BEM Episode 8 Review: Noise

BEM continues to be a hot mess, but this episode was engaging compared to what we have seen so far. Annie (aka Bela) gets a doki doki situation, and this show took a sudden shoujo turn. It was badly written as always but kind of cute.

Plot

A new kid by the name of Albert Bush transferred to Annie’s school, the son of a famous opera singer and model named Julia Bush. He becomes instantly popular because of his good looks and athletic skills, and all the girls and boys seem to be onto him, but not Annie. One day, when she’s singing outside the school premises, Albert hears her and invites her over to his place to meet his mother. Meanwhile, there are some weird murder cases happening around town of young women in their 20s being killed and losing their vocal chords. As Annie seems to be developing a feeling for Albert, she tries to dress and be pretty in order to attend the party, which she does. There, she is introduced to Julia, who is stunned by her good looks and pretty voice and suggests for her to audition at the theatre she works. The next day when she goes to the audition, it turns out that Albert’s mother was the culprit behind the latest killings and tries to kill Annie and take her voice as well, but of course Annie fights back and unfortunately kills Julia.

Episode Highlights

Albert, the failure of sexiness: I couldn’t stop laughing at the beginning of the episode where they try to make Albert look sexy but fail so badly. He is hardly animated in most of the shots, making him honestly look like a heartless doll and his eyes are almost crossing in many occasions. Even the scene where he sweats and the girls scream was so ridiculous.

Well, that escalated quickly: When Albert speaks with Bela and invites her over to his place, the whole dialogue was so badly paced that it was painful to watch. It went a little something like:

Albert: ‘Hey, I was wandering around school and I heard you sing, you have a nice voice.’
Annie: ‘Thank you, singing is very human’
Albert: ‘Yes but birds sing too. My mom wants to become a bird. Oh I know, do you want to come over to my place for a party? I want to introduce you to my mom.’

IS THIS EVEN A CONVERSATION?

‘My heart races’: Belo’s line when he was making fun of Bela really entertained me. He is the only one that feels how ridiculous this show is.

Glass guy knows that the monster is Annie, right? So okay, the glass guy is a nerd and apparently a freak that is into monsters, but besides all that, is he stupid as well? Can he not put two pieces together and realize that Annie is that monster, since he is stalking her all the time? I can’t anymore.

Themes & Trivia

Blue note attack: This is an actual thing, and if you are interested about it, you should google it and read some rather interesting research papers on the subject. According to a research paper entitled ‘Blue Note: How Intentional Acoustic Interference Damages Availability and Integrity in Hard Disk Drives and Operating Systems’, you don’t need specialist equipment to cause errors on hard disk drives using either human audible or ultrasonic acoustic waves. With audible sound waves it’s possible to vibrate the read/write head and platters in the magnetic hard disk drives commonly found in desktop and laptop computers. Vibrations outside of operational bounds can lead to both hardware and software being damaged, causing file system corruption and reboots. The researchers even showed that it is possible for an attacker to use a device’s built-in speakers (or nearby speakers) to cause persistent errors.

Reverberation: In psychoacoustics and acoustics, it is the persistence of sound after the sound is produced. A reverberation, or reverb, is created when a sound or signal is reflected causing numerous reflections to build up and then decay as the sound is absorbed by the surfaces of objects in the space – which could include furniture, people, and air. This is most noticeable when the sound source stops but the reflections continue, decreasing in amplitude, until they reach zero.

Comments

Now it’s time to complain once more about the inconsistency of the animation in this show. In the scene where Bela is singing, she puts on her earphones, starts singing, and in the next few shots she has no earphones in her ears and then when Albert comes, she takes them off and holds them in her hands. I think this was probably a mistake and they forgot to add them in the scenes because otherwise she would have heard him coming from miles away. She is a monster with special abilities after all.

‘Mune wa doki doki’

I kind of liked this episode to be honest, because it was probably the first time where we see some character from Bela and Belo that doesn’t just have to do with how miserable their efforts and lives are. It seems like in the next episode, the Mad Scientist ultimate creation will come to the spotlight, so get ready for some badly animated action scenes and police work that doesn’t help or go anywhere whatsoever.