This episode confirmed something I had been speculating for a long time, and I’m glad that the anime has finally confirmed it to be the case.
The episode leads with Yulong going over what he thinks is required to see the generic Kowloon, which he believes is a sense of attachment, which doesn’t apply to Yaomay, and then after seeing the flashback of what happened after Miyuki joined the Hebinuma family with his full-body snake tattoo and his forked tongue, Yulong realizes that it’s actually regret that allows you to see the generic Kowloon given he regretted not stopping Miyuki from pursuing revenge sooner with it coming to him that Miyuki’s regret over his mother dying is why Miyuki can see the generic Kowloon, and that’s why he can now enter the generic Kowloon.
Next, Yaomay meets with Gwen, sharing that she remembers everything from her time in Hong Kong now and will pay him back later since the money she earns in the illusion of Kowloon isn’t real. She still wants to prove that Reiko exists, and Gwen says that he can’t feel empathetic to the residents of the generic Kowloon and tells her to leave since she’s a real person. This leads to a talk about Yaomay wanting to be her absolute self, and after Gwen suggests she shouldn’t be here for someone else’s sake, she turns it back on him asking if it isn’t the same for him with him answering that he’s there for his own sake, and even if it’s egotistical, he doesn’t regret it, which was how Reiko described being your absolute self, so viewers are meant to see that Gwen is also being his absolute self. He then asks her what she personally wants to do and get done, and she does consider his words. She also revealed that she learned in Kowloon that the reason Kowloon was demolished was that the Hebinuma Group wanted to cover up something and that the talismans have something to do with it before revealing that she remembers that it’s always summer in Kowloon. Gwen then gets a call from Kudo as he leaves the area.
Yaomay then thinks about whether Gwen is right that the mystery isn’t hers to solve and that she should think about she wants to do, and when she thinks back to the screening of her mom’s movie and how her mom told her what earrings to wear, she began to have an idea of what she should be doing.
And as Reiko continues using her glasses to peer through Kujirai B’s memories, she sees Kujirai B head to a particular place where she traded in the Kowloon talismans for a bag with red pills and a death tarot card. This leads me to believe that perhaps Kujirai B didn’t die after she was given these red pills from this episode. In The Matrix movie, choosing the red pill means learning about the truth and accepting it whereas the blue pill is about choosing to be ignorant and going back to before you knew about the Matrix. Maybe what happened to Kujirai B is that the pills she took removed her from the simulation, freeing her from this fake world. Papa Hebinuma said to not let any of “that” get out of Kowloon in Episode 9, and I wonder if that was the red pills. The pills having the infinity sign on the front and an I on the back or vice-versa along with the bag coming with a death tarot card could mean that by accepting the pills that Kujirai B’s ending her infinite life in the simulation and choosing to live in the real world. After that, as Yaomay looks at the earrings her mother chose for her in the past, she got a call from Reiko saying that she’s going back to the north of Kowloon one more time since she believes she’s close to finding out why Kujirai B died. Yaomay figures that she must protect Reiko from the Hebinuma Group given its involvement here, and they plan to meet up after she leaves work early.
Xiaohei then thinks back to Yulong promising that he can go back to his old self with Generic Terra. He remembers him suggesting to kill Reiko in order to make that a reality, and he thinks there’s no way he can do it. Reiko then spots him at the top of a stairway, and when she asked him what’s wrong, he had a crazed look and seriously did think of pushing her down the stairs, killing her in the process. She then gets a call from the generic Xiaohei, who tells her that there’s device buzzing on the ceiling which won’t stop, and Reiko gets the idea to have the real Xiaohei fix it, which is extremely convenient and telling that this is a simulation. As they’re on the way to Xiaohei’s place, Reiko then gets a call from Yaomay, and she tells her to also go to the generic Xiaohei’s place since they’re on their way there.
Gwen and Kudo then meet at the Goldfish Teahouse, and Gwen asks Kudo how much he knows about the generic Kowloon, and he reveals what they thought was true with the original and the generic version not being able to coexist in the generic Kowloon. Gwen is surprised that Kudo can eat the food, and Kudo responds by saying that he eats if he wants to, and if he doesn’t, he doesn’t, and if Gwen were smarter, he’d realize at this point that this Kowloon is at least partially a construct of Kudo’s mind. Gwen then shares that he doesn’t know what is and isn’t replicated in Kowloon since he had built a shelter for stray cats by the back entrance here, describing how the hut was constructed in the process, and that shelter wasn’t replicated. Kudo then revealed he didn’t know that Gwen had did that. Gwen then spots an advertisement for the Generic Terra project with a formerly deceased cat having been cloned for her owner with the cat having many of the same tendencies and quirks, which apparently makes the owner happy, and he thinks such a thing happening would bother him and that it’d be unhealthy with it being implied that death is natural, and people need to learn to move on, and who we know this hasn’t happened to is Kudo, who is still obsessed with Kujirai B.
At the generic Xiaohei’s place, after Xiaohei fixes the generic version’s fire alarm, he stares at the clothes, and Yaomay shares with the generic version that he likes those sorts of clothes, resulting in him sharing the frills Yaomay sewed into his vest, and the generic version’s joy over seeing them makes him tear up and feel accepted. He states that looking at his past used to be painful, which is almost certainly why he threw away all his own clothes, but he’s now happy.
Kudo and Gwen’s chat then concludes with him sharing that there are two Xiaohei’s in this generic Kowloon, which complicates their theory about a generic being unable to coexist with an original at the same time, and he also shares that Xiaohei is a he, which they kept secret from Kudo ’cause they thought it was funny. Upon seeing his shelter for the cats finally having been replicated, Gwen then realizes there’s a direct connection between the generic Kowloon and Kudo.
Back at the generic Xiaohei’s place, the generic Xiaohei disappears since Kudo now knows that Xiaohei is a guy, meaning that the generic disappears since previously she was a stand-in for a person who never truly existed, but now that Kudo knows the truth, what happens to all the generic versions of people happens to her as well. Xiaohei then reveals to Reiko and Yaomay that the generic Kowloon is Kudo’s creation based on what he remembered of Kowloon three years ago with only things Kudo recognized being replicated, and since he thought that Xiaohei was a girl, that’s why he was able to coexist with her up until now. He came here to investigate Kowloon at the request of a particular corporation, the Hebinuma Group, and to kill Reiko since he had been told he could go back to being his old self if he saved his memories up until today in Generic Terra, and they’ll download those memories not into a clone grown from scratch but into a vessel that has already been replicated. When Yaomay asks him why he’s sharing this info with him, he says that seeing Reiko and Yaomay make him not want to cling to this generic version of Kowloon. He then motions to leave believes his client will go after him since he knows too much, so he needs to get as far away from Hong Kong as possible. Yaomay then tells him to bring some of his old clothes with him since as long as he doesn’t voluntarily abandon them, what matters to him will never disappear. She shares that her mom is a very-connected individual, so even the Hebinuma Group wouldn’t be able to mess with her easily, so she intends to go with Xiaohei to protect him. Yaomay then reveals to Reiko that she has been averting her eyes to something that matters to her and that she needs to face it head-on with that being her mother. She says that she wanted to change herself with how she changed her looks, and in doing so, she took advantage of Reiko’s life, so she wants to throw away her negative self and become a positive self since she doesn’t want to lose in her race to be her absolute self, swearing to return after she becomes her absolute self. She’s wearing the earring her mother chose for her on her left ear and the one she chose for herself on her right ear to show that she accepts both parts of herself. Xiaohei believes it has to mean something that Reiko is the only one not replicated from Kudo’s memories and believes that that has to mean something, and he believes that she can become who she wants to be. After he and Yaomay leave Kowloon, the clothes he brought from the generic Kowloon start to disappear, but he doesn’t fret ’cause he learned from her that he can continue to love something in a new form, which would be things such as the frills Yaomay sewed into his vest, when he previously thought life was about losing what you had. He said that even if they’re gone, he’ll carry their feelings for them with him, and the frills in his vest didn’t disappear, which again points to it being a simulation since the frills were made from materials from Kowloon and shouldn’t be able to leave Kowloon unless the base world is also a simulation. But then when both Yaomay and Xiaohei look back at Kowloon, all they see is rubble since their past regret is gone now that they fully want to look to the future. The episode ends with Reiko not being able to see the outside of Kowloon anymore, which seems ominous.
Last episode, I believe it was implied that the entire world is a simulation, and it may exist to help Kudo get over Kujirai B, which is why Reiko came into existence despite the world being replicated from Kudo’s memories. Maybe that is why she got a warning from the talismans to not look for it anymore since the ones who created the simulation want Reiko to stay firmly where she is and help Kudo get over Kujirai B, which would be her purpose for being born, instead of leaving the simulation.
As for the world we live in, generally, I don’t believe the idea of simulation theory to be a good scientific theory with practical benefits since it’s unfalsifiable. Falsification as a matter of scientific practice, rather than logic, is very significant because people, or at least humans, like to be right. Humans are inclined to seek out evidence which supports rather than challenges their existing opinions, a well-known phenomenon that is often referred to as confirmation bias. Science fights against confirmation bias by encouraging individual scientists to think critically about their work and for the broader scientific community to be skeptical of each other as a means of accountability. Although it’s possible to reason out why we might be in a simulation and even think of possible scientific observations that could hint at a simulation, there is no way to actively disprove it as far I know, which limits the usefulness of pursuing such a theory in my opinion. I believe simulation theory is popular among people who want to believe that they shouldn’t be held accountable for their actions, such as Elon Musk, who believes laws shouldn’t apply to him, and this applies to many billionaires in general, not just Musk. I admit than an unfalsifiable theory could be useful for driving progress towards better falsifiable theories, even if the original theory itself is ultimately thrown out, but nonetheless, I am currently thoroughly unconvinced of simulation theory and believe that every living person’s actions has weight and shouldn’t be carelessly dismissed ’cause nothing really matters. As TCrow from Crow’s World of Anime has indicated, in some games the world is based on a moral simulation, which I believe is more palatable to me than a world where there is no weight to people’s actions given there should ideally be consequences, but I am still very skeptical of this theory in general.
As far as how this subject matter applies to Kowloon Generic Romance, I believe this focus on one’s absolute self is good writing and shows that the characters have agency despite them all probably being part of a simulation. Even in spite of them being in a simulation, they can say that if they were confident that their actions were made by themselves, not others, they are who they are. This shows that people can have agency even within a simulation even if they aren’t real humans, which is important in showing off how there can be agency even within a controlled environment. As I indicated earlier, it was extremely convenient that Reiko got a call from the generic Xiaohei right as the real Xiaohei was about to push her down the stairs, but the simulation itself or the operators of the simulation clearly has/have a intended directive/goal in mind, which is why Reiko was saved and why Xiaohei visiting his generic version led to him becoming happy in accepting what he enjoys/like as being an essential part of him, which also led to Yaomay moving forward in her own life as well. Even if there’s an external force guiding the characters, if they’re making decisions of their own free will, one cannot deny that they have agency.