Not content with whining, Teddie decides now’s an appropriate time for another of his witty puns: “This land feels so bear-en…” I’m just going to let that little gem speak for itself. There’s plenty more where that came from anyway, much to my chagrin. Channelling me, Chie tells him to shut it, and then declares that she’s going to go warn Yukiko to be on her guard, just in case. Yeah, “warn her”. We believe you, Chie. Before she leaves, Gary and Yosuke finally exchange phone numbers, and Gary makes a mental note to send Yosuke some steamy pictures later.
‘Hey, I just met you…and this is crazy…’
As afternoon gives way to evening, we cut to Hot Uncle standing on a street corner in the rain. There’s a police car and a couple of nondescript cops nearby, so we can assume he’s investigating one of the crime scenes and not waiting for a hookup with Adachi. But wait, Adachi is here–he runs onscreen to tell Hot Uncle that they’ve found all they’re going to find here. They talk for a while about the two deaths that have occurred thus far, and how they’re still not even sure they were homicides. Well, they sure as hell weren’t accidents, unless Mayumi Yamano and Taylor Swift Konishi shared a penchant for climbing tall structures in a heavy fog. Adachi basically says this much in fewer words, showing us that at least one cop in Inaba is thinking along the right lines, and then goes on to wonder if the entire situation was sparked by the oft-reported love triangle involving Mayumi, Misuzu Hiiragi and Taro Namatame. Hot Uncle shoots him down, claiming that both Misuzu and her errant husband have solid alibis for the night Mayumi died. Instead of coming up with an alternative theory, Adachi decides to indulge in a spot of gossip about Namatame, revealing that he’s been fired from his position as council secretary due to the scandal. Then–get this–he says Namatame is “practically as much of a victim as the Yamano girl”. Yes, because losing your job is clearly comparable to being murdered. Jesus, and these guys are supposed to be the professionals? Adachi needs to put Hot Uncle’s dick a sock in it.
Well, that puts paid to my ‘the murderer is doing this shit remotely’ theory.
After dismissing a possible link between the deaths and Yukiko’s family inn, Hot Uncle deduces that the potential murderer must be someone in town. No shit, Sherlock. “Ooh, is your detective’s intuition at work?” Adachi teasingly asks him. The vaguely pornographic background music is not helping here. Fortunately–or sadly, depending on which pairings float your boat–the scene fades out before Hot Uncle can discipline him for his remark.
Back at home, Nanako is absorbed in the TV (possible spoiler and pun both very much intended), so Gary leaves her to rot her brain and heads straight to bed. But before hitting the futon he decides to check out the Midnight Channel, just to make sure Not!Yukiko doesn’t show up again. Don’t be too shocked, but she totally does. This time the picture is much clearer (and in anime mode, natch) allowing us to see that Not!Yukiko has decided to wear a pink, foofy, princess-style dress for the occasion. She’s also holding a matching pink microphone–which, naturally, represents a penis–and seems to think she’s taking part in some kind of TV show. Where’s the remote control when Gary needs it?
“Tonight, Princess Yukiko has a big surprise!” she practically squees into the camera, before declaring that she’s going to “score [herself] a hot stud!” As poor Gary scratches his own eyes out in horror, we get an extreme close-up of Not!Yukiko pawing at her crotch and thrusting her boobs into the camera while talking about her “lacy unmentionables”. Concluding this very necessary and not-at-all fanservice-y anime scene, Not!Yukiko announces she’s off to find her Prince Charming, before skipping through the entrance of a fairytale chateau flanked by horse statues. No sooner has the cutscene ended than Gary gets a call from Yosuke, who rightly points out that the “Yukiko” on the screen was wearing, doing and saying things VERY out-of-character for the introvert, demure girl they know from school. Gary tells Yosuke to call Chie and agrees to meet up at Walmart tomorrow to discuss the new developments. Jeez, does he even have to spend his Sundays at that fucking place now?
BOING
Early Sunday morning, Gary heads downstairs to find Nanako sitting alone, nursing what looks like a carton of orange juice. Gary isn’t even sure whether her dad came home last night, so asks where he is, concerned that the level of child neglect around here is getting pretty ridiculous. Apparently Hot Uncle did make it home, but left again before breakfast. What Gary takes from this is that he’s meeting Adachi for brunch (and by brunch, I mean something else entirely) but more importantly, his absence threatens to derail his nephew’s plans for the day. “If you leave, Nanako will be left all alone to look after the house…” the IN lectures. “On the other hand, you have important business with Yosuke today…” Yeah, but Chie’s going to be there too, so don’t make it sound so enticing, IN. Reading her cousin’s obvious Oh Shit, I Don’t Want to Babysit face, Nanako insists she’ll be fine on her own, then, noticing the sunny weather, remarks that she’d better get started on the laundry. God, that poor child’s life.
Leaving her to the housework, Gary heads to the Walmart food court, where he’s greeted by Yosuke in a very fetching white jacket with fur trim. As we all know, jackets with fur collars are the very height of heterosexuality, but Yosuke muddies the waters of his gender preferences by making a reference to finding something inside his closet. Well, after their “bonding” talk yesterday, Gary assumed Yosuke was well and truly out of the closet. Why is he confusing things like this!? Taking no notice of Gary’s befuddled expression, Yosuke starts hinting at the “stuff” he found inside said closet. If it doesn’t involve anal beads or vibrating buttplugs, Gary isn’t interested.
Seriously…does everything this guy says sound dirty?
“Take a look at these!” he shrieks, pulling out…a katana and aikuchi knife. Now, Gary is willing to try anything once, but he thinks it’s a little too early in their relationship to start on the really kinky shit. Why can’t they just take things slowly? Getting caught up in the excitement, Yosuke starts demonstrating the weapons as a shocked diner looks on. This goes on for what feels like ten whole minutes. As Gary sinks ever lower in his chair, a police officer meanders into shot and notices Yosuke swinging around the bladed weapons like he’s in a martial arts movie. I think you can see where this is going. The cop immediately radios for backup, citing the presence of “two suspicious young males.” Homophobe! Yosuke tries to hide the weapons behind his back, like the cop hasn’t already seen him flailing them around, and then digs the hole even deeper by insisting he and Gary are “just two ordinary kids who like weapons.” Going with the psychotic interpretation of this line and figuring they’re probably planning a massacre at Yasogami High or something, the cop takes them into custody. Gary hopes his uncle isn’t on duty, or he’ll probably be banned from socializing with Yosuke indefinitely for this. Why didn’t he just stay home and babysit Nanako!?
Of course, Hot Uncle is indeed at the police station when they arrive–it’s just Gary’s luck to be arrested the ONE time he isn’t otherwise occupied screwing Adachi in the stockroom at a crime scene. “You didn’t seem the type to pull a stupid stunt like this…” he sighs, casting a saddened glance at his nephew. Gary feels his insides shrivel up, because disappointment from a parental figure is somehow always a worse reaction than straight-up anger. The one bright spot on this turd of a day is that Hot Uncle managed to pull some strings and ensure that Gary isn’t going to get a criminal record for this charge of…disorderly conduct? Disturbing the peace? Possession of a erect dangerous weapon?
Yosuke apologizes to Hot Uncle, since he’s the one who apparently thought waving deadly weapons around in a food court was a good idea, but is soon distracted by a pair of officers walking down the corridor. No, they’re not hot; they’re talking about “the Amagi girl”, hence the exclamation marks suddenly springing up out of Gary and Yosuke’s heads like jack-in-a-boxes. One officer informs the other that she’s disappeared, causing the other to wonder whether she’s simply run away from home. Miraculously, Yosuke isn’t all “Hey, do you think they mean Yukiko?”, giving me a smidgen of faith that the game designers don’t think I’m a blithering idiot. Even though he knows Yukiko is one of their friends and that overhearing news of her disappearance might concern them, Hot Uncle doesn’t explain anything to the guys, basically going “We have to maintain confidentiality during the investigation. La la la, look over there!” I mean, if he’s willing to wipe a misdemeanor from his nephew’s file, surely it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to tell him, off the record, that one of his friends could be in danger? Wouldn’t that be the decent thing to do?
Hot Uncle leaves, possibly to check whether his daughter still recognizes him, just in time for Adachi to stroll onscreen holding a coffee cup. Since ignoring his superior’s nephew could potentially lead to awkwardness during their pillow talk, he stops to chat, even though he knows Hot Uncle’s going to punish him if his vanilla soy latte gets cold. “Huh? Aren’t you the kid staying at Dojima-san’s place?” he fake-enquires, wondering how much–if anything–Gary knows about the two of them. Gary’s about to introduce himself properly, but Yosuke butts in and straight-out asks if something has happened to Yukiko. What, apart from being thrown inside the TV? Adachi sweatdrops and then dumbasses “Oh, umm…am I allowed to say…?” Now that he’s basically confirmed that something’s up, he has to follow it through, but only on the condition the guys keep it to themselves. Yeah, that’s totally going to happen, Adachi.
‘Don’t worry–what goes on between you and my uncle is your business.’
He reveals that Yukiko’s parents haven’t seen her since yesterday, and since she’s obviously not an all-night party kind of girl they’re getting worried about her. What’s more, Yukiko’s mother was recently taken ill with stress, allegedly caused by Mayumi Fucking Yamano being a bitch when she stayed at the family inn. “With Ms Amagi being the manager’s daughter…she must’ve felt pretty strongly about the incident, y’know,” Adachi blurts out, with the underlying subtext that Yukiko is being considered a possible suspect in the murder case. Before Gary and Yosuke’s shrunken brains can process this veritable deluge of new information, the offscreen voice of Hot Uncle admonishes Adachi for “chatting with civvies” and being late with his coffee. “Get your own fucking coffee, and if you speak to me like that again I won’t give you any more special favours,” Adachi doesn’t quite reply, then runs off down the corridor, pleading with the guys not to drop him in the shit. As they make to leave the station they run into Chie, who claims she’s been looking everywhere for them. Wait, how the hell did she know they were here? And of all the possible places to search, why did she randomly decide to check out the police station? I suppose it’s possible that somebody could have told her about the two guys getting arrested when she arrived for their scheduled meeting at the food court, but in that case surely she would have come straight here rather than going on a wild goose chase around town as she seems to be claiming?
Loading ...Anyway, Chie confirms what we already knew–Yukiko is missing, and her family has no idea where she could be. She flips her shit when she hears the cops are treating her girlfriend as a suspect, but fortunately Gary manages to calm her down before she starts bicycle-kicking anyone in uniform. Because the police are completely on the wrong track (and are so incompetent that they’d probably screw things up even if they were on the right one), the three vow to save Yukiko themselves. But there’s a catch–the cops confiscated the katana and knife Yosuke brought along, and Gary’s bent golf club just isn’t going to cut it. I have no idea why weapons are apparently such an essential component of their rescue attempt when Gary and Yosuke can both summon Personas now, but let’s just go with it. Chie says she knows the perfect place to get some weapons, and leads the guys to the central shopping district, where they arrive at a rather…oddly-placed shop. As the camera pans over the dimly-lit interior, Yosuke wonders where the hell they are. According to Chie it’s ostensibly a metalworks, but judging by the wares on display the only things it seems to sell are bladed weapons (including battleaxes, bizarrely) and suits of samurai armour. How the hell is this place still in business? I mean, unless Inaba is a hotbed for historical reenactment or fan conventions for samurai movies, I can’t imagine a shop selling such specialist items doing too well in such a sleepy, rural location. Then again, maybe this is just a distant cousin of the “tiny peasant village carries better weapons than the capital city the party visited a few dungeons previously” trope.
Yeah, walking around with a track jacket over a full suit of samurai armour won’t look odd at all!
Chie starts salivating over a suit of armour, causing Yosuke to remark that the TV world is too dangerous for her. Yes, this would be the same Yosuke who was too shit-scared to participate in either of the battles Gary has engaged in thus far. Also, Chie practices martial arts and has incapacitated him on at least one occasion prior to this conversation. In short: shut up, Yosuke. He backtracks and tries to tell Chie he knows how she feels, which acts as a berserk button to her. “You don’t know shit about how I feel!” she screams, dangerously close to sounding like a typical LiveJournal entry from 2003. “Yukiko might die from this, for crying out loud! I’m going, and that’s that!” At this point Gary has the option of responding with a chauvinistic “Okay, but stay behind us”, but thinks better of it and instead replies “Oh, alright.” Kick to the balls averted!
Yosuke, on the other hand, apparently didn’t get the memo to stop being a dick and seems to be hankering for another punt to the nads. As Chie brags about her amazing reflexes, he nags “You don’t know what it’s like in there! If you’re not gonna listen to our warnings, we’re leaving you here!” Chie eventually manages to convince him she isn’t going to sprain her ankle or something, and then starts to chat up the proprietor, leaving Yosuke free to chat up Gary: “You’re our main asset in battle right now, so I think you should choose whatever [weapon] makes it easier for you…” He then entrusts Gary with 5,000 yen to purchase weapons for the group. Even though there’s only one shaft Gary wants to get his hands on right now, he tries to turn his mind to the various armaments on offer.