Tesla Note episode 6 replays the shot that takes out Kuruma at the end of episode 5 and then has a weird Mary Poppins style umbrella sequence that feels like maybe it belongs in an Inspector Gadget episode. Actually, let’s be honest, Tesla Note’s biggest problem is we have world-wide espionage with characters and plot who wouldn’t be out of place in a morning cartoon but it isn’t cute or fluffy enough to be a kid’s story and it isn’t solid or interesting enough to actually be for older viewers.
Leaving aside last week’s awful villain motive, this week has Botan literally fall apart as she deals with the fall out of Kuruma’s injury. She’s just screaming and uselessly holding him on the roof until the CIA guys get there and call in a helicopter.
Still not entirely sure how helicopter trip out to the ocean to get medical attention on a boat actually got accepted as a plan by the Japanese team… I mean, Botan wasn’t thinking at all so she definitely would have said yes, but there’s two other members of her team who aren’t new, aren’t teenagers, and probably should have some kind of standard procedure that doesn’t involve accepting help from an enemy organisation on their home turf.
Tesla Note could be a how not to spy manual.
As Botan continues to be miserable and lash out at her teammates we see a very brief scene of Kuruma’s medical procedure but then the rest of the episode of Tesla Note becomes another group (apparently A Small House) manipulating people on the boat for their own evil ends… Wow, I wish it was actually as interesting as it might have seemed on paper.
Anyway, I kind of found it weird when they were arriving on the boat that the glasses wearing CIA guy gave them like a full run-down of the ship’s specs including mentioning that all the crew use glasses to share video. It seemed like a weird fact to drop on people who were worried about a comrade bleeding to death. Obviously it was Tesla Note’s version of foreshadowing and at the very least this fact does become relevant but it all seems really unnecessary.
Like the fact that the CIA has a whole boat of medical staff all linked together with glasses and every single crew member seems to be wearing them and using the video feed exactly when the enemy decides to use this feature against them.
Affiliate Link
Outside of this, let’s look at the enemy Tesla Note delivers this week.
Sure the CIA are shady, but I can’t take blonde guy seriously as he explains traps left for the Japanese team in their room that include leaving them insufficient ice-cream to share. Plus he declares he won’t fight a woman, in response to fighting his own boss, but I really doubt he intends to ever seriously harm Botan. Steal from her yes, but not injure her.
Then we have A Small House. Who have infiltrated this boat in disguise but on first opportunity more or less strip it off and reveal their real faces, and in one case, their name to the enemy. Wouldn’t they be smarter to leave them guessing who was messing with them and took the shard?
Likewise, they first use their shard to mess with Botan and send her in to her team to go a bit nuts and to take the shard. Surely it would have been better to tell her to be sneaky (given she’s trained at infiltration) because then she could have just handed them the shard the next time she went to the bathroom.
And if you want the shard and have it, what is the point of hanging around as the various people fight one another?
Maybe we’ll get some kind of explanation from A Small House in the next episode of Tesla Note. Here however, the only joy is really to be found in the way Botan get’s brought back to her senses. That was actually kind of funny.
I’ve been pretty supporting of Tesla Note up until this episode because rough edges and all there’s a potentially decent story here, but time and again this anime just kind of misses the mark. While I still don’t think it is as bad as it score might indicate on MAL, it definitely isn’t something I’m going to recommend to others.
Images from: Tesla Note. Dir. M Fukuda. Gambit. 2021
Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James
One thought on “Tesla Note Episode 6 – For Spies and Agents These Guys Sure Let Their Emotions Get The Better Of Them”