Lots of extra material in the anime this episode! It’s so interesting to see what they are doing with this extra room they have to add footage. What might they add when it’s battle time? What would you like to see added or lengthened?
This episode begins with a summary of their plan to use the gorilla tank. They’ll bust through Chrome’s cage, and run off with him (I don’t know why, but the “nyoooom” sound effect when they talk about running away really gets me). This is why in the previous episode Senku has a realization about “more power” but it wasn’t about engine power. Now the steam-powered car is tough enough to break through a jail with its new armor.
There is also more time spent on discussing Chrome’s tendency to run his mouth. There doesn’t seem to be much danger even if he did, though. We only see him bragging about rainbow flames. He could actually cause some harm if he talked about other inventions, but we at least know from last episode he won’t say a word about the cell phone. This extra focus on Chrome’s bragging seems to have brought more meaning into a moment later on where Chrome realizes science isn’t for bragging and feeling superior. Chrome learns a lot from Senku but now we see his growth when he is on his own.
Tsukasa may be good at predicting what Senku will do in this war, but he can’t predict what Chrome may be capable of. When Tsukasa first met Kohaku way back when, he wrote off the whole village as primitive and easy to conquer. He clearly still feels no threat from any villager, especially with Ukyo’s cover-up about Chrome scouting on his own.
When Senku first met Chrome and realized what kind of person he is, he had an inner thought directed at Tsukasa. “Even if you kill me, there will always be other science users who rise up.” Tsukasa’s dismissal of the villagers’ potential means he doesn’t even consider Chrome having a mind of his own to break free by himself. Even Yo is not so much tasked with watching Chrome as much as managing the trap set for Senku.
So that leads us into Yo’s introduction this episode. The last of the 3 new characters this season, his introduction is very different from Ukyo or Nikki. We get a full backstory action scene from the old world that explains why he’s just fine living in the stone world. Only Yo, Tsukasa and Hyoga have described the petrification as a “reset” in a positive way, so he fits well on Tsukasa’s team.
The manga chapter for this episode had a lot of narration, and we know the anime doesn’t have a narrator. Some storytelling gymnastics were required to express the point that both Senku and Chrome had made the same chemical for different uses at the same time. In the manga, the narration explains at the moment Chrome made the bleach that he didn’t make sodium hydroxide like he thought. It was also a quick callback to Senku and the villagers while building up to the moment of success of Chrome’s plan. In this episode, all of that was saved for the end when Chrome returned, and it was explained by Senku himself. It makes a bit more sense in a way, since they didn’t even ask how Chrome got out of jail in the manga, but this closing scene was still missing the impact it had in the manga.
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