Key: The Metal Idol, episode 11, “Save.” 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.
This is the last of the “stand-alone” (so to speak) episodes. After this comes another two-parter, and then it’s on to the two movies.
Key is in the hands of a crazy guy—and since the cast is made up almost entirely of crazy people, that’s not surprising. Tsurugi, the naked dude with glasses, has begun giving her dancing and singing lessons, except Key won’t dance or sing. She simply stands there while he plays piano.
Tsurugi is clearly up to something, but he appears to be playing some kind of reverse psychology game with her. Aware that she claims to be a robot, he tells her that if she had ever made an attempt to sing or dance, he would have thrown her out. He has in fact kept her on for a month now only because she refused to perform.
He appears to be obsessed with her obsession: He probably does not believe she’s a real robot (nobody but Key herself seems to believe it), but he wants in some way to play on her belief and use it. He mocks her as unable to become human.
Tataki is back in town after having made some discoveries in Key’s rural home. He discovered that Key’s mother was a priestess (confirming that she’s the shrine maiden we’ve seen repeatedly), and was apparently believed to be some kind of wonder-worker. There are hints that Key’s mother had a cult of her own, perhaps not unlike the snake-cult that is still skulking around in the background.
Akane comes from that same town and, for reasons unclear, resents Tataki for going there. She apparently has some bad past she was fleeing when she moved to Tokyo. Her affections for Tataki are also growing more overt: At least part of the reason she’s irritated is apparently because she’s in love with him.
At the same time, Sergei, still recovering from his injuries, is sitting in a cell and doing something or other on a computer. He’s apparently trying to hack something, but the exact details aren’t clear yet.
We also now know some additional details about the gel: Apparently, Ajo Heavy Industries has been abducting homeless people off the street and extracting gel from them until they die. Ajo recently kidnapped a doctor who’d annoyed him and ordered his technicians to kill him the same way.
We previously saw Ajo inject Miho—that is, the human pilot of Miho—to revive her and help her recover from her present illness. It’s not clear if this was her own gel or someone else’s, but apparently the substance can be given to humans as well as used to power the robots. What isn’t clear is what good it does to suck gel out of homeless people, since we were earlier told that a pilot could only operate a robot powered by his own gel.
Presumably, they’re using this stuff for more than one purpose.
