Caemeron Crain
The following recap contains spoilers for Sunny S1E6, “Kyoto Manjū, So Delicious” (written by Aja Gabel and directed by Lucy Tcherniak)
Sunny S1E6 begins with Noriko (Judy Ongg) shoplifting a magazine from a store. She then stands outside, waiting, before discarding the magazine and walking back in. She tells the distracted clerk he should keep an eye on her, loads up a basket of goods, and proceeds to walk right out the door with them without paying. Every indication is that Noriko wants to get caught.
Later in the episode, we learn that she was, in fact, arrested, as Suzie (Rashida Jones) receives a call about her mother-in-law being in jail. But when she visits Noriko, thinking to bail her out of jail, Noriko simply asks that Suzie bring her her shogi so that she can play the game with the other women there. The question is: What is Noriko up to?
On the one hand, it seems clear that she’s involved in some passive aggression. Noriko gives Suzie a hard time about not answering her calls, and we can think back to last week’s episode, where Noriko seemed lonely and in search of some human connection. She even called that number in her phone labeled Do Not Answer, but didn’t get through.
At the same time, though, Noriko might be in fear of the yakuza, since she did see Hime (You) at Masa’s (Hidetoshi Nishijima) funeral and saw the mess that had been made of Suzie’s home (even if she seemed to just think Suzie was being a slob). Noriko clearly knows more than she is letting on about the ties between Masa/his biological father and the yakuza, but she’s playing coy to Suzie. I don’t know why she’d want her shogi board unless she legitimately just wants to play in jail, but I suppose we’ll see where all of this is going as the plot of Sunny moves forward.
As for what happened to Sunny (Joanna Sotomura) at the end of Episode 5, “Kyoto Manjū, So Delicious” makes it clear that she was, indeed, taken by the yakuza. After Suzie and Mixxy (Annie the Clumsy) meet with a detective who says he doesn’t do homebots and encourages Suzie to check the lost and found, a bot on the street persistently says the line that serves as the title of S1E6 to Suzie. Finally, she acquiesces and takes the manjū, only to discover that it has a bit of robot hidden within it.
Suddenly, the robot turns malicious, informing Suzie that she’ll continue to receive Sunny piece by piece unless she does as she’s told, and instructing her to hurry to a vegetable stand. Mixxy questions the wisdom of doing this, and the value of a lost homebot, but this just makes Suzie suspicious of Mixxy (again). Sunny has memories of Masa, and that’s the important thing.
Regardless, Mixxy has been called to work because her fellow bartender has taken ill. Someone needs to be there for an important photo shoot/review. So, while Mixxy does seem willing to go along with Suzie to the vegetable stand, she doesn’t resist a lot when Suzie tells her to buzz off instead.
Unfortunately, as soon as Suzie reaches her destination, she’s kidnapped. Next thing she knows, she’s bound to chair in front of Masa’s computer, with Hime sitting beside her. Hime apparently hoped that Suzie’s face would unlock the computer, but it doesn’t. She thinks, however, that Suzie should be able to guess Masa’s password. When Suzie refuses to help, Hime threatens Mixxy’s life, so Suzie agrees to play along.
She has no idea what Masa’s password is, and is likely right that it’s a string of random numbers and symbols, but she guesses their son’s name and birthday then Masa’s biological father’s name. Neither works.
Confronted with a lockout screen and a last chance to override, it finally clicks into place for Suzie. She gives a middle finger to Hime, and then to the computer screen. It unlocks.
We’ve seen the flashback of Suzie saying goodbye to Masa at the airport many times over the course of Sunny to this point, and I have wondered how to interpret it. Masa gives the hand gestures I’m not sure how to describe (which Sunny mimicked in the premiere, leading Suzie to be more accepting of this homebot). Suzie’s response is double middle fingers.
Without other context, it seemed possible that Suzie was mad at Masa when he boarded his flight, even if there really wasn’t anything else to indicate that this was the case. Now, it seems clear that flicking him off was a regular, playful part of their relationship—regular enough that Masa made Suzie’s middle finger enough to unlock his computer. Of course that’s what she’d do as she struggled to get into it.
I doubt that Masa planned for the involvement of the yakuza in all of this, but I do wonder what he was hoping for. He sent Sunny to Suzie. He set up his computer in a way that would allow her access… Is this simply the man taking some measures to secure the legacy of his work, in the event that something should happen to him? Or should we still be thinking about the possibility that Masa faked his own death for unknown reasons, or something like that?
Either way, Hime probably has her hands on the complete Dark Manual at this point, though it would seem that her father has died before he could set her up as his heir for completing this mission. That means a power struggle within the yakuza is looming, but I don’t know that I feel very invested in that, in and of itself.
The more interesting questions have to do with the contents of the Dark Manual, what happened when Sunny killed a guy, etc. A lot of things have indicated that Sunny isn’t a normal homebot.
For the moment, though, Sunny is out of service. “Kyoto Manjū, So Delicious” ends with Sunny collapsing on Suzie’s floor. Apparently the bot was functional enough to move, but something is wrong.
It ends up being Mixxy who finds Sunny, following a note left on Suzie’s door while Suzie is visiting Noriko in jail. This leads Mixxy to a temple, which she approaches with trepidation. But, Sunny is there. Cut to Mixxy bringing Sunny home.
I raised some suspicions of Mixxy last week, but I do think that the events of S1E6 exonerate her. None of this would really make sense if she was in league with the yakuza, though it is a little disappointing that the series seems to have jumped over the question of how, exactly, Sunny was stolen from Suzie’s bed.
See you next week.
