LogFAQs > #972568319

You're putting the fate of humankind's last colony... in a video game?

Juro Kurabe
After a few days off, we're back in with the main man. Let's hope I remember everything! Right away our focus is on Kyuta Shiba, who is, yep, Juro Izumi. Well, that was one of my guesses! He's been handing Juro his own memories via video tape to transplant them into his brain, presumably to help our Kurabe become more like him. I assume most people would have an idea what's going on by the time this branch of the story opens up again, but I imagine those who managed to avoid knowledge of 426 or invisible Shiba may be very confused lol. We learn that 426 transferred from Aibabot into Juro's nanomachines, so there's no getting away from him. There's something very unnerving about him never dropping the smiley guy act in this form.

There's several Izumi flashbacks here- I'm particularly amused watching him, Morimura, and Okino running around having no clue what is going on in UC. It's refreshing seeing them all so ignorant back then. As the apocalypse comes, Okino sacrifices himself to transfer the other two to Sector 0, but they come out in 2089. Did we just witness the loop restarting? I'm unsure, but it's a possibility. If so it probably is all automated as future!Ryoko had planned, as these folks had no idea. Morimura and Izumi vow to stop the Kaiju this time around, and we later get another flashback with an imprisoned 426 (it feels wrong referring to him by his prison number but it's the easiest identifier to distinguish the Juros >_>) being interrogated by Yuki's cop friend, then introduced to this timeline's Izumi and Okino before things fall apart again.

The other major flashback solidifies what happened to Aibabot, and there's some juicy dialogue between him and Ei. Ei let him out of the underground in the first place, and Izumi 'spared' Ei at some point. Izumi also claims that Miura is 'well aware' of something and deleted Ei's memories to hide a log from him, but I've no clue what he's referring to (he could well mean BJ!Miura, as nothing like this has come up in our Keitaro's story... unless I've forgotten, which is very possible). Maybe it is all stalling as Ei suggests.

Kurabe tries to talk to Okino, but is instead whacked on the head by Hijiyama and kidnapped the way Ogata was. Okino claims Juro wouldn't have come willingly but I honestly think he would, you've gotta at least try before resorting to causing concussions, Tsukasa! Though as luck would have it it was probably for the best, Izumi would have surely interfered otherwise. In any case, we now have what I imagine is a vitally important scene with Izumi.

He's not coy, and tells us a lot of new details. Morimura planned for Izumi's backup memories to be implanted into Juro, but Tamao (!) insisted on the new personality instead. Then we get to the crux of things: Izumi's motives. In 2188, Okino developed the environment management system for the enclosures, and in doing so borrowed some code from a video game, code which included the D-code that is now active and creates the Deimos. Our kaiju are the result of sloppy coding, our apocalypse simply the accidental emulation of 2156 video game Mighty Kaiju Deimos! ...What? lmao. How meta are we about to get?

Well, very! Izumi's new plan is to take advantage of this system by upgrading the sentinels using meta-chips, levelling up to give us a chance of winning this war. This is an absurd development on its face, but I think it works within the established lore. Hopefully the game's not going to get too cute about this, but it's fine so far. I wonder if that's why Izumi has Megumi shooting everyone, to get the pilots ready to level up. Hijiyama has seen a log referencing this, so hopefully we get into more detail in his story.

Izumi nods to Inaba in space (are they on the same side after all?), then has bought enough time for Megumi to come rescue Juro. With that, we can safely conclude Fluffy is also Izumi, and we end Juro's story ther- what's this? Yeaaaah, I love when the game throws a surprise 2188 scene on me, they're always so hype! This time we see a uniformed Hijiyama refuse safety to an 'infected' Yakushiji Sr and his daughter, but then Juro Izumi heroically risks his own life to save Megumi and promises to keep her safe. Wow, not where I thought this was going. So there is an honest connection between Juro and Megumi at its core. Great scene.

And even that isn't quite our ending, as the two Juros talk shortly before the final battle. After everything, Izumi gets a pretty sympathetic send-off as he relinquishes leadership at the end of all things to the new Juro. Is this really 426's finale? I'm not sure, there are questions remaining: if he's in Juro's nanomachines how is he also appearing to Megumi, and how did he get into Ogata's dreamworld, etc. If this is his end though I'm glad they didn't make him the arch villain, a misguided but well-intentioned man is a much more satisfying arc. He was willing to do everything to stop the kaiju, whether that meant blowing up a weapons factory (defensible), or shooting a bunch of unarmed children (less so). Of course there's a fair chance he's not done with his bag of tricks and more twists are coming, but as is this is a really good set of ending scenes for Juro Izumi. Unfortunately for Juro Kurabe, this story was ultimately more about Izumi than him, but it was a very fun time.

Cleared:
Shu Amiguchi
Ryoko Shinonome
Tomi Kisaragi
Yuki Takamiya
Natsuno Minami
Nenji Ogata
Juro Kurabe- CLEARED

Uncleared:
Keitaro Miura- 87%
Megumi Yakushiji- 71%
Ei Sekigahara- 28%
Iori Fuyusaka- prologue done
Takatoshi Hijiyama- prologue done
Renya Gouto- prologue done

NEXT UP: There's incentive for everyone with stuff we learned today- Ei's history with Izumi, Hijiyama and the video game, and Iori's whole Morimura deal, but Megumi is the natural successor here. Her new scenes have to take place after the end of Juro's and I'm hopeful we'll get more info on Izumi, and the connection between them.