No. 6 Episode 3: Welcome to Reality.

Oh god *touches face*…I look…PERFECT. And BEAUTIFUL!!!

So you’re wondering where the boy with the white hair as shown in the promos is, right? Well, this week’s episode has all the answers you need given in a silver spoon, as well as taking a good look at the rest of the world outside No. 6. Also, some tasty yaoi fanservice brought to you by Shion and Nezumi.

Note: Some shirtless Shion and Nezumi screenshots after the jump. *O*

Nezumi shows off his uber hammy Shakespeare acting to his future boyfriend Shion.

Shion starts reading Macbeth aloud to a mouse standing on the table and as he was brought up in No. 6 he has never heard of Shakespeare (let alone his written works). He remembers his mother who used to read ‘The Happy Prince’ by Oscar Wilde with him when he was little. Nezumi impresses Shion with his hammy acting skills and then speaks up of his cynical views of humanity. After taking a bath, Shion felt like calling his mother to hear if she’s all right but Nezumi discourages him from doing that, knowing that Shion would be crushed when his mother found out that he’s already a fugitive on the run, living outside the facilities he used to call home. Nezumi says he has nothing to lose, with Shion discarding everything related to No. 6 and tells him to man up a little (and being a tsundere himself Nezumi claims that it was because Shion saved him 4 years ago that he saved Shion from danger. Debt repaid.) Completely missing the point, Shion notices that Nezumi’s now taller than him.

Then Nezumi formally introduces his cyborg-rat friend (the black rat we seen in the previous episode) which visits and spies in No.6 to find out the conspiracy behind No. 6 and its dirty little secrets in order to find its weak point. Shion asks Nezumi if he did see the strange occurrences happening in No. 6 lately (referring to the wasp we saw in the previous episode) and before Nezumi gets to sleep, Shion finds his hands and neck infected with the same wound found in his colleague infected with the parasite. Cue drastic transformation and agonizing screaming.

I’m just bad at this, am I? Safu’s going to be so disappointed in me when she finds out I’m not good at this.

The next day, Safu remembers her last conversation with her grandmother, mostly about Safu studying at No. 5 and Shion, hoping to have sex (or marry before they do the former) with him once she completes her studies. Three days later, Shion wakes up in the middle of the night, and gets the biggest surprise of his entire lifetime. Nezumi returns from grocery shopping and sees Shion survive as a blessing, granted that he’s the only one we’ve seen so far who did not die upon getting infected. Shion starts self-deprecating and you know Nezumi’s going to kick some sense into him. They clear up their misunderstandings, drink some soup, investigate about the wasp and Nezumi laughs like there’s no tomorrow when he hears that all the people living in No. 6 will die sooner or later under the mystery parasite and tells Shion that No. 6 is a place that won’t tolerate rebellious people and disobedience. Sounds like a controlled state under a depressing dictatorship
to me.

Shion suggested using his blood as serum to counterattack the parasite from infecting the citizens living in No. 6 but Nezumi, being the cynical person in the situation shot down the idea, who doesn’t care one bit if innocent people (like Shion’s mother and Safu) will die from it. Shion is forced to swallow the hard truths and Nezumi’s viewpoint of the situation, but thank god Nezumi wasn’t being too much of a dick to Shion. And thanks to that, Shion decides to take up a new mission; to find out the truth about the conspiracy in No. 6. While getting their way to a hotel to meet someone, Shion found out that he has only another 12 months to figure out the parasite mystery before all hell breaks loose (literally) next spring, and is still creep out by Nezumi’s ‘kill all humans, *insert evil laugh*’ speech. They enter the hotel and are surrounded by dogs. Probably reading something about dogs before, Shion calmed himself down so that the dogs will not attack him and it worked perfectly. The person in charge, a girl named Inukashi began giving a tour around the hotel for a while and receives a note from Shion’s mother. That gives Shion an idea to warn the inhabitants of No. 6 about the parasite but with Nezumi bursting Shion’s idealistic bubble, he warns Shion that if he still wants to help the inhabitants of No. 6 even knowing the truth behind everything, he will start treating Shion as an enemy. Wanting to know Nezumi’s backstory why he hates humans (despite being one himself, unless there’s a crack twist at the end), tune in to the next episode~

No, Grandma. It isn’t that. Somehow my Safu senses tells me Shion’s going out with a boy who is better-looking than me.

Nezumi cooks a witch stew that will make anyone obey his command after drinking it. Needs no damn Geass to make it work.

Final Thoughts: Somehow, from the interactions between Shion and Nezumi in this episode, in the scale between idealism and cynicism it’s clear cut that Shion represents the idealistic side of things and Nezumi representing the cynical side. No. 6 also deals with human morals as well; 90% of the time, Shion’s brilliant (not being sarcastic here) ideas gets shot down by the more realistic and cynical Nezumi and insist (although handled it indirectly) to let the innocent people die in No. 6, thus ending the dystopian society once and for all.

Serious business aside, the first half has lots of sexual and yaoi undertones. Well, not so under now that we’ve seen Nezumi helped Shion remove the thing breeding under his neck IN BED. Arg, can’t help it and I still can’t decide which Shion look nicer; the Shion with brown hair or white hair. It’s a pity Safu’s left out in all this, otherwise she would be screaming at Shion as she pulls him back to No. 6 and beating Nezumi up with a rolling pin. We still don’t know how Nezumi got the scars on his back, sure looks painful, probably he was put into some horrible punishment four years ago before he escaped and met Shion.

And yes, Shion (post-parasite) and Nezumi do look identical to Allen Walker and Yuu Kanda from D.Gray Man. My memories are still fuzzy with the latter pair in the manga, but their earlier appearances still have a stronger impression than their later appearances (at least for me). Maybe because the manga doesn’t update as much now, shifting to another magazine and all due to Hoshino’s poor health (used to be in Shounen Jump, now in Jump Square that also publishes Ao No Exorcist monthly).

Hey, at least the tattoo is natural. It looks very cool too.

You were laughing at my pathetic attempt, aren’t you? Okay, I feel bad enough now, just stop, please. You laughing at me isn’t making me better at it.

She’s angry that no one’s ever wrote a note to her. Not even her mother.