| The Star of a Contract Fell... | |
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| 契約の星は流れた... Keiyaku no Hoshi wa Nagareta... | |
| Information | |
| Air date | April 5, 2007 |
| Air date (Part 2) | April 12, 2007 |
| Season | Darker than Black: The Black Contractor |
| Episodes | 01, 02 |
| Opening Theme | Howling |
| Closing Theme | Tsukiakari |
| Story Guide | |
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Next The New Star Twinkles in the Dawn Sky... |
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| Today's Quote |
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| Did you know that whenever a star shoots by, it signifies that one of their lives has ended? |
Synopsis[]
Part 1[]
The police attempt to arrest a man, but he escapes using gravitational power. He lands a short distance away, but while attempting to complete his payment, he is confronted by a mysterious masked man who easily defeats him and demands to know the location of the package. After the defeated man reveals that a girl named Chiaki knows the location of the package, the masked man, Hei, kills the other man. Still in pursuit, the police chief, Misaki Kirihara, is informed of the man's death and discovers his identity as a DGSE agent. She later discusses the man's death with her investigative police squad. Investigating a lead, Yuusuke Saitou and Yutaka Kouno, members of the investigative squad, hang out in a hostess bar and end up pursuing a girl they believe to be Shinado Chiaki. Li meets up with her and saves her from the police. When Chiaki meets up with her supposed allies, she is kidnapped, forcing Li to save her again. However, another contractor punches Li over the railing of a bridge and knocks Chiaki out, capturing her. She escapes from her kidnappers and meets up with Li again, collapsing into his arms.
Part 2[]
Hei brings Chiaki back to her apartment and she tells him about contractors. When they return to her room, they find her room ransacked by the men who have been chasing her. Chiaki asks to stay in Hei's room and they spend the night together. They later go out to eat in a diner, but they are interrupted when Chiaki's pursuers appear and attack them. They escape, but Hei is injured as they run. Chiaki reveals her story to Hei and entrusts him with the package that everybody is seeking. The following morning, while on the run from their pursuers, Hei causes Chiaki to collapse and escapes in the ensuing chaos. Hei reveals that he is a contractor and is shot while protecting Chiaki, who is revealed to be a doll. However, he still manages to defeat the other contractors, though Chiaki sacrifices her life to save him in the process.
Details[]
Beneath the dark skies of Tokyo, a man named Louis is running away from the police, but they finally corner him on a rooftop. Unfortunately for them, Luise is a Contractor, and he uses his abilities to toss one of the officers away before flying off. He lands on a different building far away, and starts to break his fingers one by one. A voice wonders if this is the cost of his contract, but Louis turns only to see the fleeting sight of what appeared to be a cat. He then comes face to face with a masked man dressed in all black. When Luise attempts to throw his new opponent into the air, the masked man uses cables to grab onto the railing and also onto Louis himself. This starts choking Louis, and he’s soon forced to the ground. The masked man wants to know about a stolen something, but Louis only knows that a woman has it. The masked man - named Hei –contacts a girl named Yin to ask about the police, and she tells him how close they are. Hei then grabs Louis’ head and kills him despite his other partner’s objection.
Around that same time, an investigator named Kirihara Misaki sees a star streaking across the sky. She thinks to herself that it’s been 10 years since that appeared and the large wall was created. They don’t know what happened then and what’s inside what’s called the Hell's Gate. The Contractors and Dolls (described as passive psychic mediums) appeared soon after. The next day, at police headquarters, the investigators go over the case after having found Louis’ body the previous night. It seems that highly classified information was illegally accessed from the National Laboratory, and the police’s new target is a woman named Shinoda Chiaki who had worked at the laboratory and is now missing. After the meeting, Kirihara unknowingly drives by a Chinese student named Li Sheng Shun who is searching for his new apartment building. Li finds the place, but the landlady mistakes him for the repairman and has him fix her TV. He accomplishes this after hitting the TV a few times and a surge of electricity somehow fixes it.
The landlady eventually shows him up to his room, though the two first run into his new neighbor, a woman named Haraguchi. She, however, doesn’t say anything to him and just leaves. It seems that Haraguchi works at a nightclub, and on this evening, two of the investigators are visiting as part of their search for Shinoda Chiaki. One of them notices that Haraguchi resembles the photograph of Chiaki, and when she tries to leave, the policemen begin their pursuit. Chiaki runs to a nearby park and finds Li there observing the starry night with his telescope. After he sees her and realizes that she’s being chased, he pushes her against the tree and kisses her so that the policemen only see what appears to be a couple kissing. Once the police are gone, Li panics and apologizes for what he did. She notices that he was looking at what she calls the fake stars and then realizes that he looks familiar. This causes Li to recognize that she’s Haraguchi and reintroduces himself, though she responds by thanking him and running off.
With the police still looking for her, Chiaki hides herself in an alley, but she gets approached from behind by a man named Jean. When Chiaki asks Jean about Louis, he claims that Louis is tied up at the moment. Jean is more concerned about that, but Chiaki remembers that Louis didn’t want her to tell anyone where it was other than himself. Hearing this, Jean attempts to knock her out with a chloroformed handkerchief, but before he succeeds, Jean is knocked out by Li. He tries to lead her away, but Chiaki thinks that he should run instead. As the two pass over a bridge, Jean suddenly materializes from a stone structure and punches Li. The force of the hit causes Li to stagger backwards to the railing, and Jean’s second punch knocks Li over and down right as a train is passing below. Having seen Jean’s Contractor abilities, Chiaki is powerless to his chloroformed handkerchief the second time around. She wakes up sometime later in a room with Jean and two other men named Paul, and Alain. It is here that Jean reveals to Chiaki that Louis is dead and that he was a Contractor.
Chiaki then attempts to run away, but the door is locked, so she can’t get out. Unbeknownst to all of them, Yin has her feet dipped in water somewhere else in the city, though one of the men does sense something. The lights suddenly go off, and the door surges with electricity before opening to allow Chiaki to escape. The men try to chase after her, but a black cat jumps out and into one of their faces. Chiaki runs a distance in the rain before she runs into Li again at a street corner. He catches her as she collapses onto the ground and holds her as she starts to cry. As Li carries Chiaki home, she tells him about how each shooting star signifies the death of a Contractor. On that day 10 years ago, the real starry sky disappeared and this fake sky took its place. Governments were afraid of the spread of information about heartless Contractors and soulless Dolls, so they use ME technology to delete the memories of anyone who comes into contact. The reason that Chiaki knows all this is because she worked at the laboratory for a long time. She recalls that her parents died in an accident when she was in high school, but she had seen them actually get killed by a Contractor. Since then, she has felt entranced. Elsewhere in town, Kirihara Misaki is telling the two male detectives about Jean and his matter-exchange-type teleportation ability. She also warns them to be careful, particularly with BK-201. By this time, Li and Chiaki arrive back at her apartment, but they find that the inside has been ransacked. When Li tries to get her to change clothes and starts to leave for his own room next door, she clings to him because she doesn’t want to be left alone.
Lying on the floor in Li’s dark room, Chiaki comments on how this room seems strange even though she should be used to the arrangement - it seems fake. She reveals that she’s only lived here two weeks and, for the first time, felt like she was really alive. Chiaki doesn’t know whether the her who researches all the time or the her that’s here now is the real her, but more than anything else, she was excited about Louis coming for her. Li offers to run away together and says that coming here and meeting her was fate, but the two soon get interrupted by the sound of footsteps on the metal walkway outside. These footsteps belong to the two detectives who enter Chiaki’s apartment looking for clues. Once inside, they hear a sound outside the window, but when they go to investigate, all they see is a black cat on the wall. Li and Chiaki meanwhile get out of Li’s apartment and head to a restaurant in town where he reveals that he’s got an acquaintance who’s working in Macao foreign trade. She realizes that he wants to illegally enter China, but he also says that they need a lot of money for this. Since they don’t have that money, Chiaki thinks that they can sell some of the classified information she has instead.
Because Li is still calling her Haraguchi, Chiaki finally tells him her real name - Shinoda Chiaki - and he formally introduces himself too. The waitress then brings an entire cart worth of food to their table, and Chiaki is shocked to find out that Li is going to eat it all. Starting to drink a little, she tells Li that he’ll get fat - he might be okay now, but he’ll definitely be fat by the time he turns 30. The two end up having a good laugh, however Chiaki suddenly stops when her eyes become lifeless for a moment. She returns to normal as soon as Li asks if she’s okay, though she then excuses herself to use the restroom. While she’s gone, the man sitting behind Li - one of his partners - warns him to quickly get what they’re after. Li then notices Jean’s two men are coming into the building, so he gets up and heads towards the bathroom. When Chiaki comes out, he rushes her towards the back, but the two of them still get seen by their enemies. Chiaki and Li take cover in the kitchen as one of their pursuers starts shooting with a gun, though Li manages to create a smoke screen by getting their enemy to shoot the flour. Paul uses his power to explode a bag of large beans, causing them to fly at a high velocity in every direction. The beans kill the two chefs in the room, and they cut Li’s arm as he tries to escape out the back door.
Blocking off the back entrance with a locker, Li buys himself some time as he runs off with Chiaki. By the time the two men go back out the front entrance and around to the rear, Li and Chiaki are gone. As Alain calls up Jean to report what happened, Paul eats a dandelion. Meanwhile, all of Li’s partners meet by the water that Yin still has her feet dipped into. Huang wonders if Hei has betrayed them because he’s moving strangely and hasn’t killed the woman yet. Mao the cat agrees that Hei has changed, and he then asks Yin what Hei is doing. Unfortunately, she doesn’t know because he’s in a place without water. At this moment, Li and Chiaki are at the bottom of some stairs somewhere in the middle of the city. She bandages up his arm wound and blames herself for what happened. Chiaki thinks that it’s impossible for them to run away from their pursuers, but Li just places his hand on her cheek and notes how her tired face is like the dead. Indeed, she is tired and places her head on his lap. Starting to talk about her past, Chiaki reveals that the thing she can’t forgive herself for is how the appearance of the Contractors charm her. She explains that the Contractor who killed her parents had still been a child, and although she could not see the child’s face, that sparkling became engraved into her mind because of how beautiful it was.
Li suggests that it would have been better if she had lost her memory about the Contractor, but Chiaki feels that if she lost it, then she would lose herself. Eventually, she opens up the heel of her shoe to reveal a key and hands it to Li. As she’s doing so, she asks him if he has feelings that he cannot erase even though he wants to erase them. He responds by saying that Contractors are not humans - they are killing machines who wear human skins. To keep their risk at a minimum, they always kill witnesses, and Li feels that they are liars and traitors. The next day, the two take the train and eventually arrive at an area filled will coin-operated lockers. Chiaki’s key opens one of these lockers and inside is a book. Li, however, soon notices that Jean and his two men are coming after them, so they start hurrying away. On the street, he sees a police car and some officers in front of them, so he orders her to forget. She suddenly stops in her tracks and fall unconscious because of what he said, but Li continues walking. As the policemen rush to her side to help her, Jean and his goons keep chasing after Li. On a highway somewhere, Misaki is driving along when she gets a report that the French men have been spotted and another one talking about BK-201’s movements. But what surprises her the most is the third report telling her that Shinoda Chiaki’s dead body has been found lying face-down in a river.
The Chiaki that had collapsed now suddenly reawakens, steals a policeman’s gun, and runs off with it after firing a single shot. Li meanwhile pulls out his black coat and puts it on before he stops to read the book. He finds it filled with blank pages, and by the time he’s finished flipping through it, Jean and company have caught up. They know that he’s a Contractor and have figured out that he’s the one who killed Louis. Chiaki appears at the other side of the empty lot that Hei is standing in and can’t believe what she just heard. In response, Hei reminds her of what he said about Contractors being liars. Jean remarks that the mouse has walked into a trap, and this causes Chiaki’s eyes to turn lifeless again. Alain then raises his gun at Chiaki, so Hei gets in the line of fire to protect her, but the bullet ends up coming from behind him because Chiaki is the one who fires. After Hei falls to the ground, Jean explains that this woman is not Shinoda Chiaki, but rather a Doll with her memories. They were using her as a trap to lure out Hei. Alain then shoots Hei a few more times in the back to finish him off. He comments on how easy it was, but Mao then speaks up and reveals that Hei’s jacket is bullet-proof.
By the time Alain turns around to look at Hei again, Hei is already back up and tosses his cable at the guy’s throat. Hei pulls the guy in and uses his powers to kill him, so Paul responds by exploding his dead comrade’s body. Hei manages to get out of the way and throws his cable at the Paul. He is only able to catch Paul's left arm, but that’s enough for him to use his power to kill the guy. Jean then attempts to use his matter-exchange teleportation power on Hei, but surprisingly, Chiaki gets in the way and gets her still-beating heart taken out instead. With his attack failed and his allies dead, Jean escapes by replacing by exchanging himself with water. Huang then arrives on the scene and wonders if this was a decoy too. When he asks why Hei didn’t kill the doll, Hei explains that she wasn’t a doll - she was alive. Huang nevertheless still thinks of her as a doll and of Contractors as killing machines. Their job isn’t done yet because Jean is still on the loose, so Mao has Yin track him down through her water-enabled sensing powers. Hei thus is able to find Jean quickly, and though Jean tries to swim further out into the water, it’s too late for him.
In the aftermath, the police find Jean’s body and later come to Li’s apartment to inquire about Haraguchi. Since Li tells them that he just moved here, Misaki gives him some contact information. She starts to leave, but then turns around and stares at Li’s door for a moment. When the detective asks her about it, she says that it’s nothing.
Yin's Poetry Preview[]
Episode 1[]
The rain stops,
the clouds part
but the only lights that shines through are false stars.
Tender words thaw a long frozen heart.
The woman steps out from her shell into the endless night.
Darker than black.
The man searches the false skies hoping for a sign.
For an instant he sees it,
the dying glow of a life burning itself out.
and then the star falls.
Episode 2[]
Hell's a place forgotten in the fog.
The soft blue glow the constant reminder of the past that cannot be escaped.
Stop.
The girl is innocent. A scream hangs in the air,
unheard, unanswered...still the star burns brighter.
The mark of the contractor, the curse that can never be erased
and then...the light disappears.
Characters in Order of Appearance[]
Episode 1[]
Episode 2[]
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Gallery[]
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| Darker than Black: The Black Contractor Episodes |
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| 01 • 02 • 03 • 04 • 05 • 06 • 07 • 08 • 09 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22 • 23 • 24 • 25 • OVA
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