This was a masterful self-contained episode surrounding Hajime Tanaka. We can see that growing up, Tanaka had nothing on his own that made him stand out. For him, collecting (and in this case, erasers) was the only way to get attention. He wanted to buy something that he could show off, and it is clear he was feeling peer pressure. Which you can understand because every kid at one time felt that.
At the same time, it really shows the danger the internet is now. As Tanaka, because of that peer pressure, he fell for a scam when he used his father’s credit card. His father ended up hitting him, and his classmates moved on to the next trendy thing. For Tanaka, he had nobody there for him.
It’s interesting how this transitioned to him when he was older because he isolated himself. Though in here we see him being addicted to a free-to-play game. Of course, with these types of games, the temptation to put money in is too tempting. Even worse, though, that game had a grip on his life. Even when he was at work, he was addicted to it. It really shows that even adults can fall into these dangers.
What made it even worse for him was when he saw the name of the seller that scammed him as a kid. It very likely could have been a coincidence, but just the name is bound to stir bad memories for Tanaka. He wanted revenge, per se, against him. Of course, because of the taxi driven by Hiroshi, he didn’t keep the Dodo pull since he dropped his phone in the sewers.
It’s quite scary to see Tanaka pull out a gun. Where we have the correlation of him being scammed to his addiction in the game, which wanted him to have revenge. It gives the sense he will seek out revenge against Hiroshi. Could he be responsible for the flashback memories that we see Hiroshi have in the previous episodes?
