Key: The Metal Idol, episode 4, “Access.” Written and directed by Hiroaki Satō. Produced by Shigehiro Suzuki and Atsushi Tanuma. Music by Tamiya Terashima. Studio Pierrot, 1994-1996. 13 episodes and 2 movies. Rated 16+.
Available on Crunchyroll.
A harrowing episode, “Access” shows us what the show is capable of when it’s at its best. It can be a good thriller when it wants.
Let me get you up to speed and mention a few points I didn’t bother to discuss or got wrong in our essays previous. First, when Key went to Miho’s concert, she met up with Tataki, the guy who is close friends with Akane and also, apparently, president of Miho’s fan club. After Key prematurely ends the concert by killing Miho’s robot avatar, Key and Tataki wind up at a rooftop restaurant.
And we have to appreciate Tataki’s financial shrewdness here, taking Key to a restaurant: Key is undoubtedly a cheap date since she doesn’t eat.
Meanwhile, Sergei is hunting for Key. We now know that he’s the one who killed Key’s grandfather, and to find Key, he sends a robot after the sleazy photographer, Seiichi Tamari. First killing Tamari’s bodyguard, he confronts Tamari on a high tower that just happens—another unlikely coincidence—to overlook the rooftop restaurant where Key and Tataki are.
Synopsis
When the robot backs Tamari up to the edge of the roof, people below think he’s committing suicide. Observing this, Key undergoes stress that causes another release of her power, making Sergei lose control of the robot, which promptly hurls Tamari off the roof—and right into Key.
The two of them go tumbling over a ledge and end up on an awning that slowly gives way and will likely send them to their deaths. The people below shout encouragement; as we already know from her grandfather’s dying words, Key is in some way able to absorb energy from people who focus on her, so she has another, more significant burst of energy: She throws Tamari onto the roof, levitates, and wipes two of Sergei’s robots out of existence, making them evaporate in a puff of smoke.
Shortly after that, she collapses, but not before Tomoyo Wakagi reaches her and rescues her. Wakagi was her grandfather’s lab assistant, and he has always been the one to rescue Key and return her home when she collapses. He had secretly followed her to Tokyo as well.
Also, I am totally going to get Wakagi and Tataki mixed up here. They’re both broad-shouldered, brawny guys with overall similar appearances and personalities, and they have similar names. Darn you, Japan.
Discussion
It turns out that, contrary to what I supposed earlier, Key really did throw a rose at Miho that buried itself in her chest because Sergei talks about having the rose examined. Another rose blooms from the eye of one of Sergei’s robots shortly before Key destroys it.
The robots are the product of a corporation called Ajo Heavy Industries, the president of which, Jinsaku Ajo, is apparently unhinged; he refers to the robots as his “sons.” He wants to believe that Key is not actually the one destroying his robots even though Sergei insists she is, but he also speculates that Dr. Mima, Key’s grandfather, may have sent Key to avenge his own death. And Ajo may not be wrong: It does appear that Mima must have done something to Key to make her fatal to any of Ajo’s machines.
It’s increasingly clear that Key is not really a robot. Neither Sakura nor Tamari believe she is, and they speculate that her delusion must come from some childhood trauma. We of course know already, as they probably do not, that Dr. Mima had told Key she was a robot, and he ascribed her frequent collapses from anemia (she eats nothing but pills, remember) to the running down of her battery.
Whenever Key’s power appears, her hair turns brown and she shows normal emotions. When destroying the robot on the roof, the emotion she displays appears to be rage.
There’s also some other weird imagery that now accompanies Key’s power, which may be a flashback or a mixture of flashback and fantasy. All the people giving Key power appear in a clearing around a shrine, and a shrine maiden appears in the doorway and approaches Key. We’ve not really been given clues as to who this woman is, but she might be Key’s mother.
I was also wrong when I previously stated that Key doesn’t sleep. She apparently does, and when she sleeps, a strange singing voice starts coming from electronic devices around the city—so she apparently has a psychic power that manifests when she’s sleeping, and it seems to anticipate her career as an idol, assuming she ever actually gets around to becoming an idol.
