There was a big theme going on about the values and purposes of ‘fake copies” this episode! And not to mention, finally the talks of clones and copies– which includes the city itself.
Kujirai B had explained to Kudo that Kowloon was originally demolished back in 1994. The Kowloon (at the time of the conversation) was illegally recreated and is officially referred to as: The Second Kowloon Walled City.
The city was destroyed and then rebuilt again, but the question is which version of the city are we on now? When Kudo had this conversation with Kujirai B, he had pointed out that there were talks of demolishing the city (again). Then later when we saw Miyuki and Mask-Gwen going around investigating the city, he brought up a discrepancy. The cat shelter he had built was nowhere to be found. So there’s definitely something amiss in Kowloon right now.
And on top of that, going based off the fact he knew Kujirai B, I’m starting to wonder if a second “demolition event” had actually already occurred, and nwo everyone is living the third version of Kowloon.
Then there was this whole thing about clones and stuff, but I still find the whole premise really sketchy because it feels as though the Kowloon they are living in is actually a simulation universe built to feed into the nostalgia and desires of returning to the place they long for. The whole conversation about Zicronia, an artificial gem and the talks of Generic Terra’s clone research project that sought to create “Zicronoian”.
Whatever this “Zicronoian” project is, we have gotten confirmations that there are copies of original individuals lingering about, and not only that- when certain conditions are met, their “copy” will vanish without a trace. And we saw this happen right before our eyes with Mr. Chan. Miyuki had someone bring what appeared to be the original Mr Chan, now living outside of Kowloon step into the city. And the moment he did, the copy vanished.
So how does copies just vanish out of thin air? If we go by the traditional premise of ‘clones’ they’d have a physical body. But what about Zicronoian? If we think back to what was mentioned in the first episode, we heard a broadcast mention ‘Generic Terra capable of backing up the memories of all human beings, making eternal youth and immortality a reality.’ The premise of a Zicronoian seems to be to be leaning more into the premise of creating ‘avatars’ so to speak, to host these memories.
It’s also important to note there was another discrepancy that Miyuki pointed out today: He said clones can’t inherit moles. But would that rule still apply to a Zicronoian? If they really as avatars, then I can imagine there would be options to further “customize” one self to either transform themselves completely (similarly to plastic surgery) or make an perfect identical copy (hence the beauty mark on Kujirai). So that possibility is not completely off the table until said otherwise. The biggest plot-twist could be Kujirai actually being the original to begin with, but with the whole thing about her wrinkles just confuses me to the point I’m not really sure if that curve-ball still really holds, but I digress.
Circling back to Masked-Gwen (the said original) is present in Kowloon, after witnessing Mr. Chan disappearing right before their eyes, he and Miyuki have concluded due to his presence in Kowloon, his copy that worked at the Goldfish Tea-House likely no longer exists. This suggests the original and copy cannot co-exist in the same space at the same time. We saw this example with the file Kudo was dealing with earlier: There’s an existing item named “Sai On Tower” in this location. Do you want to replace? “No” or “Replace”.
Now if Kujirai B really did died unexpectedly (and supposedly by Kudo’s hands no less, which I’ll get to in a moment), it is possible that it happened before she could upload her memories or something. They have yet to explain whether the individual needs to be alive or not in order to do so– I imagine they probably do since it has to do with one’s conscious.
So where does this leave Kujirai in all of this? Well her matter is even more complicated now because besides the fact of her discrepancy between her and the said original Kujirai B, she now being told by Kudo no less, that he had killed the original. Well isn’t that just great! Poor girl, that’s not the bombshell she was expecting.
But did he really? Masked-Gwen said he doesn’t really want to talk about it, but he also seems to want to believe it was a mistake/by accident. We also know that he is actively looking for Hajime Kudo, but now I’m starting to wonder if whether he’s looking for the original or the copy. He has said he’s been wearing the mask so that he wouldn’t be noticed, and we saw that Kudo had a reaction when he had thought Kujirai was referring to the Gwen at the teahouse (not realizing she was referring to Masked-Gwen). It does make me wonder though, is Kudo the original or is he actually a copy?
Needless to say, we’ll have to wait and see whether we’ll actually hear from him how that actually transpired next week, but boy that sure makes things even more messy. We also saw how Kudo seems to be growing increasingly frustrated with Kujirai, a combination of resentment of her existence and the the talk of erasing the fragments that proved that Kujirai B did in fact exist at one point.
That said, it appears Kudo seems to be growing increasingly frustrated with Kujirai. It seems it’s a combination of resentment of her existence and the talk of erasing the fragments that proved that Kujirai B did in fact exist at one point that is really starting to set him off. That’s probably why he has decided to just come out and tell her that he killed Kujirai B.
Which leads to the final point before I wrap things up: Kujirai’s kind of stuck between a rock and hard place because on one hand, she’s determined to carve out her own identity, while at the same time, she doesn’t want to completely remove traces of Kujirai B because she fears by doing so will basically erase her existence. It’s a very complicated situation that it difficult to pull off because it makes moving forward that much harder. That’s why Yaomay couldn’t help but feel really frustrated on her behalf. That’s why she hasn’t given up trying to persuade Kujirai to just get rid of all the stuff and move to an entirely new place to start fresh. She really wants Kujirai to be able to appreciated and loved for being herself, regardless of being a ‘fake copy’ of another.
Eva, it’s still the Second Kowloon given the Branch Manager of the realty firm mentioned in Episode 1 that the Second Kowloon’s an uncomfortable place to live, yet the population stays constant.
When Kudo offered to carry Reiko’s new tank, leading to the elderly man saying it must be rough to have a junior coworker who works you so hard, the inverse of when Kujirai B had Kudo working hard when she was his senior, and Kudo remembered that interaction with Kujirai B based on his reaction. Coupled with the heat stroke incidents for Kudo and Reiko, I’m starting to doubt it’s a simulation as I had thought after Episode 2 as no normal simulation would set up so many parallel and contrasting situations for Kudo to remember.
And regarding the sunflowers with Reiko wondering whose gaze did Kudo find when he looked through the sunflowers, we see that it’s Kujirai B. This world’s clearly forcing Kudo to come to terms with him having loved Kujirai B and how the current Reiko’s not her, and this pointed direction the world’s pushing Kudo towards makes it increasingly unlikely to be a simulation in my opinion. The world is definitely unnatural, but I’m moreso leaning towards it being a dream world induced through experimentation or something else that involves Kudo given the direction the world is pointing Kudo towards.
I’m struck by Reiko pointing out that it’s as if she was created to match the life of Kujirai B. Episode 4 had Kujirai B say in a flashback that people always want to go back to the nostalgia, which is why you can’t erase Kowloon, and this could tie into the Branch Manager words about the population being constant, and the true nature of Kowloon Generic Romance’s world could have to do with nostalgia itself, which I speculate to possibly be Kudo’s nostalgia for the past given we have multiple versions of the same person with a Gwen that knows that Kujirai B died and one that didn’t know and why the world’s so Reiko-centric given we know Kujirai B was Kudo’s former lover. The reason the Second Kowloon Walled City always has the same number of people is possibly ’cause it contains all the people Kudo knew during a specific time period there, and the world’s molded by that preference.
I suspect from these events that the Second Kowloon has been destroyed in the real world, and Kudo doesn’t want to let go of his memories and nostalgia with the Generic Terra project being his way of rationalizing how Reiko existing despite having died. This could explain how there’s a Gwen and Mr. Chan who came from outside of Kowloon ’cause they left Kowloon at some point in the real world. This could mean Generic Terra is a red herring and isn’t real with it being used as an avenue of telling the mangaka’s story and by forcing Kudo to acknowledge change with how you adjust to it being what matters.