Notes of Coppelion Episode 5

Considering what happened to the Old Capital, it’s ironic how he’s sitting on a “Safety First” sign.

• In the last episode, the team rescued the scientist responsible for the catastrophe that befell the Old Capital, and discovered an illegal waste dump in the process.

• Summary of Episode Five: the waste is just being removed from the water reservoir, but suddenly a tank belonging to a hitherto unknown force shoots down one of the helicopters. Ibara and team finds some track marks and a knocked-over ambulance. There is a pregnant wife and her husband in the ambulance, and they are promptly attacked by what turns out to be a long-thought-to-be-lost squad. Ibara gets on the walkie-talkie to get some air support from the vice principal, but he’s occupied with a really annoying Prime Minister who refuses them support and instead orders them to exterminate said squad. The team is led to a hideout – aptly named Planet – and the episode ends with the vice principal contacting another Coppelion team to rush to Ibaras’ aid.

• My Take on Coppelion Episode 5: At last! Finally! We get to see some development story-wise! Damn I’ve been waiting for this since episode one (or two). It may just be that I had problems with the last two episodes or so, but I had much less of a gripe with this episode. It had all elements I like – a consistent story, no emotional breakdowns, no inexplicable developments (physics-or world-wise), believable characters, and so on.

• The episode starts with a flashback: we get confirmation that there is indeed a whole class of modified humans. Maybe around twenty, thirty of them, as it’s the vice principal taking head count instead of a teacher (hinting at that there is only one class of them). The end of the episode reveals we’ll meet some of them next week, something I look forward to.

  There’s a whole bunch of dolls here.

• The fact that they managed to squeeze all those barrels seen in the last episode into a measly three containers prompted me to raise my eyebrows in disbelief, but at this point I’m no longer surprised on whatever this anime throws at me. Let’s move on. I wonder why the containers got stolen; maybe whoever’s behind that wants to blackmail the government into something or use it as leverage in future negotiations? We’ll see….but then again, developing a whole new helicopter in just one day? Come on. Apparently it’s nothing more than a robotic arm and two rotors thrown on top of a container.

  Okay, even I can design and manuacture something like that in a day. Sold.

• It was interesting to see how the world of Coppelion expands when history (what happened right after the disaster) and politics (the Prime Minister and the international conference) enters the fray. The food chain observable in real societies is present in the world of Coppelion as well: Prime Minister commands vice principal who in turn puts pressure on Ibara’s team and the scientist dude in the laboratory. Usually there’s no back-talking like when Ibara snapped, that kind of thing gets you fired. I guess the Prime Minister was so scared of the 1st Division that he let it slide. And it was pretty funny to watch himself declare “I’m the Prime Minister who has more power than anyone else in Japan“. Anyway, the story behind the 1st Division seems intriguing and I hope they’ll tell us more in the coming episodes.

  I love the art style how their protective mask resembes those seen in WWII footage or games

  The Prime Minister wearing a headmask but not a full-body suit, and when reminded of that fact, taking a “I know better than you, I’m the higher-up” was somewhat stereotypical, but funny.

  

  I’m pretty sure everyone’s aware of that, but be my guest.

  The minister’s aide refers to Ibara and the girls as “dolls”, which gives away how the aforementioned higher-ups view them. It seems not only the minister is ignorant (as the aide mentioned), but the aide as well. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. I mentioned in the post about the first episode that I would be interested in seeing how the theme of dolls would be used, but it hasn’t popped up since…until now. On the other hand, Mishima vice-principal does everything in his power to have the minister’s order rescinded, but even the aide turns him down, quoting “their development cost a fortune” as a reason. I’m liking the vice-principal more and more, seeing that he goes as far as blackmailing one of the military’s scientists into contacting another Coppelion team to help the girls. Guess what the incentive is…it’s food! The scientist simply cannot resist the power of sukiyaki and folds promptly. As expected from someone who manages a school, he clearly knows the weaknesses of his underlings.

• The moment I heard the name “JASA”, a certain long-running (more than 70 episodes at the time of writing this post) anime about two astronaut brothers came to my mind. Later on they show us the headquarters and it’s pretty easy to figure out what this organization’s name is in reality.

The kanji are difficult to read, but pretty close to the original name.

• The team – and more importantly, the pregnant woman – has to hold out for three days. Seeing the driver mention that in case of intruders approach, the heavy-duty iron gates don’t let them get in. I hope it’s not a foretelling of what’s going to happen in the coming episodes… Well they do have power supplies in form of a hydroelectric plant should anything happen.

  The scene where they get to see what’s inside the structure resembling half a sphere from the outside reminded me of a similar scene from Howl’s Moving Castle when Howl shows Sophie where one of the color-coded doors lead to.

  

  Only that scene was in the Alps and not inside a planetarium.

• Aoi’s constant whining is starting to get to me. Let’s leave aside the fact that she doesn’t appear to do anything useful on her own, all she does is turn emotionally super-positive or super-negative.

• There were some inconsistencies in the animation this week. When the armored vehicle shows up when Ibara’s team is under attack from the 1st Division, it’s evident that it’s CG. But when the vehicle leaves, the animation is so cringe-worthy that I almost cried out.

  This one is CG.

  Versus…

  

  This one causes eye cancer.

  (Incidentally, I have mastered the secret art of creating those annoying GIFs that loop forever.) Getting back to topic, I don’t really understand the sudden drop of quality if not for the chap that can be seen on the hood of the vehicle in the second animation. I was afraid that the studio went over-budget in the first episode, and I really hope these inconsistencies won’t become a regular sight.

• Summing it up I think this was a pretty decent episode with questions in need of answers (in the good sense!) and I’m really looking forward to the next one as well.