What little drama Tesla Note episode 6 had going with the injured Kuruma and the potential of betrayal by the CIA more or less evaporates this week as Kuruma points out he never needed surgery as the bullet apparently just grazed him and the third party, A Small House (or whatever they want to call themselves) turned out to be pretty lame all around. Here we have a pointless three way battle for shards that takes a whole episode.
Can Tesla Note let characters make sensible decisions for a change?
So many questions came out of this episode. For instance, why are the two members for A Small House even still on the boat? A question I asked last week. They could have left without talking to the other spies. But instead they do a whole introduction sequence, including explaining what their Spanish name is, which apparently is hilarious to the Japanese team because it sounds like the Japanese phrase “I’m hungry”.
But would spies really stand around naming their organisations, introducing themselves to others, and even correcting the pronunciation of a name when they had already claimed their prize? It seems unlikely.
Of course, Tesla Note had already kind of pushed the unlikely card with Kuruma announcing he’d only been grazed by the bullet. Botan was there and would have known if the injury was serious or a graze. I mean they are probably playing the distraught card, but she is a trained spy and there’s no way she freaked out that much and lost so much composure over a graze. And if the story wants me to believe she did then it is asking me to just accept that Botan is emotionally unsuited for her job.
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Meanwhile, what do the two CIA agents even do this episode? Sure we get this lovely repeated joke of both the CIA computer guy and the Japanese computer guy reaching the same conclusions after frantically typing gibberish into their devices which apparently allows them to analyse whatever the script says they need to even if there is no obvious connection between their device and what they are analysing.
Ultimately though, blonde CIA guy fights some robots and then his own boss who he avoided fighting last week. Then they give chase on a lifeboat but other than providing Botan a stepping stone they never get near the final battle. Their existence in this episode was pointless, which given it was their base the whole fight has gone down on seems fairly lame.
Back to Botan and Tesla Note manages to have her track the ones with the shards using a secret scent but then she lets them go because she has to stop the boat crashing into land. Why she can’t just let the rest of her team actually do something and stick to her goal doesn’t seem to be answered. Though given the rest of them were standing around confused because the controls were broken maybe Botan is right not to trust them.
Just one thing after another and after another, this episode of Tesla Note just feels like filler as the end result doesn’t really change from the end of last episode. Though one character might have died. Maybe. I’m still a little doubtful about that.
Even if he did die, it seems a pointless death knowing that if he’d not hung around for the group intro-session maybe he wouldn’t have had to go through that in the first place.
So all around, episode 7 of Tesla Note didn’t really impress. There’s nothing awful about it, its just that it doesn’t feel meaningful. It is more action for the sake of it and you are left wondering how much more interesting this could have been if any of these characters made sensible decisions.
Images from: Tesla Note. Dir. M Fukuda. Gambit. 2021
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Karandi James