Dimension W

Episode 10

When we last left our heroes, Kyouma's mind was stuck in the Dimension W memory world. His body remained with Mira and the digger twins, who were attacked by guard robots on the way to the Andrastea facility. At the beginning of this episode, Mira takes down the robot, at the cost of getting thrown into certain death in the abyss ahead. However, Kyouma wakes up in time to save her. This results in the closest thing to an affectionate moment we've seen between them, when he pats her on the head. Having suddenly recovered a portion of his memories, Kyouma explains some of what happened during the disaster several years ago. The Andrastrea facility was meant to research teleportation-based space travel, but it was taken over by Haruka Seameyer. He seems to be controlling the Dimwub balls, which place nanomachines on people's heads that take their minds to Dimension W. Lwai (now called Loo by the subtitles– perhaps that's a more accurate translation of his name) then shows up, with his robotic body maimed. K.K.'s been chasing him, alongside a lobotomized Yuri. It turns out that K.K. was sent to kill anyone who got too close to the accident site. His modus operandi is creating his own private army of remote-controlled zombies via involuntary brain surgery. Well, I guess he is a specialist.

Fortunately for him, Easter Island is full of human resources in the form of the accident's victims. The bodies of people trapped in Dimension W weren't destroyed – they just lost their “souls,” in the show's parlance. When K.K. makes Kyouma fight one of his old Grendel buddies, Kyouma is torn. He struggles to believe that there's nothing left of his friend in the shambling husk of his body, but in the end, he has to destroy him. They corner K.K., but Mira demands that Kyouma spare his life, stating that “killing is wrong.” Loo is also destroyed in this encounter, but he comes back – it turns out that he has multiple bodies. This most likely indicates that he's some sort of weird networked entity and not really human. With the fight with K.K. behind them, they crawl closer to ground zero.

Calling it now: the show's sudden introduction of Dimwub exposure taking away people's souls will probably fuel a reveal that Miyabi is somehow still present inside Mira. That's the lamest possible twist, but “lame” is what I've come to expect out of Dimension W, at least since they took the entire premise in such a New Age-y direction. Dimension W had a lot of potential as a device for exploring an important part of the human experience – how you relate to a version of yourself that could have been – but that seems to have been squandered with contradictory talk of “souls” and “memories.” They introduced Dimension W as a scientific phenomenon, but that gets ruined when you carelessly introduce metaphysical concepts like “souls” and “memories” into the equation. Bringing Madoka up again, since it was another show that played the game of linking subjective human experience and objective scientific reality into one system, that series was extremely careful about the balance. It gave human emotion a place within the entropic decay of the universe by describing it as a form of energy. Dimension W hasn't done anything like that, so the connection between “alternate dimensions” and “memories” feels unearned. Most shows can learn a thing or two from Madoka Magica, but in particular, Dimension W – which uses a similar scientific metaphor for a worldview – should have taken better notes.

We've at least learned what everyone is after. It turns out that the Andrastea facility contained some sort of super coil that does stuff even the Numbers can't do. Considering that their abilities are still hopelessly vague (they bring alternate possibilities to life via memories somehow), the super coil can potentially do anything that the narrative demands of it. The scientists were using it to study space travel – that is, until Seameyer hijacked the operation for his own purposes. I assume that it will eventually be used to try and bring back dead girlfriends. These are all the motivations as I understand them so far: Salva wants the super coil to fix his country somehow. Kyouma is helping to recover it for New Tesla. I don't know what Loser wants, although I suspect that it involves reviving his dead wife. He needs five of the Numbers to do something at Andrastrea, but he only has four. Fortunately, Jason Chrysler (the superhero guy) uses a Numbered coil, so they're fighting over that right now. K.K. only seems like he was hired to assassinate people.

This episode wasn't as much of a step down as the last one, but that doesn't mean that the show has improved. After the derail of Haruka Seameyer's introduction, Dimension W seems to have reached a plateau. I hope that it doesn't continue to slip.

Grade: C

Dimension W is currently streaming on Funimation.

Gabriella Ekens studies film and literature at a US university. Follow her on twitter.