[Zolda]

Several additional points:

- I've just realized that there's quite a big logical leap in episode 2 @ 04:42 when Rinne immediately assumed that the one who gave the Gotchardriver to Houtarou was Fuga. How could she assume that the one who stole the RCC's from the Academy 10 years ago and the one who gave the Gotchardriver to Houtarou were the same person? He could've been someone else entirely. Fuga could've had one or several accomplices, or he could have given the RCC's to someone else first, or even had the RCC's stolen from him. Even if in later episodes it will be proven that the Academy found out that Fuga was the sole culprit of the RCC theft without any accomplices, no one could've known what happened to him after he vanished. 10 years is a very long period where anything could've happened to Fuga. He could've then begun working with someone else entirely unknown to the Academy, and that someone could've betrayed him and taken the RCC's from him, and the Gotchardriver was acquired by a second different person without any connection to Fuga, etc.

I don't understand Rinne's logic in automatically assuming that the one who stole the RCC's was the same person who acquired the Gotchardriver and later gave it to Houtarou. There are too many different possibilities, yet Rinne could immediately know the truth and pinpoint it with total accuracy and conviction without a shadow doubt. Even Minato seemed to have the same conclusion, unless he's a double agent who has been informed with the truth all along.

- It would've been better if the writers revealed the most minimum amount of information in episode 2. They should've kept Rinne in doubt and only referred to the RCC theft as incident, without hinting that the traitor was Fuga. They should've let Lachesis do the reveal in this episode. It would've been far more impactful, because the reveal would've made Lachesis seem crueler and more sadistic as someone who prefers to break her enemies by mental and psychological torture, and more importantly, it would've shocked both Houtarou and Rinne. Houtarou would've been shocked by the fact that the traitor was the man who gave him the Gotchardriver and that he's Rinne's dad. Rinne would've also been shocked to learn that her dad was the man who gave Houtarou the Gotchardriver and that he was already dead. Now that's one super impactful, dramatic reveal.

- I said earlier in this thread that Houtarou's dad is just a red-herring, but I think there's another possibility. I think that Houtarou's dad is probably not an adventurer, but is (or was) actually an alchemist. He could've been "memory-holed" or "erased" from existence due to an unknown circumstance that probably had something to do with the alchemy world, the Ouroboros, the Gotchardriver, or something similar. His situation is probably similar to old Yuuto's one from Den-O. He even could've been dead all along, and Houtarou and his mom have been totally oblivious because they had been Neuralyzed way before the story started. They are probably intended to be just several of the many pawns of the grand plan of the main villain, until Fuga gave Houtarou the Gotchardriver and thus unknowingly help him break the chain of illusion and manipulation. This unpredictable, unplanned action that somehow helped contribute to the defeat of the main villain could be an interesting potential plot.

This is a highly probable hypothesis, because there's nothing that can prevent an alchemist from using the Neuralyzer spell on another alchemist. An alchemist can probably not tell whether someone (or even himself) have been Neuralyzed. What if someone who you Neuralyzed Neuralyze you, without him knowing that you Neuralyzed him, or without you knowing/remembering that you Neuralyzed him? The resulting information asymmetry could be very chaotic and unpredictable. If it's indeed the case, then I think it could lead to a very interesting ambiguous, Machiavellianistic game of manipulation, kinda like the film Total Recall (1990) turned up to 11.

Also, if there's a Neuralyzer spell, then could there be a De-Neuralyzer spell, like in MIB?