Episode Summary
A voice over explains “Maxwell’s Demon”, which is a thought experiment created by James Clerk Maxwell in 1867. (Read about that more here.) While the explanation goes on, we see what appears to be a flashback scene with a little girl crying next to a dead man. Shots of different parts of the room suggest that he was shot. The girl gets more upset, and things around her start happening. A wind picks up in the room, and the windows shatter.
The scene shifts to present time, where we see a sleepy redheaded girl getting a phone call. The call gets her on the move, headed somewhere other than where she is. We then find out that she is trailing another girl, who looks younger than her and is blond. She follows the blond girl to a fortune-teller’s house, whom the younger girl seems to know.
Once more the scene shifts, this time to a bar. A tall man walks in with the brim of his hat covering his face. A small girl with pink hair comes in behind him. After they order their meals, someone rushes in and whispers something to the rest of the people in the bar. They all leave in a hurry, which seems to please the tall man.
Outside again, the red-haired girl meets up with the blond girl after the blonde girl does a card trick and asks for money from passers-by. She gives the younger girl some money, and asks her if her name is Ellis. The blond girl denies it, but the red-haired girl doesn’t believe her. She informs Ellis that there is a reward on her head, and the two girls are almost immediately ambushed by men with guns. The red-haired girl quickly and skillfully disarms the men, and they make an escape. Ellis winds up easily jumping over a tall fence that the red-haired girl obviously couldn’t make it over.
The scene shifts again, as it likes to do. In a large office-type building, in room R-339, a man called Rosenberg talks to someone on the phone about having found Ellis. On his computer monitors are pictures of Ellis that look like the one the red-haired girl had, and something about Project Leviathan.
The scene shifts again, and the red-haired girl is sitting with the fortune teller. She find out more about Ellis from the woman, and is told that a great many things will happen in her future. The fortune teller decides that the red-haired girl is worthy of protecting Ellis, and asks that she do so. At about that point, the men from earlier find the fortune teller, and the red-haired girl manages to escape again with Ellis. Through conversation, we find out that Ellis doesn’t remember anything about her past, and that the red-haired girl’s name is Nadi.
They hear an explosion, and Ellis rushes back to the fortune-teller’s house. Nadi chases her, and catches up in time to save her from getting shot. Nadi and one of the other men are in a standoff, when Ellis’ eyes go blank. When they do, the man’s gun gets red-hot, making him drop it. It eventually gets hot enough that the bullet in the chamber fires, hitting the man in the head. They move into the house in enough time to find the fortune-teller still barely alive. The woman gives her a small glowing stone and tells her to let it be her guide in her journey South. In the office again, Rosenberg sees footage of the heating-up gun, and is obviously happy about it.
Nadi mentions that Ellis will be hunted harder from now on, and tells her that she promised the fortune-teller that she’d protect Ellis. They are ambushed, but Nadi uses it to their advantage and steals the bounty hunters’ jeep.
Characters
Nadi
Eurkos: Redhead. Gun. Perfect. Nadi is a bounty hunter, and as such has probably seen a lot. She’s obviously a good shot, and good at fighting. She doesn’t seem to have very many fears. Even still, she doesn’t come off as battle-hardened when she doesn’t have a gun in her hand. She seems to have a kind streak. I like her voice, too.
Calophi: I’ve always been a fan of red-headed female characters, and female warrior type characters, so seeing one that isn’t completely hot headed but still skilled is good. The kind streak Eurkos mentioned makes me wonder how she got into bounty hunting to begin with. I mean, sure it makes good money, but she completely drops the idea of taking Ellis in and decides to protect her instead, so there must be something more going on there.
Ellis
Eurkos: Ellis is soft spoken, although not as naive as she might seem. She knows enough to deny that she is Ellis when Nadi first asks, even before she knows that there’s a bounty on her. She seems like she doesn’t know that she is something different. It seems like she’s a Mazwell’s Demon – a person who can control the molecular movement of an object and thus control their temperature. She also has high physical abilities, like being able to jump over a fence that Nadi couldn’t jump over. She’s already pretty interesting.
Calophi: Ellis seems more naive about how to interact with people and less naive about her own situation. She’s pretty much definitely a Mazwell’s Demon, and she said she killed her father. I wonder if her father was experimenting on her as part of the Project Leviathan that’s mentioned later, and maybe her powers went out of control or something by accident. Whatever the case, it looks like she definitely has some fun abilities that she both consciously and unconsciously controls, like Eurkos said.
Rosenberg
Eurkos: Although it has been officially said, I think he’s the guy that’s after Ellis. He seems to have a particular interest in her, and has been watching via a camera that someone else is operating. He also seems to be heavily involved with Project Leviathan, which obviously has something to do with Ellis. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of him later.
Calophi: Rosenberg’s been spending a lot of money to find Ellis, which is irking others in his company. He is almost definitely the one who put out the bounty on her head, though whether he expects anything to come of that is another story. He seemed happy enough just getting footage of Ellis’s power, which means he could just be using bounty hunters as bait to test Ellis for now.
The Others
Eurkos: There were a few characters that, while they seem important, didn’t get very much screen time in. The first is the duo of the tall, dark guy and the cute pink haired little girl. I’m positive we’ll be seeing more from them, and I’m interested in seeing more. I wanna know if they’re father/ daughter or what. Another one is the guy that was filming Nadi and Ellis with a camcorder. I can only assume that this is where Rosenberg got his footage from. I spotted this guy in the opener, and his design is too non-normal for him not to be important. The last is the secretary chick that they show in the office building that Rosenberg works in. After having a lot of work dropped on her, she sits back in her chair and undoes the top button of her shirt. She pokes at a necklace she’s wearing, which has a stone in it that looks pretty similar to the stone that the fortune teller gives to Ellis. I think that all of these characters will play an important role as the series moves on.
Calophi: Eurkos said pretty much anything I’d want to say about the camera guy and the secretary, but I want to add my thoughts to the little girl and the older man. I definitely don’t think they are father-daughter at all. I’m thinking a relationship more along the lines of Kenpachi and Yachiro from Bleach, where the man rescued the girl from some situation and they’re companions more than family. That girl likely has some sort of fun power herself, and it’s possible the pair are bounty hunters also.
Storyline Thoughts
Eurkos: As a spiritual successor to Noir and Madlax, it seems similar. It’s supposed to, from what I understand, so that’s a plus. While it seems similar, it also seems very different. Setting plays an important part, I guess. I know I’m more interested in this than I was with the first episode of Noir when I watched that. I wanna know more about Ellis and what she can do. I’m also interested in Nadi, and the events that led her to where she is now.
Calophi: I never watched Noir or Madlax so I can’t relate the similarities or differences. I do know that I’m fairly interested in the backstories and futures of both Ellis and Nadi, and also about the girl/man pair that were walking about. Also, aside from Trigun, I don’t really watch anime in a western-ish setting, so that makes it interesting for me, too.
Final Verdict
Eurkos: Close to the top of my list, if not at the top. I am pretty interested in this one. The animation is great so far, as is the voice work. Yuki Kajiura has done some of my favorite soundtrack music, and so far I’m really liking the music in this one. I see good things happening with this series.
Calophi: I don’t like this one quite as much as Eurkos does, but it’s still in the upper half of my list. Both the story and the characters are enough to keep me watching for now, and like Eurkos said, the animation and music are top-notch. I’m very much looking forward to more.
The thing to remember about Maxwell’s Demon is that it’s a thought experimen to avoid entropy and dealing with the laws of thermodynamics. So id she does have that power, we have a good reason for physical abilities without training-she can imbue herself with kinetic energy.
[quote comment="2501"]The thing to remember about Maxwell’s Demon is that it’s a thought experimen to avoid entropy and dealing with the laws of thermodynamics. So id she does have that power, we have a good reason for physical abilities without training-she can imbue herself with kinetic energy.[/quote]
That’s a really good point. It’s interesting to note that she seems to do this subconsciously, though with things like heating the gun she was almost trance-like, as if she didn’t realize she was doing it. She also has a strange joy-gasm in episode 2 that was really creepy. o.O