ダーティペア (TV Anime) Episode 17 Review
Dirty Pair – 17

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

When 3WA agent Alan Jamis is killed while pursuing the notorious assassin Sundric, Yuri and Kei go undercover on a commercial space flight where Sundric is believed to be a passenger. Kei goes in as a Catholic nun and Yuri as a flight attendant. Kei has files on all the passengers and is studying them but also enjoying seeing rock star Bobbit Huey, forcing Yuri to remind her to do her job. They are interrupted when the flight captain loses his mind and kills the co-pilot, setting the course of the space plane a black hole and locking the coordinates with a pass code before killing himself.

Now in addition to trying to find Sundric, Yuri and Kei have to somehow save all the plane’s passengers. Because Sundric is a code breaker and assassin, Yuri and Kei break cover, having already been suspected of being “Dirty Pair,” and announce that while they were here to arrest Sundric, the need to save everyone’s life take priority. They arrange to have it so that whomever is Sundric can go and break the code. They encounter a few “false starts,” including discovering that one of the passengers is the estranged wife of the flight captain and their meeting was pure chance, as was seeing his son or the first time. Another passenger, Ralph Ray, attempts to flee on an escape shuttle but it explodes after leaving.

After no luck getting Sundric to reveal himself, some clues emerge and with the boy Jack playing “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on his melodica, Kei and Yuri determine the pass code to be the tones made when pressing the keypad that match “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” With the controls unlocked, a new problem emerges in the form of a bomb on the engines. When the engines automatically fire to escape the black hole in a few minutes, they are all dead. Kei races out in a space suit to disarm the bomb, only to find the supposedly dead Ralph Ray there. Realizing this is Sundric, the two get into a fire fight and Kei ends up losing her life line, though Sundric gets caught in the engine exhaust. Kei accepts her fate and wakes up to find herself being saved by Bobbit, who pours it on thick to Kei’s liking and Yuri’s disgust.

Thoughts/Review:

This episode had more flaws than you could shake a stick at. There were plot holes and pointless plot points. If I had time, I could go to the Tropes website and list them all by name, but I don’t so I’ll just stick to the actual story.

First is the flight captain going nuts. Initially, it adds a bit of “WHOA” to the story, but then when his estranged wife happens to be on the plane, things go south and quick. She had a drug problem, they separated, she happened to be pregnant, had a child, then six years later happens to board a flight that he’s piloting. OK, so why does he then go nuts, shoot the co-pilot, lock the plane on a course for a black hole, then kill himself? Oh, but when locking the plane’s course for the black hole, he makes the pass code be a child’s tune. Yeah, not buying it.

Next is Sundric. I can buy that he would go under cover as “Ralph Ray.” I can even accept that after he killed the lawyer Marcus Brannigan, he took on that disguise. However, this assassin suddenly being a master code breaker was a “yeah, yeah” moment but I would buy that. What I don’t buy is that he would figure out the code and teach the tune to the boy Jack, who knew it early on in the episode. *_*

Sundric’s fight with Kei at the end went pretty much as expected. I figured that Sundric would likely die from the engines firing and he did. I guess I didn’t expect Kei to be rescued by Bobbit, whom she had a crush on. I figured it would be Yuri, but considering how much they made Bobbit stand out, I understand why they did what they did.

In the end though, this episode doesn’t work for me as a “who done it” mystery. There are too many plot holes which makes for a less enjoyable experience.