Bloody Monday Episode 5: Choices

In case you're wondering, the neon green drink J is so obsessed with is Melon Soda.

Fujimaru: Are you really the … leader?
J: I don’t look it do I? Despite all appearances, I am.
Fujimaru: You said you’ll let me see my dad?
J: Correct.
Fujimaru: Where is he?
J: He’s with us. So will you. You are on our side now and you will listen to our orders from now on.
Fujimaru: What. Are. You. Talking. About? You want me to be part of the organization?!?
J: Resistance is futile.

Half convinced that his aloof yet respectable father deliberately sabotaged his career to join force with the dark side, a disillusioned Fujimaru is faced with the same dilemma — join the terrorist group or watch his family die.

Chocking on the shock, Fujimaru presses, “How? How did you make my dad one of yours?” J giggles in triumph, “Wanna know? How shall I put this…” He leans back in his seat to enjoy the look of pain on Fujimaru’s face, then shuffling forward and inching his nose close to Fujimaru’s as if revealing a big secret, J whispers, “He did it to save his sick daughter.” The shock in Fujimaru’s eyes widened, “What do you guys want?” “To be God.” The reply came instantly and absolutely, leaving no room for doubt.

“How can a human become God?” Apparently appalled, Fujimaru challenges. “That’s mathematically plausible, you just haven’t found a solution yet.” (What I want to know is how J found the money to do what they are doing.) Fujimaru was given a second chance to decide when J walks away to refill his beloved melon soda and grabbing a strawberry donut along the way. Fujimaru glances around and contemplates the weight of his decision. When J returns with his treat, Fujimaru has prepared himself for the worse. “If this is a game, we, are going to win.” Fujimaru replies with a hint of uneasiness. “We?” J chuckles at the idea and takes a large bite of his doughnut.

Meanwhile, THIRD-i has already located Fujimaru’s position and is waiting for the right moment to charge in and arrest the terrorists. (Did they really think it’s going to be that easy?)

She has just entered stage two of infection. Death awaits her at the other end of the bed.

“So how did THIRD-i trace your position? Would you care to enlighten us?” J asks with a casual shrug, as if none of the potential aftermaths of being besieged means anything to him. Fujimaru launches into a brief explanation: when Maya approached him and turned off his cell phone, the lack of a signal became the signal to indicate that he has made contact with the terrorist group (seriously though, this terrorist group needs to get a name so I can stop referring to it as just the terrorist group). Although Maya was cautious enough to turn off Fujimaru’s computer to prevent it from transmitting weak pulses to reveal the coordinates of his position, Fujimaru has already connected Maya’s phone to THIRD-i’s base unit. (Had he been a little more reserved and kept his mouth shut about the tracking device, the phone might just take THIRD-i right to the rabbit hole of this terrorist organization.)

Satisfied with the clarification, J calmly purposes to offer agent Kirishima Goro a deal: let them go now or watch his fiancée die. A decision is made and justice prevails in the end. Seeing that Goro’s determination can’t be breached even when his beloved’s life is on stake, J takes action of his own to prove that he is God. “Have you wondered why I chose such a crowded place to meet with you? I’ll give you three hints. Hint 1: we are the ones that brought in the virus; hint 2: we know how not to be infected; and hint 3: we are a terrorist group.” As he speaks, he takes a vial of liquid from the inside pocket of his suite jacket with a wicked smile and starts to finger it mindlessly. As if on cue, the surveillances in the café start to vomit blood and within seconds chaos spread across the little enclosure. Fujimaru panicked. Then he realized, it can’t be really happening. Not when the terrorist group wants him to partake in their grandiose God-Becoming vision.

Although Goro’s insistence to capture the culprits stay firmly rooted, the compulsivity that was planted by Saori’s infection continues to germinate. He orders the THIRD-i agents to attack the café despite the presence of innocent bystanders mixed in in the scene. (“Innocence” is relative in this case.)

First "family" portrait.

Enjoying every minute of this head-on conflict where everyone is being held at gun point, J walks casually towards the door with both self-amusement and the air of superiority. One of his faithful followers volunteers to hold off the police as the rest of the terrorist group escape into a large van parked at the rear of the café. A small-scaled gun fight kept the police distracted from their pursuit of J and ended with the sacrificial lamb dying in a puddle of bloody. “The world is coming to an end. This will be the last Monday there is ever to be…” were the last of his words.

The last Monday.

Agent Minami Kaoru heads to the quarantine unit to visit her friend Saori. It’s a comfort to see a familiar face in the midst of this unbeknownst crisis that fell into her lap one day out of the blue; it’s also a disappointment mingled with a secret relief that the familiar face turns out not to be Kirishima Goro’s. The fact is, this is not easy for any of them. Agent Kaoru may seem less affected because no prior establishment indicate a deep connection to Saori, but she has seen the first victim of Bloody-X die in solitude and must endure it a second time. Only this time, the pain of watching a friend victimized by the lunacy of a dozen visionaries burns a hundred times worse than seeing a stranger expire. Saori is filled with fear, regret, and sorrow and she doesn’t want to die. But the only person who can provide her with solace could not bear to see her wither away like a wilted flower. He is afraid that the moment he sees her weak and hurt in bed, his fragile resolve that kept him from compromising to J’s temptation will crumble into pieces. He’s not ready to see her.

Before Agent Kaoru leaves, Saori asks her to deliver a letter to Goro. In the letter, Saori wrote with a shaky hand: Agent Kirishima, please don’t give up on capturing the terrorists. (How can someone not be tainted with bitterness by the misfortune that had fallen on her so arbitrarily?)

THIRD-i should at least TRY and get researchers to find a cure or even a vaccine after Shikimura Sosuke's kidnap.

Goro may be purposely avoiding seeing Saori, but his thoughts never ceased to be with her. He is thinking fast and furious and suddenly, a light bulb flickered on…

In the meantime, Otoya has the theory behind J’s ambition to become God figured out as well. Suppose there are approximately one billion citizens living in Japan, if all of them are infected with Bloody-X and only 10 million of those may receive the cure, then the terrorist group will have control over who is to die and who to live. But there is still a missing piece — the cure itself, developed by Doctor Shikimura Sosuke soon before the virus manifested in the second victim.

J would not allow the deity of his plan be marred by a small yet essential piece of the puzzle. He presents the doctor with two choices: be injected with a syringe of red liquid or disclose the location of the cure. Fight or flight? Sosuke chose not to fight. Despite his cowardice, he was injected anyway to guarantee a timely delivery of the cure. (Very shrewed on J’s part.)

Really, there is no choice.

In a dark, solitary cell, Kamishima Shimon drifts around in his ghostly gown, as eerie as ever. Ishikawa watches Kamishima fearfully through the TV monitor, the man’s threat came sharply to mind: I have killed the man for you, now I want you to kill your fellow guard tomorrow. If you don’t, you will be the one dead. Should he do it and condemn himself to an eternity of hell fire and guilt? Should he not do it and be killed? There really isn’t a choice for Ishikawa. The moment he asked Kamishima to murder for him, he has sold his soul to Satan and there is no turning back. And so, his fellow guard and colleague died by his hands in the crudest way imaginable — he was stabbed to death by a short knife. Once the killing was done, Ishikawa drops the knife and collapses before Kamishima, succumbing to the power of this executioner before him.

The symbolism is shrieking at the top its lungs!

To avoid being further targeted by J and his followers, Otoya suggests for Fujimaru and his sister to move to his house temporarily. While the siblings are packing, Fujimaru notices that Haruka has been keeping contact with their dad. After much consideration, he decides to invade his sister’s privacy and read the text message. The message conveys a location where the father and daughter can converse briefly. Following the disclosed location in the message, Fujimaru finds himself in the 43rd cubicle of an internet café. No one is in the cubicle but the computer screen flashes a chatroom box sent from his father. Fujimaru hastily settles down and takes out his laptop to trace the location of the sender. (He always cracks his knuckles before any serious hacking mission.) While chatting with dad to buy enough time to trace his position, Takagi Ryonosuke realizes he is actually conversing with his son. Now that the pretense is out in the open, Fujimaru asks his father as himself, why he had agreed to join the terrorist group. But no response came from the other side.

Meanwhile, Falcon has completed the trace and the exact location of his father is in the 18th cubicle of the same internet café. He dashes out to catch dad but dad is long gone. “If dad left in a hurry, he would not have the time to clear the data.” Turning the computer back on, Fujimaru looks into the browser’s history and finds exactly what he needs. National Bioscience Laboratory.

He calls Otoya and inform his best friend of his intension to explore the lab alone. To his surprise, he finds Aoi determined to take part in the resistance as well. The two friends listened to his decision, Otoya deliberated and replies, “I will go with you. Because your choice is my choice.”

Together.

The three of them successfully entered the National Bioscience Laboratory, where the cure of Bloody-X is safely stored away. As they stood in the hallway, a faint foot step approaches them. It becomes louder and closer… They turned toward the sound source coming up behind them and saw…

—

This episode is filled with choices, most of which are mere possibilities of the alternative path that the character in question could have chosen. Only three real decisions were consciously made in this episode. The first is Kirishima Goro’s effort to not visit Nakagawa Saori. He is afraid that her condition will become his weakness and diverge him from the path he is supposed to follow — which is what J was hoping for when he made the offer. The offer itself is an empty promise. J doesn’t actually have the power to save Saori, at least not yet. He only played the serpent because he is enjoying the mayhem he initiated and intended it as a sick joke so he could amuse himself to death if Goro had indeed given in to the desire to save Saori. This is made evident when J injected the doctor with Bloody-X despite the doctor’s plea and surrender.

The second decision isn’t a surprise. Fujimaru was involved, he is even more involved now, especially with his father mysteriously turned bad. The only difference is that he is clearly aware that his action endangers his dearest sister’s life, which he desperately tried to save not too long ago — yet he still decides to follow it through. The third decision, made by Fujimaru’s two friends, injects the drama with a shot of friendship (and possibly romance). The new development may be a little hard to get use to, but it will definitely shine a new light on the discussion of human nature whether it be enduring friendship or potential betrayal.

Finally, continuing from the last episode, is a discussion of the disparity between appearance and actuality. The prison ward side plot has been developing little by little each episode. It finally matured in this episode although its relevance to the main plot remains obsecure. Ishikawa appears to be the guard in charge of convics while Kamishima is recognized as the inmate in captivity. Yet, who is the real prisoner here?