ダーティペア (TV Anime) Episode 12 Review
Dirty Pair – 12

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Yuri and Kei arrive at the 3WA HQ to find the building in lock down as the top secret security system named Algernon has been stolen. Gooley agrees to give the pair an extra week of vacation and they report to the head of the R&D department to see Fangoria. Her male assistant saves Yuri from being bitten by a lice that will drain all of the IQ from the victim. Yuri’s and Kei’s subsequent talk with Fangoria leads to little information being provided to them, only a means of finding Algernon.

Tracking the signal to the cafeteria, the Chinese chef finds a rat but the place is soon overrun with rats. Not only that, but the rats seem unusually smart, disarming and taking weapons from the humans and capturing Mughi to boot. Fangoria finally lets them know that Algernon is in fact a smart rat with an IQ of 153 after showing them Chichi, Fangoria’s mate with an IQ of 135. Algernon makes his demands to have the building evacuated but when Yuri and Kei refuse, he has his rats free Chichi. Kei and Yuri then up their demands to a triple bonus and three weeks paid vacation to resolve this issue.

Since poison gas would make the building unusable for a month, Kei and Yuri decide to bring in a hoard of cats. However, the rats easily defeat the cats and send them packing. Yuri uses her 158 IQ to come up with a plan to use the intel-draining lice on Algernon, but Algernon traps them and Kei and Yuri are bitten. Feigning stupidity, Kei and Yuri wait for Namo to free Mughi and shut down the electronic cage they are trapped in before attacking with the real lice. Chichi protects Algernon by taking the lice herself and she becomes a normal rat. Algernon leaps out of the building to commit suicide rather than live without the smart Chichi and things return to normal in the building.

Thoughts/Review:

Weird, yet interesting. The idea that rats could be the basis of a security system is rather interesting, but only if you can control them. But then once you give a rat an IQ of 153 and the ability to speak, they become another sentient race and thus using them this way would make them slaves. The episode really didn’t go down that road as the writers chose to show how the scientists who made Algernon so smart ended up making the rat too smart and certainly much smarter than the scientist who spawned him. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but think of the slave aspects.

The first half of the episode comes off as a bit more interesting since it was hard to predict what might have stolen Algernon or indeed what Algernon actually was. Once those two elements were revealed, the episode rapidly falls into some predictable situations. Despite supposedly having an IQ of 158, the whole idea that cats would defeat rats, to say nothing of rats being controlled by a super rat, was laughable. Had it been mice, it would have worked but rats are too big and cats may swat them, but they don’t hunt rats. Transversely, rats don’t care for cats for the most part and will bite them in a one-on-one encounter. I suppose the plan was done for humor but if so, it didn’t make me laugh.

The ending was so over the top as to not even be funny. The whole melodramatic suicide of Algernon made me almost want to vomit. *_* In addition to the hideous melodrama, the whole end smacked of writers who’d written themselves into a corner and had no resolution but thought that a rat committing suicide might be touching. It wasn’t.

One thing I have to remark on is how Kei and Yuri seem to constantly bargain for bonuses and additional paid time off. I guess that amuses me seeing as how the current economic mess we are in has the employers in complete charge. Thus in today’s world, Gooley would have said, “Get to work or I’ll find someone else. I don’t care how good you are, there are plenty of others I can hire now.” ^_^; However, I do enjoy the whole notion of getting some bonuses and extra vacation for getting through a tough job. ^_^

So, a mixed bag to be had here, which is fairly typical of Dirty Pair (sadly).