Shinkalion Change the World Ep 27 Review: Before The Fall

We continued on the background story of Reiji and Ina from their school days. As well as a great background of how ERDA became the ERDA that it is today with all of its staff. This episode also explained the incident that caused Reiji to became the Masked Man, and raise a question about the Unknown’s origin.

Ina is absolutely an overwhelming personality in this episode. She just barged into ERDA, bypassing all securities and even blackmailed the Director of ERDA to let her join. It’s both inspiring AND scary in a way. She literally forced herself (as a civilian) into a governmental secret services and become their highly acclaimed staff. We know she’s been a system engineer genius for a long while, but a middle schoolers impressing a very seasoned professor isn’t something we see everyday. Ina doesn’t just have the brains, but also the (emotional) brawns to accompany that.

We also got a montage of Rei and Ina’s time at ERDA. And it’s quite surprising to see the current Commander being quite jovial about the whole thing, a definite 180 compared to now. Although it’s kinda worrying that Prof Chikugo – head of ERDA – was a super easy-going guy. Well, this type of laid-back adult character is quite common in Takara’s anime like Earth Granner, Drive Head, etc… But yeah, I cannot feel any sort of “strictness” in the past ERDA, perhaps that’s why the current ERDA is being ruled with discipline.

And of course, that reason reared its head. Starting with the Unknown battle that accidentally involved Ryota when he was a kid. I think it’s a good details to add in. The silhouette of the Shinkalion Zero looks very heroic and giant. And the animation for the Shinkalion Zero has gotten quite better. The Zero Blade is no doubt very similar to the finishers of the Time Ranger, with the swords acting as clock hands. After the battle, Dr. Nabeshima was injured critically and couldn’t command Erda anymore. The fact that he was seen in distress and mumbled a very questionable request to Reiji before the battle happened suggested that it wasn’t an accident that Dr. Nabeshima was there during the battle.

Commander Hama became the leader of ERDA, and his commanding style became stricter. It seemed he was heavily affected by Dr. Nabeshima’s injuries. Though ERDA has changed, it seemed things were slowly getting back the right track…until the incident that caused Reiji to fell into a coma. This is very similar to SAO where a player is trapped inside the “Metaverse” where their consciousness as data is stuck in the virtual world, unable to wake up. And what followed must be he was hospitalized and disappeared without any traces. The scene snapped back to the present, but we can deduced most of what happened after. I’m not sure if Ina and Reiji felt anything for each other, but it seems they are only “best friends” which is, well, a shame.

This episode has quite a depressing tone – which basically detailed the disasters that befell ERDA, Dr. Nabeshima and Reiji. However, the anime still kept certain aspects positive, such as Ina and Reiji’s determination to protect everyone, and how they reeled back after the loss of Dr. Nabeshima. And of course, we get a short fight at the end where the team achieved a definite and (somewhat) hilarious victory.

In the end, this episode clarified a lot of things about ERDA and Reiji/Masked Man as well as raise some question for the Unknowns. It seems that Dr. Nabeshima has an idea on what the Unknown are and maybe what their goal is. We know that they exist before Reiji was corrupted so he couldn’t be the mastermind. It’s clear that Reiji’s “data” was corrupted in the Metaverse by whoever control the Unknown. Also the Unknown only appeared during “convenient” time, and completely silent during others. Now that we’re starting a new arc, I look forward to how they’ll write the story. But more importantly, we’re nearing the debut of the big boi – the Doctor Yellow Shinkalion!

=Aaron=
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