Aftermath

Summary

Some time later, Konoko is shown roaming the ruins of a city (pictured), with this narration:

Analysis

Below are a few representative frames of Oni's outro sequence, animated by AIC. The soundtrack appears on the promotional CD as "Farewell", not clearly credited to Salvatori or O'Donnell or whoever. Samples of this theme are played in CHAPTER 08 . AN INNOCENT LIFE during the talk with Shinatama and in CHAPTER 11 . DREAM DIVER while Mai reads Hasegawa's diary. After the sequence, the credits start rolling to the sounds of Power of Seven's Trailer, blending into another version of "Farewell".

There are details on every image's page, but they are not interlinked yet. Since the BINK video was lossy, it may be a good idea to re-extract these as JPG. The top and bottom mattes were cut completely, while some of the side mattes was preserved. The size is now 504x288, so recommended thumb sizes are 252, 168, 126, 84, etc.

Added value

There is already a fair amount written here about the questionable wisdom of Mai's rash actions in 'blowing the processors'. Was the "horrible cost" of so many dying avoidable? She could have tried to defeat Muro first and then taken the time to carefully reverse his scheme before it was implemented, but hw could she know she would survive a fight with Muro? Perhaps the only course she could take (acting alone, after all, with no one to sound her ideas against) was to take immediate action while she was there and could still do something, rather than retreat and come back later. With the TCTF as her enemy, she would not be able to assemble any support for a raid, and thus may have figured that this might be her only chance.

In the epilogue, Mai notes two large changes in society that are taking place: dealing with the situation of the poisoned planet openly, and, most intriguingly, the Chrysalis 'changing us all'. Apparently it may be necessary for everyone to have a Chrysalis to adapt to the pollution, with the ACCs unable to keep up the holding action against the pollution. How can this be done? Is there time and money for every man, woman and child to get their own Chrysalis? Can they be cloned generically from a host like Mai? Will the privileged and wealthy get them first? What sort of upheavals might this bring about? Will everyone be subject to Daodan spikes, and even Imago transformations? Where will this lead civilization? Those are the sorts of unsettling issues that Oni leaves us to ponder, with no easy answers.