“According to rumours on the Net, a few years ago, an Encoder tried to devastate the Space. But nobody knows what happened to this encoder.”
Dennou Coil continues to up the ante as the gray-clothed girl, identified to be an Encoder-level hacker, unexpectedly joins Yuko and Fumie’s own class. In fact, it turns out that she also has the name of Yuko, rather, Yuko Amasawa. A creepy coincidence, or is something afoot?
Herein, Yuko Okonogi will be referred to by her nickname of Yasako to avoid confusion.
Dennou Coil Episode Five - The Hacker’s Club
Fumie and Yasako quietly discuss the possibilities of what may have made Yuko appear in this town, guessing that her parents might belong to some glasses company. Fumie notes that Encoders are enigmatic individuals, and no one is really sure what they’re up to. Yasako voices her assumption that Encoders were only after metabugs, to which Fumie says that it’s not often the case. As an example, she informs Yasako about the urban rumour of Miss Michiko, a mysterious entity on the internet who grants wishes.
Eventually, the two decide to try to worm some information out of her… First hand.
Unfortunately, Yuko Amasawa isn’t really very sociable. Fumie doesn’t really help things by noting the similarities of the two Yuko’s names and bestowing upon the other Yuko the nickname of “Isako.”
Isako and Yasako. “Brave Girl” and “Gentle Girl”, so to speak.
Isako gives them the cold shoulder while giving them curt replies. She doesn’t appear to acknowledge her stealing of Densuke from the previous episodes, as well, but further prodding reveals she simply doesn’t care about what they think about it.
That’s when Daichi comes in and tries inviting Isako into his club. This causes a ruckus between Daichi and Fumie, causing Isako to flare up and tell both of them off.
Daichi, brooding over the event earlier, starts scheming to get back at the others. He starts off by sending Yasako a boatload of spam, but with help from Fumie, the two are able to delete the offensive mail quickly. Obviously, Daichi isn’t too happy, and upon seeing Isako get called up to answer a question, he decides to try the same prank on her as well.
And this is where things start to get interesting.
Fumie grins as the spam starts filling up Isako’s viewport, expectant of her capabilities. And true to her hunch, Isako not only deletes the spam, she does it while answering the question on the blackboard as well, with no obvious sign of directly inputting her commands. This puzzles Daichi greatly.
Before he can think any further about the matter, however, three envelopes pop up on his viewport… And the resulting spam overload knocks his glasses out of commission.
Daichi simmers over the humiliating loss as his glasses download an auto-restore program, discussing the matter with his club members. He expresses his puzzlement at Isako closing banners that specifically require hand movements to be closed. One of them suggests the possibility of the Imago secret function, a rumoured hidden function, unpublished due to bugs, causing the manufacturers to hide its existence.
Fumie, who is discussing the matter at the same time with Yasako, suspects that Isako may have found a way to use the production-hidden ability of controlling the glasses with your own mind.
Isako comes back to class to see her desk overturned, obviously by the boys, to which Fumie remarks that despite her skills, even Isako can’t do much about real-life pranks.
The boys continue their own little charades against Isako at the food table, while the girls quietly observe. Fumie voices her disapproval about Daichi, describing his over-the-top rascal behaviour.
Meanwhile, the boys continue observing Isako as she cleans up the mess from earlier, noting how she gave up easily. Daichi isn’t satisfied, however, and wants to get at her again after school.
Yasako waits for Isako after school, and again attempts to be friends with her. Isako, however, coldly points out that Yasako’s friendly behaviour appears to have hidden reasons behind it. She suggests that perhaps, before moving here, Yasako had a spot of trouble in her previous school. Perhaps she was bullied or may have even been a bully, and is trying to move away from her past. Yasako’s shock tells Isako that she was right, but she reassures Yasako that she won’t tell anyone.
During this conversation, Isako receives a mail telling her to go to the second floor. She does so after finishing her conversation with Yasako. Just as she disappears, Fumie suddenly reappears, informing Yasako that something big is taking place - Namely, an invitation to war.
In a secret classroom, Daichi’s club prepares their makeshift base for battle. Turns out that Daichi has gotten a better pair of glasses just for this, and that the fourth-grader in their team was the one who sent the message to Isako, luring her into their trap.
Isako walks along an empty corridor, wondering where the teacher who called her is. Before long, she begins to suspect that something is not quite right… And her observation hits home when yellow pulse shots fire at her. She ducks behind a stack of boxes just in time, and notices a yellow circular portal in mid-air… The source of the shots.
But before she is even able to catch her breath, portals open beside her and open fire. She barely dodges in time, her hand still flickering from being hit. To give herself a tactical time-out, Isako throws up a steel barrier to stop the shots.
Back in the room, the club members are busy firing their weapons, the “Mister Forthright”, through the portals. Daichi decides that what they have is not enough and declares that it’s time to bring out the “Mister Chase” weapon.
In the meantime, Isako appears to be doing something on her own interface devices, when suddenly missiles burst forth from the space under her steel barrier. She dodges the initial wave, but it turns out that these things actively seek out their targets, and return for another pass. Isako throws something at the missiles which cause them to explode, but more missiles appear from behind the wall. She throws up another steel barrier, but it fails to stop them as the missiles navigate the gaps between the steel barrier and the room.
Daichi and his team survey the scene via some sort of mapping system, and wonder if they managed to get her, as the Mr. Chase missiles are 200 meta a shot… With discount. They manage to delete the steel barrier, but Isako is nowhere in sight.
Fumie and Yasako are watching the action from a different location. Fumie has Oyaji throw a tracking tag onto Isako, the former ducking out of sight just as more portals appear. Isako notices them, however, and throws a disabling firewall through them, stopping their assault for a few moments. From their viewports, they can see Isako throwing up another wall, which they quickly delete, continuing their assaults. But it turns out that the firewall Isako threw was just a diversion, as red encoding marks crawl up the desk of the skinny club member…
Isako is nowhere near their target of assault, however, and has since decided to answer them in kind. She works her Encoding magic, causing herself to disappear.
This does not go unnoticed by Fumie, but she can’t help but express her approval of Isako’s expertise, before declaring that they’re going into the game as well.
At this point, the red markings have spread onto the Mister Fortright packages on the desk of the skinny guy, and they trigger a massive explosion that overloads his glasses. Isako, from her real location on the roof of the school, follows through with a hacking attack on the classroom space. It turns out that the hacking is coming from two sources. Daichi at first concludes that Fumie had teamed up with Isako, but the fourth-grader shows that Fumie was in a different location from the hacking sources. Fumie, however, already found out that the two locations were false.
Daichi has the skinny guy go look for Isako on foot, while the rest of the team focuses on finding her location.
Isako, meanwhile, is amusing herself with the portal she stole from them, deciding that it might be worthwhile to use it for her own purposes. She proceeds to order her Mojo minions through the portal.
Fumie sighs at the boy’s hopelessness, and decides to show them the real location of Isako via their own monitors. Daichi notices this, but is clueless as to how the information got there. Unnoticed to them, however, the Mojo are stealing their weapons. Daichi tells the fourth-grader to prepare their trump card, but the latter opens their ammunition bag to find nothing at all, the Mojos already escaping with their stash through the portal hidden under the desk. He tells the others to call Namecchi (Skinny dude), but remembers that his glasses are broken, and so orders a full-member charge to the science lab.
Namecchi, meanwhile, has already reached the science lab, and sees a box of glasses. He tries one on, and looks down just in time to see white encoding marks crawling up his body. Fumie observes that the location turned out to be yet another fake, and tries to directly find the source. However, she finds her way barred by a firewall.
Isako, while preparing for her final attack against the boys, notices Fumie’s intrusion, promising to take care of her as well. A large amount of portals open all around her, this time at her own command. Fumie manages to open a connection and throws a tag through, and it lands on a desk leg. Isako notices this time, however.
The boys group outside the lab with their last arsenal - firecrackers, and rush in… To find themselves staring at a whole bunch of open portals. And Isako opens fire from each and every one of them.
Somewhere outside and in a completely unrelated manner, a crow caws for their requiem.
Isako now turns her attention to Fumie, whose tag has been slowly trying to gain access via visible data network links. She simply blasts the hacking attempt away via her Imago interface. Fumie throws another tag, which lands in mid-air. It appears that Isako has some sort of barrier around herself. She denies the hacking attempt again, blasting the tag to shreds this time. Throughout all this, Fumie’s screens are blacking out as her systems are being destroyed by Isako, but she refuses to give in, throwing in another tag, but this tag stops even before it passes the interface portal, to which Isako dismisses the method as being old and useless, even though her face is starting to sweat. This time, she powers through a massive hacking beam that blasts at the last tag, leaving Fumie mere moments before it blasts her and Yasako. But Fumie appears to have anticipated this, and opens a yellow portal of her own, blasting Isako with her own beam. In a last resort manoeuvre, Isako actually has to use her fingers to force back the attack and close the connection. Just in time, too - The tag protecting Yasako and Fumie had about given way at this point, and they were mere miliseconds away from being completely overwhelmed.
In the aftermath, Fumie and Yasako look up to see all their screens completely black, but Fumie is satisfied at having stolen information. On the flipside, Isako finally acknowledges Fumie’s skills.
And the fourth-grader finally arrives at the lab, only to see the smoking remains of his comrades.
That night, Fumie and Yasako has Megabaa try to analyze the data, but it turns out that most of it was corrupted. Megabaa points out that there is still some readable text, which Yasako sees, and gives pause at…
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One of my favourite episodes of the series. At this point I’ve become attached to the simplistic art style that enables the animators to balance good animation and visual aesthetics, as well as the various events taking place in the story. Isako really shows off her mad skillz in this episode, but Fumie was no slouch either. It was also a little shocking to hear Isako’s hypothetical analysis of Yasako hitting home. Makes me wonder if Yasako could really have been a bully? That would have been an interesting twist… Also, what Yasako saw was apparently a name, although I can’t remember it at the moment, it has something to do with herself as well. This series may very well be THE series of 2007, in my opinion.
Stay tuned for the next Dennou Coil update! I will probably be doing the Night Battle episode then.
Tags: Dennou Coil
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