In Dimension W episode 12, “The Future Reached.” Mira Yurizaki tells Kyōma Mabuchi to man up. Mabuchi tries to man up. Loser fights to save his wife, who Haruka Seameyer has turned into a Frankenstein’s monster in bipedal squid form. Our heroes discover the final fate of Genesis and Seameyer’s nefarious plan.
Note: There may be spoilers ahead. I’m not sure. Just in case, be careful!
What Happened in Dimension W Episode 12
Seameyer unleashes a monster that he stitched together from Loser’s wife Sophia and parts of other humans left on his portion of the lab. Loser keeps his cool and uses his coils to open another gate directly into Seameyer’s world. Reaching in with a mechanical arm, Loser is about to yank Seameyer through the portal when Seameyer instructs the bipedal squid to shape a tentacle into a crying Sophia. Loser looses focus and gets slammed into a slab.
Seameyer creates an inorganic replica of himself and attaches it to the bipedal squid. He announces that Mabuchi is his next target.
Mabuchi, however, is in a pit — literally and figuratively. He’s given up because he still can’t get past his surviving when Miyabi Azumaya and his entire unit died. Mabuchi continues to argue with Yurizaki in favor of nihilism. Perhaps in an attempt to confuse him, Yurizaki explains that her body would have been Azumaya’s, so she’s only alive because of the choices Azumaya and Mabuchi made. She finally convinces him to keep fighting because it’s what Azumaya would have wanted.
Yurizaki theorizes that some of Mabuchi’s memories are still missing because reasons. She’s able to use her tail to establish a physical connection with him so she can help rebuild his memories, but only after she literally slaps him senseless.
A naked Yurizaki with a glowing blue coil ventures into Mabuchi’s fragmented mental landscape. She works so hard her coil turns red, which is apparently bad because other reasons. She somehow collects his memory fragments, then claps to re-sequence them. His last fugitive memories begin to return: as he dove off the platform with Genesis, he heard Azumaya call to him. He virtually traveled to the operating room where everyone’s shocked the nearly perfect operation is degrading. He tried to send Genesis to help, but ethereal Azumaya stopped him because yet more reasons. After the lab exploded, he saw ethereal Azumaya in her Yurizaki-like body stand and say thank you and that she was glad it was him.
His memory restored, he asks Yurizaki to help him leave his memories. She doesn’t answer, so he has to metaphysically strike himself.
The digger siblings arrive with Salba Ene Tibesti and Lashiti in tow. Mabuchi comes up with an idea to use his wire blades to bind the bipedal squid. A failing Loser agrees and adds that there’s a huge cable running (conveniently) around the lab. If they work together, Loser thinks they can use it to bind the beast. To keep the beast in place long enough, Mabuchi plans to stall by pretending to surrender.
Meanwhile, Yurizaki is trying to run away as her red coil begins going out of control. The beast grabs her. Seameyer, losing no opportunity to become even more unlikeable, says he’ll take her arms and legs as his own. Yurizaki realizes Seameyer’s evil glee has blinded him to the state of her coil, and she plans to get as close as she can to him before it detonates. Mabuchi arrives and spoils her plan.
She protests and he tells her no one expects her to sacrifice herself, and that she still has time to take care of her coil. Mabuchi says he will show his Genesis memory to Seameyer. Taking the bait, Seameyer plunges himself into Mabuchi’s memories only to find the truth: Mabuchi destroyed it after Azumaya said she didn’t want him to use it.
Faced with the complete destruction of his dreams, Seameyer does what all evil cliche villains do: he tries to destroy the world. That’s when the digger siblings unearth the huge cable and begin to wrap it around Seameyer and his bipedal squid body. Ruwai Aura Tibesti and his flying robots help. The cables and the beast, being mostly inanimate, crash back through the portal and begin to crush Seameyer’s real body. As a parting gift, Mabuchi tells Seameyer that Azumaya loved old things because they were proof that people had been alive and that their memory made the present more beautiful. In other words, both success and failure lay the foundation for future possibilities.
Not surprisingly, Seameyer isn’t ready to become the past to lay the foundation for future possibilities. Elizabeth Greenhough Smith tosses a spin-dart powered by a numbered coil that’s somehow infused with Loser’s feelings to Mabuchi. He uses is to shatter the portal.
In his last moments, Seameyer meets an ethereal form of Shidou Yurizaki. The professor pats him on the head* just before Seameyer complete discorporates.
Loser watches the destruction, confident that it will release his wife’s soul so he can soon join her.
The maelstrom is about to engulf Mabuchi, but Yurizaki reaches him just in time for her red coil to go critical. It combines with the collapsing portal to turn green to heal Easter Island. Her ethereal father uses the opportunity to give her an uber coil to replace the defective red one. He encourages her to read people’s hearts.
Mabuchi and Yurizaki somehow ended up miles above Easter Island, falling to their deaths. Ruwai and is robot save them. At that point, everyone feels happy except Elizabeth, who discovers her father has passed away.
Albert Schumann and Mabuchi recover the bodies of their deceased comrades. When she joins him to review the island one last time, Mabuchi shocks Yurizaki (and the audience) by saying, “Thanks, Mira.”
As they leave the island, they see the first signs of plant live returning now that the void is gone.
During the end credits, Mabuchi talks to Tsubaki Azumaya as her employees help Yurizaki try on yukatas. In the end, Yurizaki and Mabuchi return to being Collectors, still working for Mary.
* I wonder if I was the only one who expected Shidou to say, “That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.“
What I Liked about Dimension W Episode 12
Yurizaki looked a little too happy when she showed Mabuchi the sharp end of her tail when she intended to establish a physical connection with him. Maybe she considered getting him back for all of the harsh words?
While he was describing to Yurizaki how Azumaya’s philosophy made the present more precious, Mabuchi makes a reference the the tragedy of her death making other things possible — like Yurizaki. I think she was as surprised as I was that he would say something nice!
Shock upon shock — Mabuchi said something else nice to Yurizaki later! Even if it’s just “Thank you,” I thought it was a welcome change.
Mabuchi always seemed to have a supportive relationship with Ruwai. I found it an emotionally positive touch-point, especially when Mabuchi was behaving cruelly to Yurizaki.
What I Liked Less about Dimension W Episode 12
Why would Genesis scramble Mabuchi’s memories? I get its a plot device, but I don’t understand what Genesis was trying to do — or even if it were trying to do anything.
What caused Yurizaki’s coil to turn red? It didn’t seem that she was working overly hard. Did she find Mabuchi’s porn collection? That made no sense to me.
Why did Azumaya stop Mabuchi from sending Genesis? What was her motivation? She seemed all resigned and loving, but I saw no reason for her decision. Or for Mabuchi to accept it. And why the heck was she smiling when she waved goodbye?
Mabuchi said he and Azumaya had made a choice — to do what? To let her die? For what end? Maybe I’m just dense**, but I didn’t get that point at all.
If Yurizaki wanted to get away, why did she run right into the bipedal squid? Did she think she was too fast for it? I can’t believe she lost track of where she was. Details like that really smash my suspension of disbelief.
Yurizaki’s red coil went critical, combined with the collapsing portal, and became — green light? Photosynthesis? What? By this time, my jaw was in pain from hanging open.
During the end credits, Salbe makes a report to the New Tesla Energy board, but we don’t get to hear anything he says. Then why show it? What did it mean? Salbe apparently argued with some man dressed like Steve Jobs (before he died), but it seemed to end well for Salbe. Was that good? Bad? Why the ambiguity?
Also during the end credits, the “camera” panned up Elizabeth and stopped just short of her nose. What was that about? Are the grieving forbidden to show their eyes?
What was Mabuchi talking to Tsubaki Azumaya about? She seemed to smile a lot; are they going to start dating? She seemed more open to it than he did…
** Please be nice!
Thoughts about Dimension W Episode 12
I can’t remember the last time a series so completely disappointed me. It had such potential! Yurizaki as a new model of robot with what appeared to be sentience; a philosophical background dealing with the power of possibilities and the consequences of choice; even the idea of coils, their interaction with Dimension W, and their interaction with our world — that was all interesting stuff! I was looking forward to the show building on those ideas.
What I got was a series that didn’t seem to confide in me (or trust me!) as a viewer. It tried to mislead me into thinking Albert and everyone at New Tesla Energy were the villains. As the show revealed their situation was more complex, I was happy. Complex villains with interesting motivations are a welcome addition to any show! But then things started to teeter, as we found out that Albert and New Tesla were actually allies with Mabuchi. Worse, narrative decisions like Yurizaki being chained while wearing only a towel and Johnny Depp — I mean, Shijyūrou Sakai — going on a murderous rampage felt arbitrarily cruel and groundless. By the time Seameyer showed up with his cliche laugh, eye-shadow, and Grinch-like smile, I considered dropping the series.
What kept me coming back?
I really liked Yurizaki, though I suspect I was being manipulated. After all, how could such a sweet, insult-resistent, and adorable being exist? Yet, she remained true to who she was, and she consistently tried to fulfill her mission to follow the coils. I hoped to see more of other characters, too, like Claire Skyheart or Tsubaki Azumaya. I think there was a lot of dramatic potential, and I hung on, hoping I’d see some of it bloom. No such luck. Dimension W will forever remain, at best, unfilled potential.
I’d like to nominate Seameyer for worst villain of the year, except I secretly think he’s so cliche he’d enjoy it. So, I’ll just do my best to forget him, the lost philosophical potential, and confusing plot. Instead, I’ll try to member Yurizaki and her pleasant smile. When all’s said and done, that was the best part of the show for me.
So, what’d you think? Am I overreacting? Not reacting enough?
Dimension W Episode 12: Other Posts
Other Anime Sites
- Reddit: [Spoilers] Dimension W – Episode 12 – FINAL [Discussion]
- Random Curiosity: Dimension W – 12 (END)
- Yatta-Tachi: Dimension W Episode 12 (The Future Reached) Review
This Site (Crow’s World of Anime!)
- Dimension W Episode 1: Collector
- Dimension W Episode 2: Loser
- Dimension W Episode 3: Chase the Numbers
- Dimension W Episode 4: The Mystery Hidden in Lake Yasogami
- Dimension W Episode 5: The Possibilities of the Dead
- Dimension W Episode 6: The Wind of Africa
- Dimension W Episode 7: The Voice Calling from the Past
- Dimension W Episode 8: The Island That Fell into Nothingness
- Dimension W Episode 9: The Key to Adrastea
- Dimension W Episode 10: Resurrected Nightmare
- Dimension W Episode 11: The Lost Genesis
- Dimension W Episode 12: The Future Reached
