Shigure’s Retconned Backstory

The most confusing part of this episode was when Shigure’s backstory was seemingly retconned. Maybe I’m just forgetting what his backstory originally was. But I’m pretty sure it was very different from what was portrayed within Episode 9.

Vera claims that she selected Shigure to be assigned to her platoon because he had distinguished himself as a skilled sniper after coming to the Asylum. And she felt that someone with his skill set would be perfect to carry out her assassination plan.

That’s not at all how I remember Shigure’s backstory. When was he a distinguished sniper in the Asylum? Wasn’t his first mission with Vera Platoon the first time he had entered the Asylum? And at the start, he could barely figure out how to use his weapons.

I even distinctly remember that Shigure was assigned to Vera Platoon after Commander Vera requested additional soldiers. She didn’t select him herself. And she was even a little ticked off when she was told that all she would be getting was a rookie.

If you recall, Shigure took the job because he wanted to be a hero. He had no combat experience. So I’m really not sure where this new backstory for Shigure is coming from. It makes no sense.

The only explanation I can think of for this change in his backstory is if it’s revealed that Shigure actually was an expert sniper in a different Asylum platoon and that he was brainwashed to forget that and to instead think he’s there because he wants to be a hero.

That would be a pretty stupid development, though. And even if it does come to pass, it still doesn’t make sense. Vera would want the expert sniper Shigure, not the wannabe hero Shigure. So there’s no reason to replace his memories.

Conclusion

What do you think of Deep Insanity: The Lost Child? Will Vera ever reset time back to before Leslie died? Do you think she’s actually going to open up to her subordinates? And what did you make of Shigure’s retconned backstory? Let me know in the comments.

If you enjoyed this review, remember to click the like button down below. Also, follow me over on Twitter @DoubleSama so you don’t miss out on any future content. And come join our Discord server if you’re interested in discussing anime with other members of the community.

Finally, I’d like to thank Roman and Key Mochi~ for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about how you too can become a supporter of this blog, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

My review of Episode 10 is available now.