Welcome back to another exciting adventure for Takeshi Kovacs. The last time we saw our protagonist, he was being carried out of the Fightdrome and reunited with his little sister. In this episode, we’re going to dig into Kovacs’s past and find out how he became an envoy and his bond with his only family. So let’s not waste any more time and jump right into “Nora Inu.”
1. CTAC Recruitment
From a young age, Kovacs knew he had to cross a line to protect not only himself but his sister. His father had killed his mother and gotten away with it. The only logical decision for Kovacs was to kill his father before he tried to kill them next. This decision quickly put him on CTAC’s radar, and they forced him into their army like a child soldier. By separating him from the little family he had left, they could manipulate him to do whatever they wanted him to do under the lie that it was for a better cause. Jaeger, the man who “recruited him,” also bribed him by saying he would take care of Rei. It was a tough decision for Kovacs to make, but he also felt that it would be a good one if it meant a better life for her. As soon as he agreed, Jaeger told him that he’d be resleeved into an adult for training and thus ridding him of any chance at a childhood. There is a pattern that follows Kovacs his whole life of being forced into someone else’s plans because he is a means to an end.
2. Family Reunion
After years away from his home planet, Kovacs is sent back on a mission to kill a local crime lord in the Yakuza. Once he has eyes on the target, he notices a reflection of a woman sneaking upon him. Before he reacts to kill her, Kovacs realizes that this mysterious woman is wearing his mother’s necklace and immediately puts two and two together. They lock eyes for a brief moment before killing every CTAC agent and Yakuza soldier in the warehouse. The bond that these two shares are like nothing else in the world. They are both willing to kill everything and everyone they have created as long as it protects each other. Their actions automatically put a massive target on both of their backs, but nothing else matters as long as they remain together. It’s a strong bond that they have, and despite being separated for years, they work in sync as if they have been training for every scenario together. Now the only thing that they must do is find a way to avoid everyone who wants them dead and survive.
3. Another Opportunity
Kovacs gets ambushed by Quellcrist Falconer and her small army of envoys, and he wakes up handcuffed on a bridge and given an opportunity to make a difference. Quellcrist gives him a chance to join her instead of forcing him into a situation that makes him feel as he has nowhere else to go. She knows he’s ex-CTAC, but she sees something that nobody else does: a good man. These are words that nobody has said to Kovacs before, and it’s part of the allure that gets him to join them. The rest of the episode shows his training to become an envoy and gaining their trust. It is not an easy transition for him, but as time passes, the audience gets to see his transformation to become a truly better person. His love for Quellcrist is evident, but it’s nothing new; it’s more about how much he is willing to sacrifice himself if it means making the world a better place. It’s a huge shift from what the audience is used to in present-day Bay City. Kovacs is a man who doesn’t care about anything that doesn’t pertain to his case, and this is when he did let himself be a part of something bigger than himself.
4. Rei Doesn’t Trust Quell
Kovacs may be falling for Quellcrist and her teaching, but his sister Rei remains more guarded about what she and her army are doing. At one point, Kovacs gets left behind and captured by CTAC during a recon mission, so Quellcrist goes back and saves him. Despite the rescue, Rei still questions her tactics and believes that she may be thinking so far ahead that Kovacs being left behind was all part of her plan. Rei thinks that they shouldn’t drink the Kool-Aid that Quellcrist is making and, instead, separate themselves from her army to live independently. This was a means of survival, but they shouldn’t actually believe everything they are being told. It feels like Rei is jealous of the attention that Kovacs is giving Quellcrist, but she’s also about protecting him so they won’t be separated again. After the ambush on the camp, Kovacs distracts the soldiers so Quellcrist and Rei can get away in a ship. He looks into the sky and, for a brief moment, sees them escape before being shot down, and both killed right in front of him.
5. Realizations
In the present, Kovacs finally recovers after nearly being killed in the Fightdrome and explores the area that Rei has been keeping him in. Kovacs looks around, hoping to find Detective Ortega, but instead finds several machines filled with sleeves that he recognizes. Each one is a person that Kovacs came into contact with during his investigation. There is a little girl that he spoke with in the envoy exhibit, the man that was blackmailing Captain Tanaka, and a mysterious woman from Bancroft’s party. He pieces together that his sister had betrayed Quellcrist in exchange for a life without death. The episode ends on that note, but now the question remains, why did she go to great length to mess with him? She had been watching him from various points in the city and came into contact with him so many times, so why wouldn’t she tell him who she was in the first place? After 250 years of believing your sister is dead, and now she’s running around the city pretending to be God knows who. This was one of the rare times that I think even Kovacs’s envoy intuition couldn’t predict. This episode not only gave the audience background on Kovacs that they’d been asking for, but a twist that they didn’t even know was possible.
