Now that I think about it, the first episode didn’t show Walnut’s dead body so it shouldn’t be too surprising that Episode 2 reveals that Walnut is still alive. Walnut quickly deduces that their peer Robota (Yuki Sakikihara) sold them out to their employer. Knowing that Robota will send some men to finish the job, Walnut contacts LycoReco, who sends Chisato and Takina to escort them to safety. Walnut proves to be a very enigmatic character at first, appearing in a squirrel fur suit and distorting their voice with technology in order to conceal their identity.
Much of this episode is action and very good action at that. Robota hacks Walnut’s car to plunge them into the ocean but Chisato and Takina shoot his drone down (while the car is airborne no less), obscuring his vision and buying themselves enough time to get out of the car. What then follows is a shootout in an abandoned store. Takina uses Walnut’s bulletproof suitcase as cover, much to the hacker’s horror, while Chisato flanks the mercenaries from the side. This is all pretty light on character development. You see some more of Chisato’s non-lethal approach, even providing first aid to the mercenaries she injures, and that’s about it. The heavy emphasis on action over characters is a potentially risky move this early on in the show but I have to admit that the action here is a lot of fun to watch so I’m not too worried at the moment.
I will admit that Chisato is a pretty absurd fighter. These first two episodes establish that Chisato can dodge bullets and she can apparently do this regardless of range or what type of weapon the enemy is firing at her. Is Lycoris Recoil set in the Matrix? How is Chisato that good? Then again, she is supposed be this super elite agent so I probably shouldn’t be that surprised with her insane reflexes. It does help that Takina is perplexed by Chisato’s abilities. There’s a funny moment at the end of the episode where Takina tries to hit Chisato with one of her hairbands, only for Chisato’s reflexes to still kick in.
At the end of the shootout, some of the mercenaries brutally gun Walnut down. This leads the girls and the viewer to think that the mission is a failure. However, it is revealed in the next scene that Walnut pretended to die so that the hacker can lay low. Furthermore, Mizuki is actually the one wearing the fur suit, serving as Walnut’s body double. The real Walnut is actually a little girl named Kurumi (Misaki Kuno) and she was hiding inside the suitcase this entire time (no wonder she panicked when Takina used the suitcase as cover). Kurumi’s age is a little surprising. Earlier in the episode, the DA says Walnut has been around for decades so you couldn’t help but think the hacker would be a middle age adult. I don’t know, maybe the alias has been passed around to different people. That said, Kurumi makes an appearance in both the OP and ED so even if you didn’t figure out that this girl is Walnut, you’d knew that she’ll appear in the story at some point.
While her plan works, Kurumi decides to stay hidden for the time being and she takes refuge at LycoReco, serving as one of its employees and as tactical support for Chisato and Takina. Right from the get go, Chisato asks Kurumi a favor: to track down the arms dealers captured in the photo from the last episode. I can’t help but think Kurumi is just going to zoom in and enhance like in CSI. Funnily enough, Kurumi’s previously employer, a man by the name of Mr. Yoshimatsu (Yoji Ueda) shows up again. He doesn’t run into Kurumi but if he ever does, I wonder if he’ll connect the dots.
Oddly enough, Takina doesn’t look super happy with Kurumi’s survival. You’d think she would since it means she successfully completed her mission. Then again, the end result isn’t what Takina had in mind. Had Chisato not taken the time to aid her opponents, she and Takina probably would’ve succeeded in escorting Walnut to safety. With Walnut surviving and actually wanting to get gunned down to fake her death, Takina feels she and Chisato got an easy out. What also irks Takina is Chisato’s apparent refusal to kill anyone and her willingness to look after her enemies. I don’t know if this is a matter of ethics, it appears to be the case for Chisato but not for Takina, but it is certainly one regarding efficiency. Casualties are to be expected and Lycoris are licensed to kill. Technically speaking, Lycoris don’t need to concern themselves over the wellbeing of others so long as they get results. At the very least, that’s what Takina thinks. Suffice to say, Takina thinks Chisato is holding herself back with her no kill rule. Either that or Takina is a psychopath and she needs at least one person to die in a given mission to feel happy.
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