"Firo and the Three Gandor Brothers Are Felled by Assassins' Bullets" is the twelfth episode of the 2007 Baccano! anime.
Funimation Blurb[]
- First Version
Here’s what’s what: An explosion shakes the train. So much torture for one boy. He believes the world revolves around him. A big car can take more body damage. If she is to die, he’ll be the one to kill her. When they reach out to save him, he mistakes them for devils. The one who made her would prefer that she would not make friends. He gets shot in the knees. He didn’t expect a flame thrower. He gets shot in the head. The grenade is hidden in the last place he’d look. They run over them with the car that ran over them. They fall off the train. He attempts to save her so he can kill her. He wants to torture him forever. Hostages are hard to hang on to amid chaos.
Recap Scenes[]
Firo Prochainezo interrogating Ennis, Szilard Quates breaking Maiza Avaro's arm, Isaac & Miria fretting at the party, Szilard gunning down the Martillos in Alveare (E11); Claire Stanfield killing Czeslaw Meyer and later tormenting him to Rachel's horror (E11); Ladd Russo confronting Claire, and Claire announcing that the world is his in a voiceover (E11).
Synopsis[]
1932, Chinatown. Rachel, who has been recounting her experience aboard the Flying Pussyfoot to the President of the Daily Days and Nicholas Wayne, prepares to explain how she received her leg injury at the President's request.
In 1931, the sole Lemur guarding Natalie Beriam and Mary Beriam in a first class compartment investigates a rapping sound at the window. Rachel shatters the glass with her boots once he draws near and kicks him in the face, rending him down for the count. Once inside, she tells Natalie and Mary to come with her.
The President criticizes Rachel's action as 'unwarranted', considering her position as an information gatherer. Rachel explains that she had originally intended to hide and wait for the chaos to die down, but found that she could not remain passive as the Lemures, White Suits, and the Rail Tracer continued to commit atrocities.
Back on the Flying Pussyfoot, Rachel assists Mary and Natalie onto the roof of the first class car and instructs them to run, not walk, over the rooftops until they make it safely past the dining car to Second Class. Returning to the first class cars, she peeks through one of the windows and finds Goose Perkins and two other Lemures holding Nice Holystone and Nick hostage. A Lemur enters the room and whispers to Goose that the Beriams have escaped, prompting all four Lemures to go investigate.
Rachel rescuing Nice and Nick.
As soon as the Lemures are gone, Rachel opens the window and hurries over to untie the ropes binding Nice and Nick's wrists behind their backs. Spike bursts open the door, and Rachel slams her shoulder against it long enough for Nice and Nick to escape; she then flees to the roof via the window, but suffers a bullet wound in her left shin or ankle in the process.
The President asks Rachel what drove her to risk her own life, but Rachel is not sure of the answer herself—all she knows is that she did not want to see any more bloodshed, especially not on the railroads that she loves so much. Nicholas snidely points out that her love for trains directly conflicts with her history of stowing away aboard trains, but shamefacedly coughs at her frosty glare. Not for the first time, the President reprimands Nicholas.
Just then, Sugarcube enters the room holding a tea tray. He sets a full cup and saucer down for Rachel, along with a box of sugarcubes. Rachel informs the President that she has only one more thing to report, and looks down at a rope burn on her left palm.
Title card.
Back in 1931, Spike turns away from the open window and points his rifle at the door through which Nice and Nick had earlier escaped, ordering them to come out with a menacing grin. At a fizzing sound, he looks behind him and has just enough time to recognize a lit bomb on the floor before it explodes.
The sound of the explosion reaches the dining car, and Jon Panel, addressing Fang Lin-Shan, identifies it as having come from first class. Jacuzzi Splot, certain that Nice is responsible, instructs Jon and Fang to keep a handle on the dining car, and Donny to go to the freight hold and search for the smuggled cargo. Donny asks if he means to go alone, and Jacuzzi, calm and determined, replies that he made a promise to Nice to come back. If Nice dies now, he will never be able to fulfill that promise. Jon wonders if Jacuzzi is not afraid, and Jacuzzi admits that he is terrified—but despite his terror and the possibility of his own death, his mind is made up.
The Gandors hold Dallas and his two goons at gunpoint.
1930. Dallas Genoard, flanked by his two fellow incomplete immortals, holds Firo Prochainezo and Ennis at gunpoint and announces that he has severed ties with Szilard Quates. Now that he and his friends have immortal bodies (and have lost Szilard's crate) they plan to do whatever they want, which in this case means finding and taking revenge on all the people who have done them wrong. He asks Firo if he has any last words—only to freeze when Luck Gandor aims his silenced gun at the back of Dallas' head and asks him how he and his friends obtained their "very familiar" guns.
Dallas' friends are in similar straits: on his left, Berga Gandor has one arm around a thug's neck and a gun pressed against his temple; on his right, Keith Gandor has pushed aside James' gun and pressed his own against James' throat. Dallas nervously claims that he and his friends saw Firo sneaking around with the three guns earlier and, suspicious, followed. From their hiding place, they watched Firo and his allies enter a Gandor hideout and subsequently heard gunfire.
Luck reveals that Firo is his childhood friend, and that the Gandor Family and Martillo Family are on friendly terms. He furthermore declares that the Gandors have eyewitness accounts of Dallas' group leaving the Coraggioso shortly after reports of gunfire. Without further ado, the Gandor brothers shoot the three men dead and avenge their subordinates' deaths.
Firo thanks the Gandors for saving him, and, after Luck tells him the downstairs meeting room is safe, says that he will explain the situation only after he rescues Maiza Avaro. Berga wonders what they should do with the three corpses, idly suggesting that they might be able to get away with claiming self-defense—but Ennis blurts out that the men are immortal and urges Berga to tie them up posthaste.
Berga is beyond baffled by this, and then thunderstruck at the sight of Dallas' blood retreating into his body. As the last of the blood vanishes, Dallas turns his head to glare up at Berga with a devilish grin cracking across his face.
Inside Alveare, Maiza winces on the floor from the pain of his broken arm regenerating. Szilard, pitiless, looms over him and demands to know to whom Maiza gave the Cure-All Elixir. At Maiza's silence, he reaches out his right hand—and pauses at a nearby smattering of machine gun fire from the outside. Maiza leaps to his feet and crashes through the closest window to the alleyway; Szilard takes chase.
Maiza lurches to his feet on the cobblestones and starts toward the back alley behind Alveare—an alley from where Ennis is simultaneously running toward him. Szilard crashes through a second window seconds later, and is immediately hit by a car.
1931. Claire Stanfield imparts his solipsistic views unto Ladd Russo and Chané Laforet on the roof of the Flying Pussyfoot's caboose. From his perspective as the center and creator of the world, he cannot be sure whether Ladd and Chané actually exist or whether they are part of a dream he is having. It is impossible for Claire to imagine himself dying, or what the world would be like without him. Thus, though it is impossible for the world to disappear entirely, everyone else will vanish once he dies—leaving him the only one left in the world.
Fermet.
Underneath one of the freight hold-fitted cars, Czeslaw Meyer rests where Claire had left him: tied to the metalwork, sans his right arm and everything below his waist. Czes hazily wonders if this is his punishment for devouring his abusive guardian Fermet, whom he had devoured after Fermet thrust a red hot poker into his eye. After rifling through Fermet's memories, Czes realized that Fermet cared only for and delighted in his pain. Remembering that disillusionment, Czes reaffirms his vow to never trust anyone again.
In the car above, Miria Harvent opens the freight doors and spies Czes' left arm dangling over the side of the metalwork. She urgently calls Isaac Dian's name, and he is equally horrified by Czes' plight.
Czes, still intending to devour the other immortal first, is on the cusp of unconsciousness when splashes of blood on his cheek rouse him. He opens his eyes to find Isaac, his face shuttered with worry, clinging to the side of the train; Isaac's worried expression morphs into relief at Czes' movement, and he calls out to Miria that Czes is still alive. In contrast, Czes remains listless—right up until the blood on his cheek zips back into a long cut on Isaac's wrist, which seals moments later.
Miria supports Isaac's and Czes' weight as her grip slips on the edge of the freight hold door.
In an instant, all of Czes' lethargy is replaced with acute, panic-sharp fear at the revelation that Isaac is the Immortal. Unaware of Czes' terror, Isaac hurriedly loosens the rope around Czes' torso and reaches out to Czes with his right hand—which Czes slaps away. The action causes them both to slip from the train; Isaac immediately curls his right arm around Czes' torso, and manages to grab Miria's outstretched hand with his free one. Miria catches hold of the edge of the car's door as she falls but, due to the strong winds and the limits of her own strength, is not able to hold on for long.
Airborne, Miria and Isaac embrace, with Czeslaw between them, in order to shield his body with theirs.
On the roof of the caboose, Ladd claims that he is surprised someone as "goddamned arrogant" as Claire can keep a straight face—but Claire shoots back that vengeance is another factor in play. Vengeance for Tony, his conductor mentor whom the White Suits killed. Ladd realizes that Claire must have killed Dune, and, himself out for revenge, instantly attacks Claire with several boxer's punches in a row.
Claire dodges every punch before maneuvering into a handstand on Ladd's shoulders with aggravating ease. As he moves out of the handstand, he taunts, "All I have to do is think something..."—Ladd turns, infuriated, only for a bullet to blow away part of his already nicked ear; he looks up to see Claire holding the Lemur conductor's smoking pistol, and Claire finishes—"...And it becomes true!"
Grinning, Claire says that there would be no sport in killing Ladd with the gun when he could just as easily kill him with his bare hands, and that he deliberately shot Ladd's ear in order in order to humiliate him. He wants Ladd to die a broken man, as atonement for Tony's death—or more precisely, Claire's world that has lost Tony. Ladd's bestial snarl sloughs into a sly sneer, and he mockingly asks how "the almighty ruler of this world" plans on killing him. Whatever the plan is, Ladd will do everything he can to show Claire that the world does not work to his whims; he will kill Claire, and dance upon his body in celebration of him no longer existing in Ladd's world.
Lua clings to the side of the train.
Claire asks Ladd to answer one question before he kills him, which is whether or not the woman in the White Dress— Lua Klein—is special in some way. Ladd snaps that Lua's sole reason for living is to die at his hands alone, and that Claire under no circumstances is allowed to kill her in his stead. Satisfied, Claire replies that thanks to Ladd giving him the 'full picture', he knows exactly what Ladd will do next. As Ladd hesitates, apprehensive, Claire declares that Ladd will voluntarily throw himself off the train. He steps aside, revealing Lua clinging to the opposite edge of the roof. Ladd calls out to her, alarmed, while Claire eyes her with sinister intent.
Over in first class, a smoke bomb fills a car's corridor with smoke. Several Lemures fire blindly into the smokescreen, only to turn and flee at the sight of a bomb soaring through the smoke their way. It goes off seconds later. On the other side of the smokescreen, Nice lights a third bomb and tosses it through the open doorway of the room she and Nick are sheltering in, shivering with bliss at the ensuing explosion. Across from her, Nick removes his hands from his ears and says that they have to go reconnect with Jacuzzi the sooner the better.
Nice throws one last bomb behind her with bittersweet glee and follows him to the sole intact window in the room. Nick pushes the window open and is immediately knocked backward into Nice and onto the floor by Goose Perkins' shoes, in the mode of Rachel. Goose levels his pistol at them and coldly comments that, given how many explosives Nice has been hiding under her clothes, he should never have dealt with her as a gentleman.
Goose survives Jacuzzi's gunfire.
Jacuzzi bursts through the door, ducks behind a wall when Goose shoots, and retaliates with machine gun fire. He then follows Goose into the bathroom, fires multiple shots into the full bathtub, and retreats with a slam of the door. Behind the bathtub, Goose asks himself if this is a trial ordained by "Master Huey"—for if it is, he cannot afford to run away or die. He stands, determined to battle through every 'trial' henceforth.
The sound of machine gun fire is echoed in 1930 as Dallas Genoard and his friends finish carrying out their murder-revenge spree to the tune of five corpses: those of the Gandor brothers; Firo; and Ennis, whose blood is already trickling back into their bodies. The three men decide to make tracks before she regenerates and head into the side alleyway, running a good distance before skidding to a halt at the sight of an automobile haphazardly juddering toward them.
Szilard's car rattles down the alleyway, with Isaac at the helm.
The vehicle is none other than Szilard Quates' automobile, and at its helm is none other than Isaac. In the passenger's seat, Miria exclaims over their good fortune in finding such a large car parked on the street. Isaac agrees enthusiastically: while they have never stolen such a large car before, it will surely be perfect for stopping a machine gun. Spotting Dallas' group in the headlights, Miria brightly encourages Isaac to run them over. The men try to run but are no match for the automobile's speed, and upon impact tumble over the hood of the car and onto the ground.
Isaac cranes his head to look back at them through the rear window; Miria's shriek for him to watch the road comes too late, and Szilard Quates' body slams into the windshield with such force that the glass breaks. Isaac panics and reverses the car right over Dallas and his two companions.
1931. Ladd frantically shouts at Lua to climb down to safety, visibly and audibly upset that she endangered herself against his orders. She ignores his distress in her distress, pleading for him to retreat rather than fight Claire.
Ladd turns back to Chané and Claire just in time to see Claire leap over the side of the car, and he surges forward in an effort to reach Lua first; Chané, meanwhile, remains a silent observer on standby. Claire reaches Lua first; he snatches her from under Ladd's nose, lands on the rooftop, and, with his right arm around her neck, announces that Ladd will now throw himself off the train.
As the Flying Pussyfoot passes a post with a dangling metal hook, Claire lassos the hook with a coil of rope and ties the rope's other end around Lua's neck like a noose. Lua bows her head, placid even as the rope rapidly loses slack, and Claire backs away while slyly wondering what choice Ladd will make; if he recalls correctly, Ladd had said he is the only one allowed to kill Lua.
The rope becomes taut; Ladd scoops up Lua with his right arm and grabs the rope with his left hand, holding fast despite the burning friction—holding fast even when that friction cleaves his fingers. His attention is instead with the sight of the noose coming loose around Lua's neck; looking back to see Claire giving him a knowing grin, he realizes he has played right into the monster's hands.
With a star-filled night sky above them, Ladd looks down at Lua in a rare moment of tenderness and wishes that he could kill her "right now and forever." Lua's eyes shine at the sentiment; emboldened, Ladd glares at the rapidly approaching water tower and, with a roar, draws back his ravaged hand for one final punch. There is a sickening crunch as flesh meets metal.
Elsewhere on the train, Jacuzzi shoots off the lock and handle of a door leading to the outside. He orders Nice and Nick to go meet up with Donny in the freight hold, otherwise hoping that Jon and Fang will be able to maintain control of the dining car on their own. In the meantime, Jacuzzi intends to use himself as bait and draw their foes in. Nice asks him to wait, and he watches unflinchingly as she retrieves her sole remaining cherry bomb from her eye socket. She warns him that the bomb is not very strong, but he nonetheless thanks her and promises to "let it blow with love." Nice raises her eyebrows and teasingly chastises him for the 'naughty' comparison, but their moment sobers at the sound of distant gunfire.
Goose reaches the open door seconds later, leans outside to spot Jacuzzi on the roof of the next car, and fires a few bullets his way without purchase. Ducking back inside, he orders his men to travel through the cars and head Jacuzzi off while chases Jacuzzi via the rooftops; two of them obediently hurry into the next car, but Goose then instructs the third to bring him 'it'.
Jacuzzi baits Goose.
After coming to a halt, Jacuzzi readies his machine gun and hollers for Goose to come up and fight him. Goose, hoisting himself onto the roof despite the canisters newly on his back, concedes that Jacuzzi has "guts" and that it is "too bad" Jacuzzi is not on his side—and unleashes a torrent of fire in Jacuzzi's direction with his flamethrower.
Meanwhile, Isaac attempts to lasso something, anything, on the train with his coil of rope. He misses and swears in frustration, only for Rachel to grab the rope with her left hand from where she has braced herself under the train. She is able to support their weight for an impressive several seconds, but her injured leg cannot support her, and the pain causes her to relinquish the rope.
Claire dives off the overhead roof in an acrobatic stunt that stuns Isaac and Rachel—the sole people who witness it—rebounds off a water tower, and safely lands on the caboose's roof with the rope in hand.
Jon and Fang lead the passengers in an uprising against the Lemures.
On the other end of the train, Jacuzzi dodges Goose's fire and answers with gunfire until his machine gun runs out of ammo. Tossing it aside, he flees toward Second Class while Goose, vexed, wonders where his men are.
Inside the dining car, three Lemures struggle futilely to open the door leading to second class: a door that has been jammed on the other side courtesy of a gun tied to the exterior doorknob. At a chorus of guns cocking, the Lemures turn to find every single male passenger armed and holding them at gunpoint. Also armed are Fang and Jon, the latter of whom praises the Lemures' kindness in leaving their weapons cache unguarded in a freight hold. Fang cheerfully adds that one just cannot afford to turn one's back on one's hostages for even for a second. The three Lemures surrender.
Goose pursues Jacuzzi over the rooftops by keeping up his fiery offense, cackling with the confidence only a flamethrower can grant its user. Jacuzzi laments to himself that he has nothing to light the cherry bomb with; then, he stops to turn and confront Goose head-on. Once Goose joins him on the rooftop, Jacuzzi gives him a brazen glare.
Claire jerks open the doors of the freight hold whose cargo Donny is rifling thorough. Startled, Donny guesses that Claire must be the Rail Tracer on account of all the blood, but Claire is in no mood or position to grace Donny with an answer. Instead, he holds out the rope and instructs Donny to pull on it as hard as he can, because—except for 'the kid'—there are some "fine passengers" on the rope's other end.
Donny and the Rail Tracer.
Donny peers out of the door and gapes at the sight of Isaac, Miria, and Czes on the other end of the rope. Alarmed, he uses all his strength to yank on the rope and 'reel them in'—which sends the screaming trio soaring over the heads of a mutually flabbergasted Goose and Jacuzzi. Jacuzzi calls out his friends' names in shock as they abruptly drop over the other side of the train; although Jacuzzi neatly jumps over the rope, Goose is not so nimble—the rope sweeps his feet out from under him and he falls, the canisters on his back slamming onto the roof.
1930. Ennis, alive and whole, wakes to the sight of Firo and the Gandor brothers sprawled dead on the ground. Either not noticing or not processing the absence of blood around the four corpses, she hurtles around the corner into the alleyway down which Maiza is running. She stops at the sight of Szilard's automobile swerving behind Maiza, and Maiza halts in turn at the sound of glass shattering behind him. He turns to see Szilard's body draped over the hood of the vehicle. Isaac reverses, inadvertently pinning Dallas and company under the automobile's tires. Szilard punches through the fractured windshield and drags Isaac's head through the hole, whereupon Isaac is astonished to see Ennis yon. Miria cries out for Ennis to save Isaac, leading Szilard to demand Ennis explain herself.
Maiza crumples to the ground.
Ennis quails under Szilard's wrath; deciding to save the subject for later, Szilard hops off the car, offers Ennis a knife, and orders her to guard the couple and kill them if they resist. She accepts the knife without hesitation. Meanwhile, Szilard advances on Maiza—who, with Isaac and Miria at risk, can do nothing lest he endanger them further. Knowing this, Szilard takes out his handgun and shoots a bullet through each of his knees.
Maiza cries out and crumples to the ground with pain. Szilard scoffs at Maiza valuing Isaac and Miria's lives over his own, scornfully disparaging Maiza as unworthy of the power he currently possesses. Behind him, Ennis lands on the hood of the car; Isaac and Miria yelp, but imploringly say she must be joking despite the knife they are threatened with. They cannot fathom her sincerely hurting them.
Szilard dismissively states that Ennis is a homunculus of his own creation, garbage incapable of feeling or acting on its own—but as of this moment, Maiza is worth even less than such an insect.
Preview[]
Miria and Isaac exclaim that immortals and non-immortals, mysterious people and non-mysterious people, and those who are equal and those who are not, all sing.
Differences Between the Anime & Novels[]
1930[]
Click "Expand" for differences regarding the 1930 timeline.
See Episode 10 and Episode 11 for notes on the anime and the novels' distinctly different setups for this episode's events.
The Gandors' knowledge of the massacre at Coraggioso is slightly less plausible in the anime given that the massacre happened hours before the party, and the viewer is left to assume that the Gandors must have learned of the massacre before arriving at Alveare. Since the events of Nov 1930 take place over two days and one night in the novel, the Gandors learn of the massacre after the party upon returning to Coraggioso. When the police leave the next day, the Gandors decide to head to Alveare to speak with the Martillos.
When Dallas turns at the sound of Luck's voice in the novel, Luck presses his gun into Dallas' forehead, between his eyes. Luck here is far more composed than his novel counterpart over the deaths of Mike and his other subordinates. In the novel, his fury is visible, audible, and potent when he loses control and shoots, fury for which he apologizes after the fact. His brothers offer assurances in response.
When the man Berga kills regenerates and guns him down in the novel, both Luck and Keith shout Berga's name. Ennis has just enough time to wonder how the men regenerated so quickly before she and the others are gunned down.
Szilard and Maiza's brief discussion on homunculi inside Alveare is cut from the anime, as is Szilard's question over whether or not Maiza had the 'demon' manipulate his dead friend's souls. When Szilard is distracted by the gunfire, Maiza actually grabs his ankles and flips him to the floor before making his escape in The Rolling Bootlegs. Maiza is also the first to be in immediate danger from the automobile, not Szilard; he is able to dodge just in time before they hit Szilard.
Ennis' quiet words of distress over seeing Firo's and the Gandors' corpses are cut from the anime. When she rounds the corner in the novel, she finds Szilard holding a knife to Isaac's throat while Maiza glares at him—a sequence of events that plays out differently in the anime. It is then that Isaac and Miria spot her and cry out her name, and Szilard, in consternation, hands her the knife and others her to guard them while he devours Maiza. Ennis restrains Isaac like Szilard had done, knife to throat.
1931[]
Click "Expand" for differences regarding the 1931 timeline.
While Rachel does report to the President in the novels, Nicholas is not present and most of the meeting itself is not explicitly depicted.
Rachel is not quite as altruistic in the novels as she is in the anime. In reality, she fiercely tells herself to not save Natalie and Mary upon spotting them; her body simply moves of its own volition. She also deals with the Sham Lemur differently: she kicks the window to catch his attention and, once he opens the window, drops down and causes him to lose his balance. Her kick to his stomach causes him to fall out of the window and down a hill, and she prays she did not kill him.
Her clothes are also meant to be coated in black soot by the time she rescues Natalie and Mary, but the anime does not reflect that detail. She uses a rope, not cloth, to lift the Beriams, and runs with them instead of seeing them off; she runs with them to the other end of the car, jumps with them onto the next roof, and it is only after a gunshot that she tells them to continue on until they have passed the dining car. Natalie realizes that Rachel has been shot in the thigh (not the ankle, an injury that Rachel receives later in the episode), but leaves with Mary at Rachel's urging.
Spike then emerges to request Rachel move so he can shoot Mary. After some banter with Goose, who orders a Lemur to drag Rachel down, Goose orders him to shoot Chané at the first solid opportunity. Rachel's arms and legs are bound, and she joins Nick and Nice in captivity. Goose, believing Rachel not only killed the conductors but is in fact the legendary assassin Vino, demands to know why the 'Rail Tracer' would do something so unprofitable as to ruin his and the White Suits' plans. Nice and Nick startle at the name, but Rachel merely cackles and says that she is not the red monster—who at this rate will probably eat all of them just like he ate "that boy."
In the anime, Goose and the five or six Lemures leave after their comrade reports that the Beriams have escaped. In the novels, the Lemur reports instead that their men in the dining car have vanished (Claire's doing). Once alone, Rachel uses her specially serrated fingernail to cut through the ropes binding her, Nice, and Nick, and afterwards somberly informs them that the boy the Rail Tracer butchered was the boy in the dining car.
Spike does not burst into the room in pursuit of the escapes hostages in the novel, so he neither shoots Rachel nor acquaints himself with Nice's bomb. Goose moreover orders his men to abandon the mission and kill all the passengers before he leaves to deal with Nice and Nick. After Jacuzzi leaves to go help Nice, Fang notices that he did not mention Nick and wonders if he is not worried about him. Jon comments that Nick is "kind of forgettable."
The anime cuts out the events leading up to Isaac and Miria discovering Czes. After investigating the conductors' compartment, they walk past the freight hold where Jacuzzi and Donny are interrogating Upham, the second freight hold where Ladd and Czeslaw are negotiating, and continue onward to third class. There, they untie all the third-class passengers and warn them of gun battles and monsters.
A child's nearby screams cut off with the sound of breaking glass, and Miria uneasily wonders if the sound was Mary and Czes. Upon finding an open compartment, they enter to see two Lemures peering through a window. Assuming the two men were bullying the screaming child, Isaac and Miria pelt them with lime-pepper bombs until the men drop their Thompson machine guns—which Isaac and Miria claim and aim at them. They make the two men surrender after challenging them to a duel. Once Isaac and Miria shut the men in a nearby compartment, they return to look out the window and are struck dumb at the sight of Czes, tied to the space between the wheels.
At the same time Isaac and Miria are walking through third class, a confrontation is playing out between Turner and Rachel—a confrontation that Claire interrupts. The confrontation and subsequent conversation between Claire and Rachel are cut from the anime, meaning the anime does not show Claire giving Rachel a train ticket—i.e. the reason why she is not arrested by police later. The anime therefore also leaves out how Claire knows about Isaac and Miria's plight; he excuses himself from the conversation to re-enter the compartment in which he had left Czes, only to find Miria leaning out of the window. Although Isaac is right side up in the anime, in the novels he is hanging nearly upside down from the window; Miria is holding on to his legs. His hand is scratched, not his wrist, and he exits the window entirely to crawl along the underlying ironwork.
When Isaac throws his lasso and misses, he and Miria do slam into the ground—protecting Czes from the brunt of the impact with their bodies—before Rachel seizes the rope. Even then, they are dragged against the gravel; in the anime, they do not touch the ground. The novels also make it clear the rope is attached to Isaac's belt. Claire does not enter the freight hold when he spots Donny, he merely clings to the outside ornamentation instead. Unlike his anime counterpart, he is visibly surprised when Donny identifies him as the Rail Tracer.
Although Ladd does not seem to realize Claire likely killed Dune until Claire invokes Tony in the anime, he suspects Claire of the deed at first sight in the novels. He points out Claire's logic is contradictory—if everyone is a figment of Claire's imagination, then why should he care about Tony?—but Claire says that there is nothing wrong with feeling friendship or obligation towards figments of one's imagination.
Just as the novels depict Isaac and Miria's actions leading up to their discovery of Czes, the novels depict the events that directly cause Lua to climb onto the roof. When she and Who return to the second class compartment as instructed by Ladd, they find Doctor Fred treating the injuries of Jacuzzi's friend Jack—two characters the anime leaves out. Having been given permission by Ladd several hours prior to use Room Three, Fred found himself an unexpected patient in Jack when Jacuzzi and Donny dropped their friend off. Fred ropes Who into assisting him as an impromptu nurse; meanwhile, as Lua gazes out the window, she discovers Claire spying on them. Claire finds her lack of visible reaction 'weird'; however, she inwardly recognizes him to be some sort of monster—one she instinctively knows might be capable of killing Ladd.
After Fred—who like Lua wishes to die—notes that there is now life in Lua's eyes, Lua sets out to find Ladd and warn him away from the monster.
Goose holds two guns when he kicks Nick back into the room, not one, and he aims one at Nick and the other at Nice. Nice reluctantly surrenders her twelve hidden dynamite sticks at his instruction, and Goose remarks it was a good thing he did not shoot her before decking her with the butt of one gun. Enraged, Nick withdraws his knife; Goose shoots him in the arm. Jacuzzi bursts in right before Goose can shoot Nick in the head, and is grazed multiple times by shots fired from Goose's two pistols. Instead of ducking into the bathroom, Goose rolls behind the bed to escape the machine gun fire.
Claire procures his large rope from his jacket in front of Ladd's eyes, while Ladd is chastising Lua; earlier scenes in the novels explain how Claire acquired this rope alongside a smaller coil. It is then that Claire reminds Ladd of his prediction, calmly unraveling the rope while Ladd charges at him rather than Lua; right as Ladd's punch is about to connect, Claire grins and tosses one loop around Lua's neck and the other around the hook.
Whereas there is enough time in the anime for Claire to present Ladd with a choice of what to do, Ladd has a only a split second in the novels to act. He grabs the rope and Lua in the instant before they are swept off the train. In the novels, Ladd takes specific note of when his ring finger is severed (comparing the rope twisting around it to an engagement ring), the only finger he loses while airborne; he genuinely yells when the noose appears to tighten around Lua's neck in a stranglehold, though it then falls away.
Lua actively struggles to maneuver herself under Ladd's body while they are airborne in an attempt to protect him from the inevitable impact in the novels, but she is already underneath him in the anime. Ladd silently rejects the life in her eyes, and then punches the incoming pole (a water tower in the anime).
Goose is given the flamethrower after he emerges from the first class bedroom in the novels. Jacuzzi does not goad him into climbing upward, preferring to wait silently, and Goose does not call out to him on the ladder. Instead, Jacuzzi spots just the nozzle poking out over the roof, and falls to the ground at the unexpected jet of flames it produces. Then Goose clambers after him.
When the dining car passengers hold the Lemures at gunpoint, Jon coldly informs them that all he and Fang taught the passengers was how to pull a trigger. His throwaway line in the anime about the unguarded freight hold is meant to imply that they stole the Lemures' guns and ammunition. What the anime left out in the previous episode—and this one—was Jacuzzi asking the passengers for their help after he took control of the dining car. After the Lemures surrender, Jon ties them up with tablecloth.
Jacuzzi realizes that he does not have anything to light the cherry bomb with after he stops and faces Goose, not while he is fleeing. Miria is clinging to Isaac's legs when they soar over the car.
1932[]
Click "Expand" for differences regarding the 1932 timeline.
Rubik's appearance during the Daily Days meeting in the anime is meant to imply that he has been working for the Daily Days all along, not the Runorata Family. In the novels, he does not appear to have a connection to the events of January 1932, though he is said to have once worked for the Runoratas. Similarly, his connection to the Daily Days, while real, is also different: in the novels, he used to regularly sell information to the Daily Days rather than work for them. These changes are retroactive, as Narita only added Rubik/Sugarcube to the novels once acquainting himself with the character during the anime's production process.
Trivia[]
- Goof, approx timestamp 6:18: There are two shots that focus on Keith holding James at gunpoint, and the first shot contains an error: a duplicate James is partially visible in the far right border. The duplicate likely originates from the second shot, as it matches one of the frames depicting James collapsing backward.
- Only Jon and Fang's guns are loaded in the dining car rebellion scene.
- Jon and Fang are called Ian and Fan in the English dub.
- The mustached Lemur who surrenders with his comrades in the dining car is the same Lemur who ran from Ladd in the previous episode. This Lemur partially assumes Upham's role in the anime; while Upham is the Lemur who runs from Ladd in the novels, Upham is not one of the Lemures who surrenders in the dining car.
- The Lemur guarding Natalie and Mary is revealed to be a Sham vessel in 1934 Peter Pan in Chains: Finale.
- In the flashback, Fermet is wearing Y-back suspenders, which would not become popular until the 1850s. Suspenders themselves were first invented in 1820. Assuming the costume design is accurate, then Fermet must have been torturing Czes until the 1850s at minimum.
Unanswered Questions[]
- Where is Dallas in 1932, and what have the Gandors done to him?
- What will Ennis do now that Maiza is at Szilard's mercy?
- What role will Firo and the Gandors have in the alleyway showdown?
- Why does Rachel stow away on trains despite professing to love them?
- How will the confrontation between Jacuzzi and Goose play out?
- What happens to Isaac, Miria, and Czes in the meantime?
- What does Chané plan to do now that Ladd is no longer an immediate threat?