The following recap contains spoilers for Sunny S1E3, “Mmmm, Hinoki” (written by Nancy Won and directed by Lucy Tcherniak)
Sunny S1E3 picks up a couple of weeks after S1E2, but not much has happened. Since Sunny (Joanna Sotomura) informed Suzie (Rashida Jones) that the airline had sent someone by to confirm that Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima) was dead, Suzie has been wallowing alone in her room and refusing to take calls from her mother-in-law.
Noriko (Judy Ongg) wants to have a funeral for her son, and she becomes insistent enough that she pays Suzie a visit in person. Sunny won’t let Noriko see Suzie and relays that Suzie isn’t ready for a funeral, but Noriko is prepared to hold the service the following day whether Suzie attends or not. She gives Sunny a pearl necklace she wants Suzie to wear, along with a wrapped package. This turns out to be a framed drawing of the Dark Manual symbol.
Suzie does an image search, which confirms the link between Masa’s drawing and the Dark Manual and revitalizes her interest in figuring out just what her husband was up to. I almost said “late husband,” but this is where I remind you that we don’t actually know for sure that Masa is dead. It wasn’t the airline who visited Suzie at the end of S1E2, but a bot sent by whoever has been spying on Suzie.
Episode 3 introduces us to the woman who would seem to be the head of this dark group: Hime (You). In the cold open, Hime visits a vendor to get a replacement for her fake pinkie finger while thugs torture a guy in the backroom. I think, however, that this scene actually fits into the timeline of events after what we see later in the episode, so I’ll circle back around to it. Regardless, it gives us a sense of the kind of person Hime is, even if I’m not sure why the guy in the backroom was being tortured.
After she receives Masa’s drawing, Suzie goes to see Mixxy (Annie the Clumsy). Since they briefly talked about the Dark Manual before, Suzie is hoping that Mixxy can help her learn more about it. Mixxy agrees to help, even as she warns Suzie about looking into things too deeply. There are monsters at the bottom of the ocean, after all.
Nonetheless, the pair head off to see Takumi, who gave Mixxy the bit of code she used to modify her homebot to do sex stuff. He clearly has a huge crush on Mixxy, but he’s worried about getting in trouble. Further, he says he isn’t holding any illicit code at the moment. Mixxy is able to seduce a lead out of him, but it might not have been wise for Takumi to provide it. Later in the episode, he’s paid a visit by an intimidating man, so I’m a bit worried about our smitten friend.
Based on the clue Takumi provided them, Mixxy, Suzie, and Sunny head to a club called Wanted. Mixxy and Suzie are guided through hallways and up stairs to see Tendo, while Sunny is forced to wait because robots aren’t allowed. Meanwhile, Hime issues some cryptic orders about what Tendo and others are supposed to do. It’s a plan that comes to light as the episode proceeds.
Suzie is ushered to the robot fights that are already in progress, while Mixxy is not welcome to join her. Having seen BattleBots, I didn’t find these fights to be all that disturbing, but it’s clear that Suzie does. Perhaps that’s because the robots in her world aren’t supposed to be capable of violence, but more deeply, it’s because she realizes that Masa was involved in all of this.
The kicker, though, is when it becomes clear that Sunny has been tricked into entering the fray. Suzie won’t stand for this, so she intervenes before the fight can take place. Hime insists that Sunny must fight, but then she gets her fake pinkie knocked off. Suzie steps on it as she and Sunny leave to safety.
I believe the cold open of S1E3 fits in here, as Hime goes to get a replacement pinkie late at night, saying that she needs it for the funeral she is going to attend the following day. That turns out to be Masa’s funeral, and the episode ends with Suzie and Hime staring each other down in front of an altar to Suzie’s husband.
One question I have is how much Noriko knows about the Dark Manual, Hime, etc. As she invites people to the funeral, Noriko calls someone she has labeled as Do Not Answer but then gets cold feet and hangs up. Was that a call to Hime that she followed through on later, or is there another person she was too afraid to call?
On the other side of the same question, I wonder how involved Masa and Hime have been with one another. Last week, we saw Sunny beating a man to death before Masa shut Sunny down. We could potentially connect that to the world of underground robot fights, but I’m not sure I buy it as an explanation of what was going on in those flashbacks. Regardless, if Hime knew something about Sunny, maybe she wanted to see what this robot could do.
Maybe the biggest problem I’m having here is that, if I’m honest, I don’t really care about robots fighting one another. I don’t find it shocking. Homebots killing human beings is shocking, and I get that the robot fights are enabled by Dark Manual modifications to the bots involved, but besides BattleBots, the whole thing put me in mind of “The Ring” from the first season of Angel, only without affecting my emotions the way that episode did.
Perhaps Sunny wants me to anthropomorphize Sunny more than I’ve been willing to do to this point. As it stands, I’m not sure I like this robot, and I’m definitely not feeling like it has a moral status. Suzie tossing Sunny into the sea would have been fine! Sunny being destroyed by a robot with saw arms would have been bad for the plot of this series, but it’s not like I would have been sad about it.
Anyway, Sunny S1E3 pushes the story forward by bringing Hime into view, but it mostly leaves us with all of the questions I had after last week’s premiere. The real mysteries center on Masa, his involvement with the Dark Manual, and what he was trying to do with Sunny. Is he alive or dead? What about Suzie’s son, Zen? What interest does Hime have in all of this? I hope Suzie will just straight up ask her.
See you next week.