Everything is falling into place as we near the conclusion of our story. One by one, questions are answered, and as a result, I find this episode oddly calm and rather unexciting. Our mystery is finally about to die. One thing for sure, I don’t think the identity of the true culprit was ever in doubt.

— That doesn’t mean, however, that every single question is answered to a satisfying degree. For instance, at the start of the episode, the investigators can’t even cut power to the machine, because the Mizuhanome is apparently “protecting” the ID Well. Huh? In any case, this ends up being a good thing, because pulling Narihisago and Fukuda out now would’ve prevented them from saving Hondomachi. Nevertheless, when the three brilliant detectives return to Kaede’s dead body, they are easily extracted with nary an issue. Huh?

— Anyways, John Walker expected Fukuda to try and trap Narihisago in his own ID Well. And he also expected Narihisago to try and kill Fukuda in retaliation. And if his best laid plans had come to fruition, Hondomachi would’ve been trapped forever. The case against John Walker would thus go cold without the three brilliant detectives. A dastardly plan, right? I dunno. It seems a little precarious.

— For example, what if Narihisago doesn’t kill Fukuda? There’s a good chance he wouldn’t, right? Maybe John Walker doesn’t think this. Maybe he’s super duper confident that our hero would just rage out against Fukuda… but then I have to question his thought process. Like c’mon, Narihisago has only directly killed one person, and it was the guy responsible for his daughter’s death. With everyone else, he would only talk them into killing themselves. So why would you suddenly expect Narihisago to kill Fukuda with his bare hands? Are you sure you’re a serial killer mastermind?

— Sure enough, a calm and collected Narihisago doesn’t kill Fukuda. Whoopsie. Instead, he gets the latter to lead him back to the location of original Mizuhanome — the one that Hondomachi had climbed into. Something about how the previous ID Well is from three years ago, and now they’re updating or syncing so Hondomachi will soon appear in the latest ID Well. They can then extract the girl. But what if they pull her out before she can solve the case? Wouldn’t that suck? We just have to cross our fingers and hope that everything magically works out!

— There are a lot of convenient revelations like how time can stretch and dilate as long as nobody is observing you in an ID Well. So in the end, whipping up this sandstorm works out in our detectives’ favor. They can carry out their rescue operation without any interference from the real world! Hoo boy, I bet John Walker wishes he could have a do-over right about now.

— So we finally cut to Hondomachi, and she’s wrapping up the investigation that Narihisago had started. I find this scene somewhat amusing, because it’s literally just the girl standing in a room, thinking to herself. The anime got to save a bit of money this week. So far, we’ve had a scene in which a sandstorm obscures most of our vision, so there isn’t much to animate. And now, we have one person pacing around a room.

— One thing I find annoying about the serial killers in this show is that they’re all so… simplistically ritualistic. One guy always drills holes. Another killer always rips people’s faces off. Someone likes to tear out their victim’s tongues. If one or two of them are like this, fine… but all of them? Yeah, sure, serial killers tend to do the same things every time they strike, but not just one thing.

— Anyways, John Walker also has a gimmick. His killers always strike on certain days. So for the entire week, these killings would occur on a strict schedule? You’re, uh, the Challenger, right? You wanna beat someone up? Sorry, wait till Sunday! I dunno, I’m kinda surprised that nobody saw this pattern until now.

— Then of course, the seven days thing gets linked to Genesis… the final boss always has to see himself as God, huh?

— So Hondomachi goes and sees Fukuda in her dream world. She asks him about his encounters with John Walker, and he remembers the exact dates and time. ‘Cause y’know, he loves numbers. In doing so, Hondomachi is able to figure out who at Kura might have gone missing one one of those days…

— I’m just wondering… did they ever ask the real Fukuda the same question? I don’t remember. It’s been months since he was captured. They had to have asked him about John Walker, right? He would’ve come up as part of their due diligence, right? Did they never ask him when he met the guy…? Maybe they did and I just don’t remember. I sure as hell am not gonna fire up the older episodes to find out.

— Meanwhile, Matsuoka goes to Momoki’s house again to figure out why Narihisago’s cognition particles would be found there. Togo immediately notices that something is off: there’s a new picture on the shelf. How does she know? She’s been here before. The team has a funny reaction to this revelation. I guess maybe Togo and Momoki had a little sumthin’ goin on behind the scenes. Or it could’ve been just a one night stand. Shrug. Still, bosses shouldn’t get involved with their underlings. That’s like HR 101. Tsk tsk tsk…

— It turns out someone had hidden one of Narihisago’s cherished photographs in Momoki’s house, and this is how our hero’s cognition particles were planted. Still, it seems like John Walker is getting kinda sloppy. He could’ve hidden the photo in any of the existing frames on the shelf, but he had to stick a new one up there. Not exactly what I would expect from a mastermind. Again, I still don’t think relying on Narihisago to kill Fukuda in the ID Well is as foolproof as he thinks. It just feels weird that he could have eluded everyone for this long but finally begin to screw up.

— There’s still the matter of Momoki claiming that it was all a trap. Guess what? We still haven’t heard his explanation. He must have known that Narihisago and Fukuda weren’t going into his ID Well. It feels like he would’ve thrown a major wrench into John Walker’s plans if people were simply reasonable and allowed him to speak.

— Hondomachi straight up calls John Walker in her dream world, and of course… it’s Hayaseura. Who else could it have been? He’s been the only suspicious person in this entire series from start to finish. He was fishy from day one. We all knew it was him.

— Y’know… making him the true culprit is fine. I just feel like the show should’ve done more to try and lead us astray, y’know? Give us multiple people to suspect. It’s funny how ID INVADED has relied on multiple twists and turns in the past few weeks, but the ultimate reveal is so milquetoast. I wasn’t even excited for this scene. When I saw Hayaseura’s face, I was just, “Well, yeah… duh.”

— Anyways, just as soon as Hondomachi solves the case, she is extracted by the other two detectives. Great timing. Fantastic timing.

— Uh, phrasing…

— Anyways, Narihisago leads his colleagues back to Kaede, and in doing so, the team back in the real world can finally observe and thus extract them from the ID Well. I guess Kaede’s location is the eye of the storm, and thus the investigators could now observe them? Eh… again, it doesn’t seem like going into your own ID Well is as dangerous as they initially made it out to be.

“Oooh, if the dreamer realizes that he’s in his own unconscious world, then bad, bad things will happen! He’ll be trapped in it forever!

…

Oh hey, we’re free now.”

— Hondomachi immediately tells the team who the true culprit is, but they probably suspected the old man at this point. Who else would have had access to Narihisago’s cell as well as Momoki’s residence?

— But the series ain’t over yet, so Hayaseura’s about to make his last stand. He heads off to a room, types away on a futuristic keyboard, and unveils Kiki. I’m curious as to how she’ll protect him. Hmm… well, she can project her dreams into people, right? Maybe he used her powers to incapacitate all of those nurses, and he’s about to do the same to our lovely investigators.

— Still, I gotta wonder how Kiki is hidden within the very same organization with nobody knowing about it. “Hey, what does this room do? Why is it drawing so much power? What’s going on in here?” Clearly, only Hayaseura knows about it, and he answers to nobody. Man, you guys have some terrible oversight.

— In any case, we’re nearing the end of the series. I still have a lot of questions about how the dream worlds work… but they’re just minor details. It’d be nice to iron them out, but it’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.