Dimension W

Episode 7

This episode opens on a flashback to when Kyouma was a punk teen. One day, he meets a girl – Miyabi – Twilight-style, when she's about to be crushed by a van. They promptly fall in love. Unfortunately, she comes down with a case of Anime Girlfriend disease. Condemned to die tragically young, Kyouma - then just a scrappy ruffian - tracks down a leading doctor, Seira Yurizaki, to treat her. Since she's the wife of Shidou Yurizaki, the man who invented coils, she's not exactly available, so he tries to punch his way through her guards. This catches her attention, and she recruits Kyouma into the Knights of Grendel in exchange for treating his girlfriend. They go on the Easter Island mission, which leaves Kyouma hospitalized and an amnesiac. In the meantime, his girlfriend was violently beheaded in a coil accident.

Back in the present-day plot, Mr. Obviously Evil African Prince has set up a Collectors' Hunger Games for the coil that initiated the disaster at Easter Island. A bunch of the world's best Collectors (representing a broad spectrum of ethnic stereotypes) have arrived to participate. Elizabeth is also there, alongside a mysterious cloaked figure who is Definitely Not Loser. On the flight there, however, they're approached by a mysterious sphere of energy. It seems to arrive with purpose, and Salva comments that it may be “what Dr. Yurizaki predicted.” At that point, however, their ship crashes, and the episode ends. Parallel to all this, Kyouma, Mira, and Albert independently arrive at Easter Island. Their goal is to collect the coil before any of Salva's men can. But judging by the greeting he faced, I doubt that our heroes will have an easy time of it.

This was a functional information/transition episode and not much else. Kyouma's backstory was entirely what I expected. At least he had the grace to emote more than usual. The nature of his girlfriend's death was also overwhelmingly brutal – we don't know anything about her death except that a coil guillotined her, as indicated by her preserved yet headless corpse. Perhaps showing that to Kyouma without explanation wasn't the best way to break the news. It was also narratively unnecessary – she could've just succumbed to her disease. There's no need for more icing on the Kyouma-has-his-life-ruined-by-coils cake, especially in the form of garish accidental violence against women. It's also uncertain how Lwai, Salva's energetic robot “brother,” will factor into all of this.

Overall, there was less overtly wrong with these episode, but it was also trying to accomplish way less. Kyouma's backstory is conventional to a T, neither particularly compelling nor uniquely flawed. Maybe something interesting will happen next week, when the Easter Island shenanigans finally begin in earnest. We still don't know what Salva wants to do with all of the collectors there. We know that he's looking for traces of life. There shouldn't be any on the island, considering that the accident rendered it totally inhospitable, but there's also photographic evidence to the contrary. With some backstory out of the way, Dimension W still contains more mysteries than answers, the foremost being where the show might be going with all of this.

Grade: B

Dimension W is currently streaming on Funimation.

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