Dennou Coil Episode 2 - The Coil Digital Detective Agency
Fumie and Yasako manage to escape the insidious advances of Sacchi thanks to Fumie’s quick thinking and never-ending bag of cyber tricks; however, Densuke’s infection by the Illegal means he is almost out of action, and so Fumie takes Yasako to visit “Mega-baa”, the doyenne of digital goods. Mega-baa, however, turns out to be Yasako’s grandma, with whom she will be living; she’s Fumie’s main source of supplies for weaponry against Sacchi and the Spheres, although not without a price.
As Densuke attempts to recuperate in his kennel (although the Illegal’s mark fails to disappear), however, Isako has her next move in place; her “Mojas”, tiny puffballs wielding capsule-producing rings, are tracking Densuke down, although their task will not be easy with both a poop-obsessed little girl and a geeky grandma to contend with…
Aside from the necessary eulogising about how generally awesome Dennou Coil is, this episode is a prime example of how to do one of the things I usually hate in anime properly, and that’s “cute”. The Mojas are absolutely adorable precisely because they’re a crack force of kidnappers that happen to be blobs of fluff with arms, not because of big eyes and annoying moe voices. They’re actually even more awesome than Oyaji is, and that’s saying something.
Anyway, this episode really shows that the team on the show knows how to handle its story effectively. The pacing (something which a lot of other pretty decent shows this season aren’t really getting right - Heroic Age, RomeJuli and Seirei no Moribito would be prime examples of this) is absolutely perfect, managing to weave together exposition and action effectively to keep even my attention-deficit brain engaged, and despite the mounds of techno jargon that the setting necessitates it never really feels like the audience is being lectured to - it all (just about) makes sense. Sure, some of the interactions between the digital and real world do require a pretty huge suspension of disbelief (Yasako is just a bit too good at “handling” Densuke, for instance), but I’m more than willing to do so for this show. Great stuff.
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