Darker than Black: episode 17 “I’ll Sing a Love Song at the Garbage Dump… (Part 1)”

This one seems to be a one-off story but there are some Amber-after effects coming out of last week’s episode. I do hope that this 2-parter will shed more light on the doll’s background and mechanism. I just feel that lately they start to resemble the name that’s been given to them. This is a contrast from the first doll on the show, Chiaki, who’s as normal as any other humans until her programming over-rides her. Ever since then, however, other “Dolls” including Yin, seems to be emotionally stunted and robotic. This makes me wonder if there was anything special about Chiaki that makes her far more humane than the other “Dolls”? More importantly, I’d like to know how and why someone decided to make a “Doll” in the image of Kirsi. If Yin was created to remind someone of Kirsi, then wouldn’t it be in their interest to infuse Yin with Kirsi’s personality? If Yin is actually Kirsi, why do some characters treat her like a robot which can be re-booted easily?That was a rather light and entertaining story. I kind of like the part where the landlady screams at the gaijins because I’ve had the same experience as those gaijins and our group weren’t actually that bad. We were simply sitting near a lake at night and talk quietly to one another. I don’t think we made that much noise (certainly there was no rock guitar involved) apart from the occasional subtle laugh. For some reason, however, someone was annoyed and throw us an egg.

It missed us but it was a startling experience. The thing is, it’s not like we went out of our way to annoy the local resident. It just happens that we came from different countries and met some interesting people from all around the world. It’s inevitable that we wanted to spend as much time together since some of us were only there for a few weeks. Oh well, it was an interesting experience and I hope the Japanese residents didn’t think that we did that just to annoy them.As for the other part of the stories, I am amused at how Hei’s appetite seems insatiable. I’d like to say that eating like a pig is his payment but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Eating like a pig seems to just be an after effect of using his power. He doesn’t have to eat that much but he gets hungry due to using that power.

Kenji is an interesting side-character although I wonder how and why he decided to join a Yakuza gang when he’s clearly unsuited to become one. On that note, I was a bit confused when I saw the manager of the bar getting knocked out after the doll was already in Hitotsubashi’s possession. That is until I realize that the bar is also Hitotsubashi’s HQ and the guy who hits the manager with the bottle is actually Kenji. It’ll be interesting how Hei handles Kenji here. I don’t think he’ll hand Kenji and the doll over to Huang but sometimes it’s hard to see if Hei really likes a person and want to help he/she or if they’re just a target that he must get to know well.

This item was filed under: Darker than Black episodes