There’s not much to write about here as there is very little in the way of plot, more just a sequence of surreal events and imagery.
The jist of it is that Ran makes some cakes and drops them on the ground. Ataru eats one, falls ill, and Lum thinks Ran has poisoned him. So she tries to find Ran, and discovers she has entered a space-time distortion. Lum follows, and cue the Alice In Wonderland parodies (albeit twisted even further, with an appearance from Ogami IttÅ amongst others).
Eventually she finds Ran, and it turns out the cake was meant for Rei. The cake expands 100x it’s normal size to fill Rei’s ravenous appetite, and that’s what had made Ataru ill.
Like I said, not much to summarise really. This story did actually appear in the manga, but the levels of weirdness have been greatly heightened here and sequences added in. The production crew are really pushing the characters and setting to the boundaries of the original manga now.
And tomorrow they will roll over those boundaries into unknown territory!
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This may be the last full episode from Asami Endo. She’s credited on a few more, but they are alongside other names so it may be reused footage. Not to mention this is the final episode in this production batch. The fact that she worked on so many episodes provided a strong visual consistency in the series so far. It will be interesting to see if that continues with some of the new animation directors.
Screenplay: Kazunori Ito
Storyboard: Makoto Moriwaki
Director: Mamoru Oshii
Animation Director: Asami Endo