When I’m low on battery, I start to wonder if I’m human or not. At least I know I’m not a scarf-wearing cat.

——

Surprisingly, that was pretty deep. It actually strays from the usual norm of questioning humanity and its decline and explores the prospect of flourishing science. (Though that science no longer exists…) After something close to more comedic and even moronic in some sense, the conclusion is quite bittersweet for the two humanoids who wanted to be more human than machine. Ah, when machines are thought to have feelings, I always imagine them to be vengeful or conniving because of near-perfect calculations, but when they simply want to stay home, all of the negative vibes suddenly disappear. “O-tarou” seems like a droid looking to merely fight but when his memory is restored, he delivers the best lines in this mini-arc. 

Everything leading up to the talk at the end rubbed me the wrong way. I do find it funny how O-tarou the cat and the Nautilus battled like it was supposed to be some epic fight, but it just didn’t cut it with me, even if this series is made for utter randomness. The one part I enjoyed most in regards to the battle, however, was O-tarou’s drill hand after emerging from the waters. That part I thought was great because O-tarou strangely sounds like Viral from TTGL — oh, wait, he is. As absurd as it all seemed, things settled down once the action part was put to a halt and a more reasonable explanation detailed O-tarou and P-ko’s origins kindly named after the real Voyager and Pioneer, which is a nice little shout-out to NASA’s space probes. 

Some part of me found this a good portion of the episode a little hard to follow. Another part of me somewhat enjoyed it, especially Mediator’s interactions with Pion/P-ko. Then both sides of me honored the ending because it had a bit more of a serious tone, which is something unusual for Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita. But what ultimately gets me is that space probes have human feelings, and that kind of randomness is fine by me — it’s been done before and it’s been done worse. Personally, it’s not the best arc so far out of the three, but it still covered plenty of self-created grounds. Each of the three conditions thoroughly explained last time had the opportunity to show itself in this episode. And, at least we now know why Mediator’s hair got cut. 

Expect more randomness as the second half rolls on. 

GO Rating: 3/5

The haircut execution. That’s when you wonder why the ocean is the ocean.