The first story arc continues and concludes this week as we follow our mysterious exchange student and his mysterious friend in their ongoing escape from the Bad Men. We also find out that Lee-san knows how to treat a lady, even if she is kind of mean to him and clearly bad news and, oh yeah, a step above a prostitute.

The second episode of DTB opens with Lee-san (now Li-san, so says the sub group) as he carries his hooker girlfriend home. Walking in heels is killer, I understand. She yaps a lot about Contractors and conspiracy and all that and we learn that she knows so damn much because of her work at the laboratory. Oh, and also because she witnessed her parents being killed by a Contractor. It’s enough to drive any woman to Club Pinky.

And there’s that awesome OP again…

After the OP, we rejoin our…um…heroes? as Porsche-san gently reams out her subordinates for fooling around at Club Pinky instead of keeping their mind on work. Oh, you silly boys! Next it’s back to the apartment complex (Jellyfish Heights - classy) where the chick’s apartment has been broken into and messed all up. She clings to Le…Li-san and begs him to take her to his place. Hubba, hubba.

But they just lay on the floor…next to one another…not even touching. She admits that she really likes being a hooker, it makes her feel alive. She isn’t sure if the “real” her is the chick from the lab or the chick who makes a living with her hot bod. Well, I guess it isn’t so important. Li-san makes a speech about their meeting being fate (and makes a really cute happy-shy face) and suggests they run away together. “Can I really believe in you?” she asks. He doesn’t answer, so I’m guessing…no. The two cop-guys find their way to her apartment and there’s that damn cat again.

Meanwhile, Li-san and his lady have slipped out to a restaurant. He very cryptically tells her he has a friend who can get her a fake passport and also that she’ll need some money, or something she can trade for money. I think our friend has seen too many spy movies, but she falls for it. She admits that she has information - valuable information, information about Pandora and the Gate. A very smiley Li-san says that will do just fine. She finally tells Li-san her real name, too - Chiaki something. (Makes me think of Nodame Cantabile, personally…)

A huge spread of food arrives and Bitch-san begins to criticize Li-san for his healthy appetite. He says it’s less than he usually eats, but she insists that he’s going to get fat. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually, someday, he’s going to get FAT FAT FAT. Then they start laughing about it and her pupils disappear. Which totally happens to me when I drink red wine, so it didn’t seem strange at all.

The guy in the next booth chats with Li-san after No Pupils Girl wonders off to the bathroom. He makes cryptic references to getting something from the woman and that Li-san is the only one for the job because he has no conscience. He tells him the others are close and to get rid of the chick and then leaves. Yessir!

Enter: bad guys.

Li-san slips off to collect his lady and they run away through the kitchen. Bad men pursue and turn the clean, well-stocked kitchen into a war zone! Plates shatter! Bags of flour are blown apart! Dear God, is there no honor? Li-san is hit with shrapnel but still manages to shove the girl out the door and to safety. The bad men try to follow but they’re clearly not cool enough. Then one of them…picks a flower and eats it. Hmmm. Scary.

We meet up with the guy in the next booth (Huang) and the blind girl (Yin) and a voice without a body. They talk about Hei and why didn’t he just kill the woman, but he’s in a place without water so Yin can’t find him. As they hide out at the train station, the hooker bandages up his war wound and Li-san tells her she looks like a corpse. This seems to turn her on, so she puts her head in his lap. Then she tells him her sob story about her parents and gives him a key. Li-san says that Contractors are all killing machines and liars and can’t be trusted. Witnesses have to be killed, he says. It’s subtle, but I think this is a bit of foreshadowing.

They take a train to…somewhere…and use the key to open a locker and pull out what looks like a text book, but I guess it’s the Information she alluded to in the restuarant. But wait - the bad guys are there! Jean has found them! They walk down the street and Li says, “forget it,” then pushes the girl aside and runs off. First instinct is to think he’s being an asshole, but we know he’s done it to protect her.

Porsche-san gets a call on her radio telling her…that they found Chiaki’s body.
Say what?!

Li-san puts on his long black coat (so hot) and after a bit of running stops to flip through the book…empty. That bitch! Said bitch has grabbed a gun and followed them, and by now Jean and his thugs have caught up. Apparently, the Chiaki we know is just a Doll with Chiaki’s memories implanted in her. Li-san gets shot in the back by the bitch and one of the thugs shoots him a few more times. Then a voice tells them the coat is bulletproof. Who’s voice? Oh yeah, the cat.

Li-san (ok, Hei) hops up and takes care of the thugs pretty easily. Jean was doing some kind of glowy thing with Hei’s chest that the doll who is not Chiaki prevents by jumping in front of him. Huang, et al, show up and he gives Hei some crap about not killing her. Hei says she wasn’t a puppet, she was alive, and Huang reminds him that he’s just a killing machine. The cat yells at him (be nice to Hei!) and Yin uses her water-power to find Jean.

Jean pulls himself out of the water and starts in with that rock crap again. Then he notices Hei has shown up and a few second later he’s dead and floating. Hei goes back home and begins chopping up about six heads of lettuce (that much killing would make anyone hungry). Porsche-san comes over looking for information about Chiaki, but Hei says he just moved in and, oh sure, he’ll be happy to give her a call if he remembers anything. Porsche-san knows something is not right, but doesn’t press the matter.

Another great episode, though it makes me a little bit nervous. I feel like the “Stone Cold Killer Who Learns To Be Human” story has been told about 1000 times already and unless DTB can think of a really original way to tell it, the show could easily dissolve into the same old thing. (It’s more interesting if Hei is just a Stone Cold Killer, I think.) Still, I’m having a good time watching the show and I’m looking forward to the next episode.

Next time: Hei chases some underage tail and the cat gets shook up.

Posted on Tuesday, April 17th, 2007 at 3:21 pm in Darker Than BLACK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.