Hello and welcome to our weep. There yet in exploration and education in anime. I'm your anime idiot, tess Dugan.
I'm your anime expert, D Hollander Gonzalez.
And I'm Brendan McCullough. Your French visual arts movement about gay anime.
Dang it, I'm in. I'm ready for that art exhibit.
Parlev la misonsen.
Do you speak misensen?
I was like, what's? French and pretentious for film school?
Parlevoo lesbian. Portrait of a lady on fire.
Tegan and Sarah. That's my lesbian touchstone, not Gideon the 9th. You would think.
You'd think. Sci-fi lesbians.
Hey, if you figure out how my brain works, let me know.
I'm working on it. I have a thesis. It's bad.
We try to get into your brain one week at a time through each show, hoping to unlock your trigger catchphrase.
We found it with Zach Bell. That unlocks something and God help us, we can't get it back in.
Boy, we're looking for that second show to counteract it this week. Will it be Yuri Deco? We'll see.
We'll see.
Will, siri. Deco.
No.
Okay, moving.
It wasn't there?
No.
So this series, I don't know anything about it. I think I got recommended somewhere and added it to my list. I forget where the source was, but yeah. Is this a show either of you are familiar with?
No. Literally never heard of this program.
It may shock you from my Astounding opening about French new wave Deco and Yuri, but no, I'm not familiar with this at all.
Great.
Wonderful.
Going Blind.
Yeah, a classic.
As far as I know, it's about a French visual movement and lesbian girls. Because I am literal, I said I.
Told Paul the name of the anime and he was like, is it an anime about decoden? Like decoden phone cases, which I have a lot of and have spent very much money on that. I think that would be so fun, actually. Make that anime, please. Someone anime about like, oh, here it is. It's like competing deco den phone case creators, but then they start collaborating and falling in love and they are two girls.
I just imagined the scene in American Psycho where they're showing their business cards, but it's different. That's lovely. Mine is a kitty strawberry cream paradise. Wonderful.
Incredible.
I was imagining a small anime girl carrying Jared Leto, which, honestly, that's at least once a day for me. That's always in the background of my thoughts.
Someone contain him.
Put him down.
Well, we're going to go out and try to put down Jared Leto. We'll be back. We're going to watch the first three episodes.
It's Morbid time.
Gun clicks in the background at.
Welcome to the cyber future. How cute's your avatar. That's all we care about. Are you a sexy lady when you're not supposed to be? Are you a big fair? A big ferret when you're actually a little tiny bear man? We'll find out on the interwebs.
Think about it. A big ferret is kind of like a little bear. They're not far off.
The noodle factor is what's different.
Noodle bear got to stretch that bear out. Yeah, I want to just get this out. Is this summer wars? Do we summer wars again?
It's a little Summer Wars again.
It's pretty summer wars.
Wars again.
It's pretty close.
It's got the elements.
That was my first thought. I'm just like, God damn it. If this is like beat for beat. Summer wars again, I could be astounded.
He keeps just, like, getting stars aligned. We've been summer wars.
It's never good collection.
If your show becomes part of our vocabulary, that's a mark against you. That's the biggest insult we can give you.
But Summer Wars is actually good.
Summer wars is good. It's the same plot. He's done, like, four times.
Yeah.
So starting Episode One, we start hearing about a legend of a giant with hundreds of eyes, but he can't sleep, so he has to close them all a little bit at a time, like something's always watching the Internet. So we see kid on a roof sending out little digital paper airplanes. It seems to find something, and the kid jumps off and goes invisible and yells, I love AI.
I hate this child so much.
I also think they are saying I love I because I in Japanese is love.
I was wondering why they weren't.
I do understand the confusion, of course, because we are in Internet is bad island world.
But yeah. So we're on Tom Sawyer Island. That's the name of this land. Please don't sue us. Disney parody. Parody. And we see a classroom. It's full of a bunch of mascot y creatures because a lot of people, they're on the Internet.
This is?
Yeah, it's it's summer wars. It's like virtual reality. AI. They're all they're all in AI chat or VR chat. God I'm a grandpa. So we learn that Hearts and Love, its likes are currency, and decos are the technology they use to connect to the Internet. There are basically implants that let you customize your personal perception of reality so your expression doesn't bug anyone else.
This whole show is based on insane, truly fantastical, unrealistic premise of, what if Google Glass was successful?
What if that far flung reality? Would it account for all the horrors in the world? Probably not.
No.
But you can watch TV in class. We can't do now in the Zoom era, what a different time. So, yeah, we see some kids in the back of the class. They put up pictures of themselves so the teacher can't tell they're not paying attention and mute themselves to the class. And they're talking about, oh, there was sightings of Phantom Zero, a mysterious hacker, a legend reveling around the Internet. And they're like, oh, we got to go check it out and find info about it. And our main character, Barry, in this class is like a little red cat, and they get caught talking, but her deco is Malfunctioning, so she has to leave class. So she jumps out, and, Boy, is she hungry for Likes. Her mom scolds her for skipping school, but she's like, I'm on Phantom Zero business. And her mom's like, whatever, Nerd. All right, at least get your eye fixed. I made you an appointment. Go to the doctor. So she goes out, meets a friend on the street with a new avatar. So we get to see a little bit of that little customization angle. He's a little floating fish in the air. And she's really looking forward to finding Zero because that's her ticket to fame and notoriety. So she gets to the scene where Phantom Zero was last seen, and she sees this, like, hollow Rose on a streetlight. So she picks it up, her eye starts glitching. So we see her POV of her. Just like the colors and digital AR effects aren't fully taking place. But we then see walking in the background, the kid from the opening, but they're invisible to the working Eye. But not to the broken eye.
What?
It's camouflage broken.
You can see beyond the superficial.
Not you Mark. That is a superficial avatar.
I can't think of anything worse than your online avatar presence being what everyone sees. Like, if I had to tell my family why I'm a smug little rabbit from a manga, that'd be a hard conversation because that's been my picture on Discord for a long time.
So Barry starts following this kid who is just ripping people off, taking advantage of the invisibility. And they find another one of those hollow roses. And it has information about a Mark, someone who can easily be Scammed online by lying and pretending to be their dead father to get all their money.
Who would do such a thing? Lying on the Internet?
No one knows you're a dead father on the Internet.
Hey, he could be out there ghosts. Surreal. So Barry seeing this, calls up her friends at school. Or the next Day, Barry goes to the real school and sees the friends in real life. And it's like I found the kid who's definitely zero. And they're like, hey, you have no proof. You can't lie to us like that. So she's like, if only I knew the Internet motto of pixar. It didn't happen. The old Etchings upon the server, the ancient text. So got to go get evidence. So she goes back, finds him again and Is, hey, hey, are you Zero? And then the kid's Like, oh, shit, and runs away.
Scatter.
So Barry chases, but Zero escapes. And then Barry goes home. Oh, no. She missed the appointment. Can't get her eye fixed. And her parents give her an eye patch to cover her broken eye.
Great look. Little heart on. I do. The style of this show is very nice. I love the colors. I love that Barry's sweater and boots, they're like the same color of pink, and the lining of them is pink, like the line art, so it makes it look very soft and I don't know, it's very internety, if that makes sense. Like, that idea.
The style is great. I do dislike the world. It kind of sets up because it's kind of like everything's a great box, but then we got, like, holograms to cover up the ugliness, and it's like, I know that's what the show is trying to do, but, God, that would be a depressing world to live in.
That's why you need your deco, baby.
Yeah, I guess they got you. You don't have, astigmatism you can see, the real world.
So the kid who I guess is named Hack at some point yeah, I.
Think at the end of episode two is when they finally say their name.
Is yeah, it's later.
Yeah. So Hack goes home. They have, like, a little hologram construction, no entry sign that they just walk through. They got a little hidden house, got a little robot named Pup.
Nice, good.
Lovely. And oh, no. Barry hacked into the hollow rose and finds them and connects, just appears in Hack's apartment is like, hey, tell me about Hack. Disconnects and reverses the signal and then in turn finds Barry and goes to her balcony and is trying to get the rose back. But then we see all of a sudden, everyone around them in the neighborhood starts losing likes, oh, no, not my validation from strangers. Oh, no, I worked hard for that. And they both look up and they see this woman with a blurred face just floating there. And Hack is like, hey, that's Phantom Zero. And that's where we end episode one.
Garnet from Steven Universe. Yep, two points real quick. A, the rhymey Whimy talking from Hack must have been an absolute nightmare to translate. Oh, yeah, it's and two, when Barry goes back to school and sees her friends, they watch, like, a clip of a video game that has the phantom zero in it.
Or like, it's not very confusing, but it was confusing to me.
It's Legoshi beastars. If he was in persona five, that's what Zero is in this game. And it's just like, that's just someone's persona. Leave him alone.
I think later in my notes, I call it the Furry game. Okay, episode two, barry's mom comes to wake her up. Barry is asleep out on the balcony, and she talks about a weird phantom, and her mom is like, oh, no, you fell asleep when you were logged in. Uh, it's almost time for school, so Barry's gotta get up. And she also has to go to the doctor today since she didn't go to her appointment the day before. And she thinks that everything that happened with Hack was a dream, but she still has a little paper rose thingy. What? And then we get a flashback to what happened with Hack. I was calling Hack Zero in my notes also until the end of this episode, but I will try my best to remember to call them Hack. So they're in the Hyperverse. It's like, not pretty. And it's like steampunky. I don't know.
It's always great when your first comment is it's not pretty.
It reminds me of Code Leoko a little bit.
I had that thought too. Everyone like, is this Internet, too? Is this a different website? What's the difference?
Everyone suddenly just has a forehead you could put a billboard on for no goddamn reason.
This is the gray web. It's not quite the dark web, but you shouldn't be here.
It's the morally ambiguous web.
Yeah. So Hack is trying to fight the mysterious figure that we saw at the end of episode one, Phantom Zero. They're running away. Hack is looking for an exit, and Barry is just having the time of her life. She's like, this is she? If people like something in this world, they called it lovey. So she just keeps saying it's lovey.
Another pet peeve of mine is just forcing slang to make it feel like a different time period.
And it too I can't even tell you not to talk about The Hunger Games again. But in The Hunger Games, they have a drug called Morphling, and it's like, just fucking say it's. Morphine. It's fine. Suzanne Collins, I love you so much, but why did you do this?
Legally dissimilar morphine.
But yes, I also hate when people do that in media. So there isn't an exit where Hack thought there would be, so they just keep running. Phantom Zero has caught up with them now and is shooting lasers. Hack tries to attack with some of their paper airplanes, but Phantom Zero blocks them. They end up in a room with some moving blocks that trip them up for a second. And the way they talk about it and focus on it for a second, you're like, oh, this is going to be a real problem. But then they just get out.
No.
Hack throws another round of paper airplanes at Phantom Zero, and one of the planes nicks Phantom Zero. So when it returns to Hack, it has some data on it and they transfer it into one of those paper rose things. OOH, it's purple now.
Got your DNA.
Hack throws up another paper airplane and it explodes into a bunch of yellow dots, which then fall to the ground and give them a map of the area. Convenient. And they find a route to the exit they're running. Phantom Zero is still kind of on their tail. They reach the exit, but Phantom Zero shoots something down. It's like a purple blob, and it chases Hack, and they trick it into running into a wall, which gives them time to go back to Barry and give her the Phantom data rose, as I started calling it before the exit opens. And then the exit opens. It's a hole in the ground. She falls through the hole. Hack almost runs into Phantom Zero again, but circles back to the exit and goes through safe and sound. Thank goodness.
Real looney tunes ass shit.
Yeah. The pacing in this particular part was so strange to me. Like the thing with the blocks and this part where Barry goes through and you're like, oh no, is Hack going to be stuck? And then they're just not they get.
Out fine, let's give it a minute.
Yeah. And then we see a vehicle full of dudes. It seems like they're after Hack. They get an alert. Hack gets an alert. The dudes are about to show up where they are. Here they are. They're cops and they're here to arrest Hack for their love scams. They try to capture Hack. They have no citizen data on them. Hack throws out a digital smoke bomb and is able to escape. Then the cops tell their cop friends that Hack is on the loose. And they call hack a Uray. And you're like, what's that? It's in the name of the show. What the heck is that? Some tech dudes that work with the cops say they found a safe house disguised as a deco facade. Hack is it looks like Hack is at home when the cops break in. But it's just a hologram. They tricked the cops. Just kidding. They're still in there. They're just hiding. And they attach something to the back of the cops visors that make what they're seeing mess up. And they like, see a beach? Uhoh, you messed with their VR. My VR headset.
God forbid I take it off.
No, I don't want to see the.
World take it off prematurely. You'll die.
But that's the commentary, baby.
What's the other show we watch? That's bad where you're locked in the game. What's the bad one?
I don't know.
That's too many.
You know what? You're right.
Fair. I was going to say Sword Art online, but we haven't watched that yet.
Haven't we? Good. We never will.
Fuck that shit. So Hack escapes with Pup, their robot friend. But there are a bunch of drones above them. There's an explosion and they run away into the city. Drone chase ensues. They narrowly avoid getting shot. Great. In class, Barry is talking to her friends again. She tells them about what happened last night, and they say that they didn't hear anything about there's a thing. What's it called? Was it called the Zero love phenomenon where a hacker shows up and takes all of everybody's love in a particular area. So one of those happened while Hack was with her, and it happened where Hack was. So she was like, it's you. But now she knows it's not. Anyway, whatever. So her friends didn't hear anything about one of those happening last night. She mentions Hack and her friends think that she's talking about the video game, the furry video game they play. They mention that she wasn't even logged in last night. But they attribute the weird stuff going on to her broken eye, and they say she probably just imagined it all, but she's going to investigate. They get caught by the teacher again, and she dips. She thinks maybe this weird stuff is going on because she fell asleep in the Hyperverse. But she does still have that phantom data rose, so it had to have happened. Some dudes are cleaning up Hack's hideout, and a mysterious person walks by. Ho. They must be relevant.
They're in the opening.
Yeah. Barry is playing the furry game with her friends. There's new content, but Barry is not very enthused, so she just leaves again. She's like, I'm not into it today. Bye, fellas. And it's time for her eye doctor appointment. She wears her eye patch out so she doesn't see any funny business, and she wonders if it was all just part of that game, because she remembers seeing an ad for it. So maybe it tagged her for early access to something. In the eye doctor office, there's a voice telling us the audience about deco. It is mandatory for all citizens, but you don't have to get the surgery to put it in your eyes. You can just get glasses, which I.
Think that was, like, a recorded ad in the office. Yeah, but as you know, Bob yes.
I'd prefer wearing glasses. I don't want anything that alters my vision permanently in my eyes. Thank you.
We all got glasses, I think.
We do all have glasses, but I don't even wear contacts, baby.
Yeah.
Same. It's her turn. The doctor checks her eye out. He has big, beautiful blue eyes. He's quite a looker. He says that operating on the eye is the best solution, and he could take care of it right away. And he, like, straps her down. And I'm like, this is scary.
I don't trust anyone who's that gung ho for surgery that they're not being surgic on.
Yeah. Also, I mean, I don't think any of us like eye stuff, so just the thought of it like just walking into an eye doctor appointment and having them be like, well, we got to operate right now.
It's like shuffle needles in.
You okay? No, thank you. And she doesn't want it either. She stops the procedure and runs out. Back at home, she keeps getting a notification that her eye doctor appointment is incomplete, so she just marks it as complete herself so her parents don't find out.
Flawless system.
That'll be $10,000 for your non surgery.
10,000 hearts. So she wants to keep her weird eyes so she can see Hack again. And she goes to look for her parents, but they're not home yet. So she uses her dad's Hyperverse glasses to find out about the zero phenomenon that happened yesterday. So she's in a room with a bunch of people just doing some work, approving and rejecting posts, it looks like. And she puts on content moderators Phil Mods.
I MoD for, like, four people on Twitch.
She puts on a disguise to look like her dad, and she passes a desk where a woman approves a bunch of pictures of a family, but rejects a video of a building on fire and another of a guy getting beaten up.
I was wondering about this because earlier in this episode, I think the dad says, our society has no crime in it. I'm like, that's not possible. And then they also have a task force that's hunting them down. I'm like, if there's no crime, why do you have a task force? And then we see this where it's like, Ah, there is crime. But they just have the moderators purge it. So it's like, technically, there isn't wink if it's down.
Everything is carefully curated. In this fake Internet world, who would have thunk?
What a narrative statement.
What a twist. She sees more workers deleting all this stuff of hack, and she's like, oh, no, there's going to be no evidence of it. So she sits at her dad's seat to try to get some evidence of the incident before it's all gone. But her dad catches her at home in his real office. Busted.
His real office is also just a small closet with the chair in it.
Dark room.
I don't want to point fingers. I live in a studio apartment. That's arguably what I have, but there's furniture in there.
So her parents sit her down and ask her what she was doing. She asks what the workers were doing, and they say she doesn't need to worry about it. They're content moderators. It's their job. They make it so people don't see stuff that stresses them out. And Barry gets upset asking what happens when people can't tell what's real anymore? You guys are just lying to people on the Internet. Who would do that again? Who would do such a thing? And her dad says that she's grounded and she can only log into the Hyperverse for school. She runs into her room. Her mom says to her dad that this is all too complicated for her. I think it's weird to be like, you can't log into the Hyperverse when she literally I know just seeing everything isn't the Hyperverse. But you're forcing your daughter to be in this Internet world. This is Tom Sawyer Island. What is the rest of the world like? Why do you live here? I don't know.
Anytime there's an island now in something, I'm always suspicious of. Like, this is the village. This is the isolated world.
I need to see the largest city outside of this, please.
Yeah. So she's laying in her bed, and she has this little pet. It's very digimon esque. Like, baby Digimon esque, and I love it. She calls her parents liars and that she says she doesn't care about her punishment and she's going to find out what no, she knows what happened and she's going to find Hack. So she opens up the phantom data rows and it gives her a code. So she puts it into something and finds a location on the map. So she goes to find it. She appreciates how cool the city is at night and gets excited that she's running away from home experiencing the real world. She's like walking around. I took a note of this because I thought it was weird. She sees people, like sitting at a cart eating dinner, and she sees a cat Avatar and that seems to weird her out. And I was like, don't you have a cat avatar for school?
Why it weirded her out? Because it wasn't an avatar. That was just a cat, man.
Was it?
That's the vibe I got.
Hard to tell with this show. Who's real.
Hey, maybe that's what they want us to be like. Whoa. So she checks her map again. She finds the spot she was looking for. And the mysterious person from earlier who was walking by when Hack's little hideout was getting cleaned up is walking up to her and she remembers seeing them in a still that the moderators were deleting. They approach Barry and asks where Hack is. And that's the end of episode.
Shit.
Oh, damn.
One note is the story with the god with like a thousand eyes. At the beginning, it talked about how they let the god arrest by putting all their eyes on the peacock's feathers, which is like a mythos that's pretty prevalent. But then all the task force and cop people have the peacock logo on them and it's just weird. It's like, oh shit, NBC run. It's not intimidating when it's like the bad guys and they're peacocks, at least not this peacock. I've seen Kung Fu Panda too.
Yeah, he's pretty spooky.
Yeah. Episode three starts off with the task force interrogating Hack after they caught him. They ask all about the incidents and if it was them. And we see Hack not responding with their head down, like pretty much handcuffed to a chair. And they said they're going to blame Hack for all the phantom zero phenomenon that happened recently where everyone lost their love. And Hack doesn't respond. Cut to Barry talking to the person with the tall person with the big old hat. Tells Barry to be quiet and notices Barry's broken deco. It's like, ah, that's how you figured it out. That's why you can see us. And then we see pup come running in and starts gyrating and Robo talking to the tall person in robot language. Beeps and boops, pretty much. And Hack comes in and explains oh, and explains the situation to the tall person, like what happened with Hack and that they got arrested and stuff. The tall person's like, all right, I'm on my way. I know what's happening. Let's go, pup. So they start to leave and Barry starts chasing after with a bunch of questions. What are you? What's going on? I saw you in a picture. What's happening here? And they tell Barry not to get involved and to go fix your deco. Get on your bike. Get on with barry says, what? My nodes are bad. They say Hack was caught. And Barry says it was because hack was helping Barry, so it's her fault. And they tell Barry to come along. Then, well, who are you? Oh, don't worry. I'm just a ghost. It's like ah. Their name is Ghost. No, not true. Not helpful.
You're being too cryptic. Give me something.
They lead Berry down to a sewer. Great surprise. It's also a hologram. I don't know why holograms work so easily in this world. I feel like that's super easy to solve. If it's like, is this a hologram or is this real? And then you find all the criminals.
Yeah, I definitely thought that about Hack's. Little do not enter.
Like, it's just like it looks like a wall. I can't imagine it's anything else in a world full of technology and, like, all right, man, sure.
And, you know, there would be a bunch of nerds just kicking every wall looking for all the hidden ones, dark soul style.
Yeah, we play video games. You hunt for the secrets we know. Where's that wall chicken? They ask how Barry found the spot where they first met him, like, on the map they found and how they know Hack, how'd you get here, how'd you get roped up in and they start making tea while they're talking, and Barry's like, Ghost. Huh? And goes up and pokes him in the side, and they're ah. Why? He said you're a ghost. It's like, not a literal ghost fucking child. I'm not a deceased spirit of a person. I'm a ghost. As in off the radar ghosts in this world, or the term ghost in this world, refers to people whose births and thus their deaths, aren't registered within the system that the island is run on. And we find out that only registered citizens can get decos. So they're effectively just deco list people. They're Amish.
You live in a society. I'm on the fringes.
Joker. Makeup. Joker makeup.
Joker makeup.
Joker joke. They say that unregistered people are called Yuri's, which we've found out last time, and that because they're not in the system, they're not invisible. It's not like they won't appear in front of people's eyes if they're just standing there without decos. But it does make them a lot easier to slip in and out of and escape from people because everyone relies on the technology too much and they don't see with their real eyes.
It also does make you wonder, for the ones who have their decos in glasses, do they just not ever have to take I mean, I guess maybe they just never take them off when they're outside, but what if they do and they see a Rando and they're. Like, who the fuck is that?
We all got glasses. You can see around the glasses. It's not like, oh no, my glasses slipped down too far on my face and I'm being robbed by five invisible children.
We had this conversation when we watched Vivi. It was the same thing.
Oh, right, yeah.
Where it's like you could just see.
Oh yeah, the guy's glasses got hacked. But nothing. They they say that Hack would frequently run around hacking other people's decos and thus being invisible to them. And because of Barry's broken one, that's how they could see them. And Pup asks Barry to return Hack's device, the purple origami flower with the Zero data in. Oh, and Pup says that Barry it wasn't given to Barry for like safekeeping because Hack would know it'd be safe. It was more of convenient of like the task force wouldn't look somewhere this stupid and gave it to Barry. So basically trying to dissuade Barry's claim that Hack trusted them. I kept calling them ghosts. Their name's Finn. Their name is Finn. That's going to come up like 20 minutes from now. I'm just calling them finn is the tall person with the big hat, says that Barry was able to take the data from Hack, decode it essentially and find that spot, their meeting spot for Hack. So they aren't fully stupid. They have some potential. And we cut back to Hack in the prison cell and someone's escorting them back to their room. And they're told that there will be a trial tomorrow morning and that because they're Yuri and unregistered, the trial will be private. And the guy basically just is like, oh jeez, I can't believe the Phantom Zero is a, you know, what a mess. And leaves. As soon as he leaves, we see Hack's head jerk up and they're ugh, what a good nap. Just sleeping through their whole arrangement and interrogation cut back to Barry and Finn. And while they're talking, we see an old lady pop up on a video call on Pup and she tells some weird story about her youth. I don't know what this was about. Probably more of a got it allegory from the beginning and saying that they're probably looking for Hacks or looking to help Hack. And Finn is surprised that the old woman already knows and say, I'm a gossip for a reason. Don't underestimate my network.
I stay connected with the youth. Kiddo, I'm in class with you.
It's a disguise. I'm everywhere.
Did you see the newest TikTok trend?
I'm fortnite. Glizzy 420.
I hate this.
Oh, shit. Fortnite glizzy 420. You're one of my babes.
That's me.
Get the golden ninja backpack, you're pro elite. They say that, they tell them that Hack is going to take the fall for the Zero phenomenon. And Barry says that's not possible because Hack was with them when Zero hit. And she saw zero personally. So she knows it's not Hack. So they have to do something. And the old woman says, well, if you want to do something, you're going to need evidence because the trial is tomorrow morning. So good luck and promise.
Tomorrow. Oh boy.
And if they can convince Hack if convicted, Hack will be sent away to a correctional facility and never seen again. Kids show and we can't say killed. Barry says there might be evidence on the device. Hack gave her the little flower and she hands it over to Finn. And Barry says that she wants to help analyze the data they got. Finn says they'll paint the most picturesque version of the Hyperverse Barry has ever seen. I wrote that line down because I thought it was relevant. What a fool I was. So they're going to analyze the data. We see an Afro guy come over. He's got a bunch of equipment. He's from the opening, so I guess he's part of their crew. We know nothing about him. He sets up some other equipment, shocked to learn that Barry's going into the hyperspace and not Finn and says good luck, and then leaves and we never see him again. So they set up this machine. Finn takes the Origami Rose, downloads the data from it, reconstructs like a Hyperverse simulation of the data in it, and Barry's able to hop into and inside. Barry is shocked because it's like a self contained Hyperverse. It's not connected to the outside, so it's like an intranet. And we see Barry flying around and Finn tells him to knock it off and focus on the job at hand. So Barry flies down and starts scouting around the town. They were in the city. They were in the other night with Hack trying to pinpoint the origin of the zero phenomenon when it happened. And we see again, this just feels like dated of like it's the future, but from our understanding. So Barry is zooming around the town using pinch and Zoom, like on a phone. And that just bugged me.
I was going to bring this up later, but I'll just say it now since you said it feels dated. This came out in 2022, which is surprising to me.
Yeah, this feels older than that. This has an older grasp of the Internet.
Yeah, I would say it looks new. It looks great. Like the style and animation looks great. But yeah, it feels like someone who only uses the Internet solely for emails, for works, understanding of what the Internet is.
Yeah.
Oh, it's the Okama Gamesphere. It's like there it is. There's someone who's never played a modern video game in their life. So we see Barry walking around and they're able to find the point of origin for the Phantom Zero Effect when it all started. And we see jazzeros appearing out of nowhere and draining the love from everything around them. And they're like, look, there's no one around here. It's not us. It's not hack. So Hack wasn't the point of origin for it. And then they run over to where Barry and Hack were that night. They're like, look, here we are, far away from it, so here's evidence that it's not Hack so we can go stop the trial. They download it again back into the flower, and they say it's not enough evidence to prove who Zero is, but it's enough evidence to prove that it's not Hack, so that's good enough for them, and Finn gives it to Barry to go intercept the trial tomorrow. Cut to the trial tomorrow, and we see. They tie Hack's love scam from the guy before where he's pretending to be that guy's dead father. They use that as, like, the sticking point of being Zero, and they put all the blame on Hack. But then, right on cue, Barry kicks in the door, and a defense attorney disguised, and they say they got an objection, and they start going into all their circumstantial evidence showing how Hack isn't involved. And they're like, who are you? We offered a lawyer to Hack, but they declined it. And they're like, oh, I'm from a human rights group. Anyway, here's my case. It's like, who are you? And she claims that there's no way Hack could be Zero. And as she's talking about she's getting more worked up and getting more into it because she's getting all the, you know, map with all the string on it. She's getting worked up with her Zero conspiracy theories and stuff. And Finn has to keep saying, like, hey, don't get worked up. Your disguise is loose at best. If you get worked up, it'll break. Like, calm down. And of course, Barry does not listen and keeps getting worked up. So as they're making their point of who Zero is and what they are and all this stuff, their disguise slowly falls apart, and it's just Barry standing there. Oh, no. And right after it breaks, we see the prosecutor in this case who was putting Hack on trial was a robot.
Lots of question marks here.
No idea, because no other robots have been established. It's all like, hologram Internet technology not fully walking about robots.
Yeah, pup is the only one we.
Actually see as a little RTD Two.
I wasn't sure if because then we see that they've been infected by the Zero phenomenon. So I don't know if that's what happens to people who get hacked, but then isn't this this person's real body? So? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know.
It's OD because he had Barry's there, and that's Barry's real body and Hacks there, and that's Hack's real body. But the prosecutor is just randomly a robot. It's like, yeah, okay. It's like Power Rangers or Samurai Jack where he punched the bad guy and Sparks shootout. It's like, I guess there wasn't blood in there. I guess they were a robot. So, yeah, the prosecutor gets hit with the Zero phenomenon and is freaking out and everyone's staring at them. While doing so. Finn helps Barry break Hack out of their restraints. Hack grabs their gear again, get our favorite catchphrase, I love AI or I. And they wrap the cloak around themselves and Barry to escape and go invisible. Finn is guiding them through the courthouse. Like, take a left here, take a right here down this hallway. And we see the lawyer start the robot lawyer stops freaking out. Everyone's like, hey, wait a minute. They're gone. So they give chase, give chase. Once they're outside, they make it all the way out of the courthouse. But they're on, like, the 70th floor. They're way up in the sky on the edge of the building. They're like, what do we do now? And fans like, Jump. It's like, we're so high up. They jump. And right as they do, a monorail goes by. Once again, monorail saving the day.
Hooray.
And they get on it, and it catches them, and they're like, Ah. All's well that ends well. What's that? The task force is right behind them. Who could have guessed? And they're sending in their drones, their quadricopter drones, ferry 2019, despite it being the future. So they send them in, and they're like, what do we do? And we see hack looks up ahead on the monorail cart. It looks like there's, like, some sort of station or something, a building that the monorail goes through and out through the other side, so it looks like a check in station or something. And we see that the monorail cart go through, and as it comes out the other side, it explodes. And we overhear a task force member saying the culprits were on the cart and they were caught in the explosion. They're dead. That's the show, folks.
Very thorough investigation.
I don't see a body anywhere. No evidence of a body. It's strictly cart metal. I can only assume they were caught up in it.
Absolutely disintegrated.
There's no crime in this world because everyone's bad at their job. And that's the show.
Yeah.
Are we tapped into the Matrix yet?
As you can tell by how easy we all had our notes, it was so easy to follow and so clear. Yeah. This was trying to say stuff about the Internet. They try, what do you guys think?
The reason I was going to save why saying it came out in 2022 is because yeah, they're trying to make Internet commentary here, but it's Internet commentary that people have been making for years, and at this point just feels so, like, outdated is the word. But also at this point, it's a weird mentality, and it's like, get over it, in a way. The Internet is bad mentality. Died a while, and, like, I don't know, the whole love being currency thing. Black Mirror did that I don't know how long ago with the Nosedive episode, which is a really good episode. Yeah. When I saw that this came out in 2022. I was like, what? No way. But, yeah, this feels like one of those shows we've watched before where it's just like, there's so much, but so nothing. Kind of like tongkatsu katak.
You know the one?
The ramen.
Katsu ramens hitman ramen. Yeah, because it's like what you're saying. It's like, all right, your argument is the Internet is bad and we shouldn't be so heavily relying on technology. It's cool. What's your alternative suggestion? Because without the decodes, this world is just a sad gray block on an island. And honestly, that sounds like worse hell than a technology room. So it's like, sure. What's your alternative to the Internet? Because I grew up pretty close to the Amish back in Pennsylvania. That's not a great option either. I don't know what you want from US showcrater, so yeah, it's beautiful. It really looks cool. I can't fucking stand hack. Everything about hack is irritating to me. Finn's cool. I'll watch Finn. But yeah, it's like, what are you trying to say with this show? What's the point of all this? If you just want to make a show that looks cool, that has no real mess, that's fine, but try to be less not even controversial. But they're trying to be poignant.
I feel like if there was more of a focus on the content moderator stuff, which maybe there is in the rest of it, I feel like that's a more interesting take at this point because I feel like that's not necessarily something that's been addressed a lot in media.
Well, because that just feels like Fahrenheit 451 to me. That feels like something that's been happened, that's been addressed a lot with, like, Big Brother and stuff. It's just not as future dystopianly oppressive as other stuff. But it is the same idea of the world's an illusion. What is real?
I said that. Now I'm thinking about it. I'm wrong. There's also Black Mirror episodes about that where you can literally delete people and you don't have to see them anymore. Ignore me.
It's still like that framework of like, oh, I work for a business and I just delete things off the Internet. That is a thing where people are like, hey, should that person not be a Nazi? And that's a hard question to ask. For some reason.
Crazy weird going to let that person.
Keep being a Nazi, but we're just going to hide it from our advertisers so we can still make money off it. Cool. Thanks, Reddit.
Wait, guys, did I take off my glasses because I'm still in a capitalist hellscape?
Wait, let me take mine off. Nope. It's blurry. Real blurry.
Learn to disassociate. That's the only way to do it. Anyways, if there's anime you use to hide from the horrors of this world, you can send those recommendations to us. Our email is areweedarya@gmail.com or you can reach out to us on TikTok, Tumblr, Twitter are we there yet?
Yep. Sorry.
Go ahead. You can find me on TikTok and Instagram at Honey, period. D or on Tumblr at honeyd.
Honey is spelled H-U-N-N-I-E. Can find me somewhere you can find me moderating people on Twitch do you think I'm abusive? Of my power? You know it. You absolutely know I am. Everyone's in Emote only mode talk back. Banned. Gone. Get out of here.
Thank you to Camille Ruley for her artwork and thank you to Louis Zong for her theme song stories. You can find all of Louis'music at Louisong bandcamp.com. Thank you, and we hope you'll join us next week as we learn to live with anime.
Is puppet an animal sidekick?