Wait. The cult was crazy? I’m shocked. SHOCKED.
Impressions:
This was certainly an episode of all time. The newest wild goose hunt is to go to a weird AI cult that’s basically the Amish mixed with Scientology. They worship an AI who only speaks through the one dude who of course has an entire harem of wives, while eschewing all technology… aside from the god computer. This was ostensibly about the hacker girl, again. Except just like last week, it’s not really about her at all. She used to be in this cult, and still knew some people there, and… uh, that’s it really. She had feelings about it, and is even now, still conflicted and mopey. …Uh huh.
They messed around with the AI and the cult went all Heaven’s Gate when everybody else decided to ritually sacrifice them on a fire. To appease the computer. You know, as computers want. It improves the RAM or something. You’d think it’d at least be a Waco situation, but no. Literally the second the FBI rolled up, it was everybody rush into the building and set ourselves on fire. The weirdest part may have been that after everything was reduced to ashes, the AI for the first time actually revealed that it wasn’t just a crazy dude pretending to speak for a silent monolith and did indeed direct them to kill themselves because it also had an existential crisis. Uh, so… what even was this mess of an episode then? What point at all did any of this serve? Even past episodes seemed like thin excuses because Watanabe wanted to animate some particular action sequence or scene himself, but with the usual main character sidelined, there wasn’t even that.
