A great self-contained episode. At first we see Tachikoma wandering around when she finds a girl named Miki who is looking for her dog. It is funny how Miki treats Tachikoma like a pet in many ways. Though things like throwing the dog, who isn’t Locky because it isn’t the dog Miki is looking for. It shows the difference in artificial intelligence from that of a human. Miki loves her dog, and treating other dogs like that isn’t wrong.
In reality, Locky is dead. Much like the goldfish story Miki tells, she doesn’t want to mention how sad she is about Locky being dead. At one moment, Miki would really like the idea of having a pet that would never die, like Tachikoma. Though through Tachikoma’s actions, she could never replace Locky. But you can’t blame Miki for desiring that.
The latter half of the episode builds on the themes of escaping reality with the box that Tachikoma brought back. The director had an artistic vision of a movie that he could never have funded. Though the idea of a never-ending movie is interesting, it is understandable for people to want to escape reality. As the horrors of the real world are real, staying inside this box away from the world isn’t healthy, as Major points out. Both sides of the episode do a fantastic job of showing how tough facing reality is and how you can cope with it in different ways.
