Bloody Monday Episode 11 (Finale): Pandora’s Box

Ignoring Fujimaru’s cry, K walks away. The instant K passes him, Fujimaru can feel his blood freeze in his veins.

THIRD-i traces Fujimaru’s father to the church and finds Aoi knocked unconscious at the door. When they did burst into the danger zone, the commotion has already subsided. Inside the church, lies an aghast Fujimaru holding his dying father.

Struggling for strength, Ryonosuke hands Kano-san the information he has gathered on Bloody Monday during his time as an undercover agent and pleas Agent Ikuma to stop the operation before it’s too late. Then, he loses consciousness.

The questioning in the Minister of Justice’s office continues. According to THIRD-i’s information thus far, Kamishima has 11 children (indeed, as potent as the thunder-bolt bashing Zeus). Anzai Mako, being the youngest of them, is J’s half sister. When the Minister of Justice found out about J’s heritage, he used his influence to swap J’s identity with a recent suicide victim in order to secure his political career. While drawing a clear line between J and himself, he inadvertently caused J’s rebellion.

Somewhere secretive, K, along with Maya are administering the opening of the box, their final weapon.

When Pandora’s box is opened at last, the ultimate count down to doom begins. In five hours, the city will be destroyed — à la the small church in Russia.

THIRD-i’s video analyst finally discovers the secret hidden in the video recording of the church genocide that initiated everything: before everyone in the church started to exhibit symptoms of Bloody X, there was a white flash. A brief one, hardly discernible, but most certainly from a bomb. Calculating from the timing of the flash to the onset of the infection, these people were not infected with Bloody-X. They died from the side effects of the bomb.

But the finding arrives too late. When Kano-san finds the enemy’s hide out, it’s already empty, leaving only a computer flashing the hours before the detonation of the bomb — a declaration of war.

Frantically, THIRD-i agents start to search for the bomb, hoping to remove it before midnight, when it’s set to explode.

Outside the emergency room, Fujimaru and Aoi are approached by a high officer in THIRD-i. He apologizes to Fujimaru for causing his family enormous amount of pain and confusion by appointing his father an undercover agent. “When everything’s settled”, the officer promises, “I will send you and your family out of the country, away from danger.” Not making any eye contact, Fujimaru says in a tired but resolved voice,

“‘Bloody Monday…’ that’s what dad said. He said no matter what, we have to stop Bloody Monday. How long do we have?”

Then he closes his eyes and hears his father’s urging to stop the disaster. Inhaling deeply, Fujimaru states calmly, “Let me stop the bomb.”

As Falcon laboriously attempts to stop the bomb, the THIRD-i elaborates on the enemy’s secret weapon. It’s a highly damaging weapon; the impact emits a tremendous amount of energy in the form of radiation and light. People are killed by radiation poisoning almost instantly (which brings to mind the question: why was Maya spared at the Russian church?) while buildings are preserved. The radiating light from the bomb is analogous to the otherworldly glow upon the opening of a treasure box (think: Argonauts’ Golden Fleece in The Spirit), hence the code name: treasure box (or what I like to call, Pandora’s box). It’s expected to explode in the center of the Tokyo, wiping out the entire city.

Despite Falcon’s best efforts, he isn’t able to stop the bomb through the computer left by the terrorist group. But THIRD-i is able to narrow down three most likely locations to plant the bomb. The operation speed quickens.

Despite the favorable outlook for the terrorist group, the animosity between Maya K and J is growing. The gulf pushes J to resort to “plan B” on his own. He first kidnaps Otoya, then, he calls and threatens Fujimaru to come meet him without a computer.

When Falcon comes to the coffee shop as promised, J sits him down and cuts to the chase, “Bloody Monday needs to stop.” He talks of equations and a mathematician’s fanaticism. Dropping a blood red cherry into his melon soda, J tells Fujimaru that he is only concerned with one thing: retaining the parsimonious beauty of his equation. As it is made impossible with Fujimaru’s interference, J wants to stop the execution of the now cluttered function. Problem is, he can’t.

He doesn’t know where the bomb is. In fact, he doesn’t know anything about K’s plan. What he does know is that the hand held device in K’s hand is the only way the bomb can be deactivated. And Fujimaru is the only one who can do that. He hands Fujimaru a computer and leaves with a smirk.

Returning to the van where Otoya is held, J remarks bitterly, “Look, Fujimaru would do anything to save you. What a pair of friends.” Then mockingly, he continues, “Aside from being nourished in the same womb, we are like two parallel lines who’d never meet.” To J’s remark, Otyoa corrects darkly, “I’m not like you.”

Heard enough, J jumps off the van and tells the driver to take Otoya to his grandpa’s maison safely. Before shutting the door, he smiles widely at his half brother but the look of sadness shimmers in his eyes.

As it appears, J doesn’t simply want to stop K. He wants to set his function right again. By handing Falcon a computer on the same network as the terrorist group, J has Bluebird monitoring Falcon’s activity. Once Falcon succeeds in hacking into the computerized detonator, Blue Bird will sack him from behind.

Unfortunately, Falcon and Blue Bird are set apart by skill. After a lengthy battle, Blue Bird is the one who got sacked! Aha!

And Blue Bird himself, punished with death.

At length, Falcon stops the bomb and exposes the location of the bomb. After calling THIRD-i base and giving them the information to capture Anzai Mako, Fujimaru stares at her name in his phone. At length, he hits the delete key and erases a friend from his life.

In the new hideout, K is waiting for J’s return. Believing J wouldn’t want her dead, K puts on her wrist watch and decides to wait a little longer.

Maya is exposed as the killer of the creepy Kamishima Shimon, and a double spy, believing only in money. But K lets her go.

As Maya walks away leisurely, a blaring police car passes her by. The THIRD-i agents quickly surround the terrorists but J and K are both no where to be seen. It’s not over yet.

When K sees Fujimaru, she thanks him for saving her three times and asks if he has contacted THIRD-i yet. The answer is negative. “Before that, I want to ask you one thing. Everything you’ve done, did you plan it from the beginning? Being in the same school, being part of the newspaper club?” “Yes.” K replies evenly. “Sacrificing Hide and killing my father, too? Why?” he demands. “Because I am the chosen one. By purging the earth of human, we can become God.” Level headed, Fujimaru replies, “You are not God, you are only a murderer.”

But when K reveals that stopping the detonator didn’t deactivate the bomb, Fujimaru can no longer remain level headed. She tells him, “Only when my heart stops beating, will Bloody Monday be truly stopped. Between one life and millions more, what do you choose? If you kill me, you’ll be a murderer too. Will you understand me then?” She tosses him a gun.

Holding the gun and hearing the timer ticking away, Fujimaru cringes. Slowly, he puts down the gun.

K picks it up and points at Fujimaru’s head, “Is this the so called sense of justice?” She scoffs derisively and inches in to shoot Fujimar.

*Bang* a bullet penetrates K’s heart and sends her to the ground with a thud. Agent Goro stands by the entrance, holding a smoky gun.

Staring up at Fujimaru, K whispers feebly, “I… I lied to you… The bomb doesn’t stop when I die… It will go off when I do…” Fujimaru only looks at her impassively, a stream of tear slips from the corner of his eye.

Still staring up at Fujimaru, K wonders, “When I die, will you be sad… or will you be happy?”

“I’ll be sad.”

The timer hits zero, it’s prolonged beep coincides with K’s flat lining pulse.

In a later inspection, the THIRD-i agents found that the core of the bomb has been removed.

It’s not over yet.

J has the bomb. He calls Fujimaru and tells him that when he saw Fujimaru fighting for his loved ones, he understood one thing:

People become weak when there is someone they want to fight for. But, he adds, if you didn’t have anything you want to protect, no matter how powerful you are, you are still doomed to fail.

“You win.” He congratulates Fujimaru and hangs up.

Fujimaru sees J standing on the bridge across from him but when he runs near, there’s only a cup of melon soda sitting on the lonely pole.

After that night, things quiet down in the city.

Maya gathers her money and sets out on another mission. She departs for her flight smugly, not noticing the butterfly-tattoo sniper sitting close by — they have some old grudge to settle amongst themselves.

In the hospital room, Fujimaru is sitting by his sister’s bed. His flashback take us to the moment before his father’s death. Takagi-san apologizes to his son for not being there for his family and tells Fujimaru that if he dies, he wants to transplant his kidney to Haruka. He has signed the legal papers. “That way, I’ll always be with you and Haruka…” he says with a smile.

Sakura opens her eyes and looks out of the window. The smiling to her big brother, she exclaims that it’s almost Christmas. And this Christmas will finally be spent with the entire family. Fujimaru, who has yet to tell his sister the truth, closes the door quietly behind him…

Now, it’s really over.

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Comments

It took me long enough to finish recapping this drama. (No joke.) It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, it’s just that whenever I’m watching (and writing), I’m on the same wavelength as the characters and the flow of events. But as soon as the curtain call is over, my brain checks out and it takes the right mood to get back to the game and get on the same wavelength again. Sadly, slipping back to the right mood can take months.

And yet, each time I come back to it, I find myself delighted with how much I like each episode. Aside from the action and suspense that keep the story flowing, what weaved everything together so delicately are the subtle touches on the relationships between people and the complexity of the characters’ feelings. K’s question of her friendship with Fujimaru shortly before her death, J’s lonely exile (especially the two shots of J standing, looking over at Fujimaru and the same shot without J but a cup of melon soda sitting idly on the rail), Fujimaru’s father’s death (finally being there with his family, on a poetic level), and Hakura’s heart-wrenching last remark of a happy Christmas, these are all moments worth savoring.