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Justice Doesn’t Just Mean Saving the Nice
Special 7 continues to not really be anything all that special and yet it also is fairly watchable in bite size chunks. Episodes 8 and 9 both get the audience to think about justice in different ways and episode 9 is clearly setting up for a bigger conflict but really neither episode goes far enough or has all that much impact.
Episode 9 has our idiotic rookie answering a cry in the street from a woman who had her purse snatched. Heedless of danger to himself he sprints after the motorbike, hops a ride on a truck, leaps from the moving truck to tackle the guy on the moving motorbike and apprehends him, only the bag falls into the river. Instead of being thanked for his heroic (?) deed the woman berates him about losing her work equipment. That in and of itself makes you wonder if playing the hero is ever worth the effort however in case that wasn’t cause enough to question whether she was worth saving, we later learn the character is involved in the kidnapping of Belle. Bottom line, she isn’t a very nice person.
Does that mean the audience should be happy she was mugged or that she lost her bag? Does that mean the Nanatsuki was wrong for trying to help her when she needed someone? It isn’t really clear what the anime wants to say here but it at least asks the question in episode 8 which makes episode 9’s blatant ideological slap in the face a lot easier to take.
Affiliate Link – Soundtrack
As offices of the law the characters in this story have to follow their orders and they should be protecting everyone, not just the people they like. However, that is a hard pill to swallow for the group when they are tasked with transporting a terrorist involved in the airport explosion nine years ago. Ichinose lost his partner. Nanatsuki was a hostage caught up in the explosion. Nijou’s brother ‘died’. Yet for whatever reason they need to transport the guy safely. Of course, the rest of the terrorist group may take care of the problem for them but in the meantime there’s a lot of questions about whether the guy is even worth protecting.
While some of the other characters struggle with this question, Nanatsuki, straight forward as always, simply declares that he is finding his own justice and that means protecting the guy so that he can testify. It’s simplistic but suits his character. Whether the other characters agree or not remains to be seen but there’s bigger fish to fry by the end of the episode and I guess we’re moving onto the climax in the next episode or so.
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Karandi James
Special 7 is not so special, but here’s the episode coverage.
Images from: Special Crime Investigation Unit – Special 7. Dir. H Kosaka. Anima&Co. 2019.