But before we get to the strange development in the Inako-Kihachi-Yosuke relationship, we have to talk about everything else that happened first. When we last left off, Saki had offered to help the kids get the Electric Catalog back from Yosuke, right? So that’s what we open with in this week’s episode. Yosuke’s staff instinctively bows to Saki as she waltzes through his manor with Inako in tow. We then literally find out that she’s his sister — his older sister to be exact. She used to be a menace to him back in the day, and maybe she’s still a menace to him now. But these days, she’s an importer of alcohol, which also explains why she’s always drinking in every scene she’s in. Anyway, I guess them being related makes sense in a way. But the anime is doing this thing I often dislike in storytelling, which is that everyone is tied to everyone else in some form or fashion. It just makes the world seem small.
But why is Inako here alone with Saki? I thought the woman approached both kids. Instead of tagging along with them, we see Kihachi back in his workshop. He had just received a large stack of papers, and they’re all filled with almost nothing but random diagrams of electric circuits. Tucked away in a corner are a few notes from his brother. Our boy proceeds to lose himself in an attempt to decipher the mystery before him. The patterns have a strange hold over him, causing Kihachi to not eat or sleep. He even starts neglecting his responsibilities. He ditched the prototype aircraft he was working on before he got distracted by Noriko and Kengo’s stupid relationship problems. Most of all, he hasn’t been spending much time with Inako, it seems. Ah, one step forward, two steps backward.
Yosuke probably sent those papers, knowing the effect it would have on Kihachi. He’s probably also the one stalking the kid right now. Kihachi eventually realizes what material he needs to make the circuits work, which is also probably what Yosuke intended. After all, the latter has no ingenuity whatsoever. He needs others to do all of the work for him. Even so, why not just approach Kihachi like a normal person? Well, I suppose there’s nothing really normal about Yosuke. It’s just strange how he went from utterly despising Seiroku’s little brother to now being obsessed. Yeah, you could say he didn’t realize Kihachi would be useful to him until now, but why did it take him so long to come to this conclusion? I mean, we’re literally talking about his dead crush’s blood relative. Who else would understand Seiroku better?
In previous episodes, Inako would normally sit and wait for Kihachi to turn up, but she suddenly gets an epiphany after connecting the dots between the numbers in the Electric Nishiki and the cluster of light bulbs that Kihachi had assembled. As a result, she rushes home to have a conversation with her father that should’ve happened a long time ago. I’m not talking specifically about the Electric Nishiki, of course, but rather, her dreams and aspirations for the future. Apparently, the numbers are just a recipe for sake — a sake developed and named by her mother. Yep, you guessed it: the sake is called the Electric Nishiki. Again, everyone and everything is connected. Eh, I’ve already said my piece about these coincidences, so I’ll just leave it at that.
What’s more important than the Electric Nishiki is the long-awaited and much-needed talk between father and daughter. Inako finally tells Jinemon directly that she wants to become a master brewer like her mother Naeko. A good father would understand his kids’ hopes and dreams and thus come to this conclusion anyway. But we don’t have a good father. A neglectful father would eventually hear about this from someone else, which actually did happen. Noriko already leaked this information to Jinemon in a previous episode to no avail. Finally, we arrive at the abusive dirtbag of father, who now requires his daughter to bow with her head to the ground in order for him to finally get a clue. Still want to sell your daughter off for money? Well, do ya?
We cut to the flashback of Naeko’s final moments. Jinemon was transcribing the Electric Nishiki’s recipe as the woman rattled off a bunch of numbers and instructions on her deathbed. She then literally told him, “I want to leave this behind for the children.” The emphasis is mine. It’s obvious that he deeply cared for and loved his wife. So how could she mean so much to Jinemon just for him to turn around and try to sell Inako off years later? I’m not even a parent, and I find that completely reprehensible. If I lose a loved one, the last thing I would do is get rid of their legacy. The fact that it’s his own daughter…? Ugh. No matter what he says now to Inako in the present, Jinemon will never be redeemed in my eyes. But it’s eleventh episode, so it’s about time he turns the corner. As a result, Jinemon predictably tells Inako to go for it. Make the sake and save the brewery. He was scared to screw it up, which is why he never attempted it. But the man who could never speak to his daughter previously without yelling suddenly trusts Inako to carry on her mother’s legacy. Boy, you could’ve thought of that a long time ago… but as always, these revelations are better late than never.
More importantly, Inako now has a true goal to pursue. Sure, she wanted to follow in her mother’s footsteps, but this was always just a vague notion floating around in her head. In truth, she had no concrete plans for how to achieve her dreams. She spent the previous ten episodes mostly serving as Kihachi’s muse, because she arguably needed a muse in return. She wanted his inventions to not just bring her closer to her mother and god, but also to give her the spark she needs in order to move forward. And in a way, this has happened. She never would’ve stumbled upon the recipe for the Electric Nishiki if she hadn’t embroiled herself in Kihachi’s troubles. She also needed Kihachi to save her from Yosuke, but now that she has her mother’s recipe in her hands, regardless of what ultimately happens between her and Kihachi, she should be able to stand on her two feet. Of course, I still expect this show to have a happy ending for the two kids. But it’s also anime, so we can expect some vague “we’ll be together” nonsense without any real commitment from either side.
The side effect of this momentous turn in Inako’s fortune, however, is that she keeps missing Kihachi. Every time she visits his workshop, she finds out that he had just left. This time, he intends to personally acquire the quartz he needs to develop his version of the Electric Nishiki. As a result, a kid who is deathly afraid of the dark heads to the mines all by his lonesome. It’s also a derelict mine that has been shut down. There are literally signs telling people to keep away. I don’t think you need me to tell you that something bad’s going to happen.
Kihachi stupidly squeezes himself through a crevice even though he has no clue where it might lead. As a result, he falls deeper into the mine. In doing so, he manages to find all the quartz he would ever need, but he also causes a minor cave-in. Naturally, his lamp goes out, and he’s now trapped in complete darkness. He has an bigger problem on his hands, though. Look, there isn’t a whole lot of oxygen in these mineshafts, especially when they’re rundown and unmaintained. It’s not just the darkness that will get him. He’s going to have a tough time breathing, and that will only exacerbate the situation.
Luckily for Kihachi, Yosuke has been stalking him this whole time, right? As a result, the kid didn’t have to stay down there for too long. When a drill breaks through the rock wall, light floods the chamber and interacts with the crystals. Even this serves to inspire Kihachi by resembling the flow of electricity in a circuit. Not only does he have his own epiphany, claiming that he now understands everything, he also seemingly hallucinates Seiroku’s final moments and words. Before we can really dwell on these images, however, Yosuke suddenly yanks Kihachi out of the chamber and embraces him.
Their relationship has taken a strange turn ever since the kid was forced to dance with Yosuke in drag. Yosuke acts as if he is intimately acquainted with Seiroku’s little brother even though they have been nothing but adversarial to each other since the start of the story. Nevertheless, he now claims that they are kindred souls. Inako would soon arrive, deeply concerned for Kihachi’s well-being. She first sees them locked in a handshake, but Kihachi is not of right mind at the moment. Yosuke then princess carries the kid to a gurney and whispers into Kihachi’s ears. When the kid gets taken away to receive treatment, Yosuke gives Inako a strange, knowing look as if to say he’s deliberately stealing Kihachi away from her. All of a sudden, the love triangle has inverted itself and now Kihachi is the one being fought over.
Granted, the previous love triangle was always hollow, because neither Inako nor Yosuke ever cared for one another. She was an unwilling participant of an arranged marriage, and he only wanted to use her family’s name. A proper love triangle requires the person at the center to feel some sort of ambivalence towards their pursuers. So is that the case now with Kihachi being the target of Inako and Yosuke’s affections? Like I said, he’s not of right mind at the moment. He simply thinks he’s trying to fulfill the promise he had made with Seiroku. Anything he agrees to in his current state should be null and voided. As a result, I feel like we simply have another hollow love triangle on our hands. I’m willing to wait and see what the anime is trying to do with this, but my gut feeling at the moment is that this is all rather ridiculous. If they had properly built Kihachi and Yosuke up as frenemies throughout the course of the season, then Yosuke’s current behavior might make more sense. Instead, it just feels like a cheap development for unnecessary drama, because we need to pad this story out even further. I’ve been told that we still have two episodes left? Maybe we could’ve cut this to just one if we didn’t feel the need to invert the love triangle.
To put a cap on this week’s events, I also find it strange that some sort of computer is the key device that will truly usher in the age of electricity. The first electric computer didn’t come along until decades after simpler electric-powered inventions such as the light bulb. I would think the mere widespread usage of electricity alone would demarcate the age of electricity. Furthermore, the average person at the time wouldn’t be able to afford a computer nor even have a need for it. It feels like the story has this need to one-up itself. Every invention has to be bigger and/or crazier than the last, but what Kihachi probably should’ve done a long time ago was simply market his light bulb. Or, y’know, come up with a workable electric grid for his neighborhood or whatever. Revolutions don’t have to be bombastic. I know an electric grid doesn’t sound sexy like a computer, but it makes more sense, no?