What the hell is going on? Where are we? Who are these people? Why in the Hunger Games are there this many people (creatures?) fighting each other? Lots of unanswered questions here. I feel like I was just thrown into the ocean having never been taught how to swim.

We seem to be putting together a main cast during this game. Also, Rachel is back, and she is in her hooded phase. I still can’t claim to have much of an understanding of this world we are in or most of the characters in it. I will say that one of my favorites almost immediately is Lero-Ro because it is so instantly recognizable as the voice of Shiki from Tsukimichi.

Lots of lore on the tower and the characters during this training period. Also, some shady stuff happening with the test administrators. It is pretty clear already that this is the type of show where everybody is always acting with an agenda of some type or another. Any character might just be acting out a scheme and no character is safe (I should have suspected something like episode 12 at this point).

Schemes upon schemes upon schemes. Turns out Khun is one of the better schemers out there. Also, metagaming is totally a thing through the use of stuff like that note. Some battles might be won before they are ever fought. All the betraying and (literal) backstabbing in this sequence should have been more hints at what was to come.

I literally, physically gasped at the conclusion of episode 12. For whatever reason, bingeing through this season at a breakneck pace, I never stopped to consider the possibility that Rachel was anything other than what Yoru had presented to us. I happened to watch this episode right before bed as well, so I was forced to sit with it and ponder it for a whole day before I could watch the finale. Rachel’s turn in this episode really, really makes me want to know more about Yoru and Rachel, about their time before the tower and before each other.

The way this season ends makes it feel like the story up until now was really the prologue to the actual meat of the story. I still think that there has not been enough establishment of the setting overall, but the show is cool enough that it doesn’t bother me too much. If you think about this season as a prologue, then there is still a lot of story left to tell in which those gaps can be filled in over time. You get the sense also, that sometimes it just doesn’t matter. The Tower is a place where rule of cool wins…always. Screw your rules, power systems, logic, schemes, none of that matters unless you do it in a cool enough and interesting enough way. Also, totally digging the new rurouni-version of Lero-Ro. Safe travels!