I have to admit, I didn't see that ending coming, though I knew as soon as Ann grabbed her SD card (which look exactly like the microSD cards we have today; guess that's a format in for the long haul) that we'd see it playing a part as being confused for the bomb key, though I thought the attackers would be the ones to make that mistake. Knew the bomb was a fake as soon as it went off, though (no grimdark for this series). I like the reference to the whole "red wire, blue wire" thing, though from what little I know of explosives, anything both that small and powerful enough to damage the plane would be rather stable (C4 and thermite are the two that come to mind), so just plain shooting the bomb should actually do the trick. Doubt any of the Shinkis know that, though.Klinkin wrote:I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see Shinkis in the workplace, though, as some combination of personal assistants, secretaries, and maybe even full-on employees.
As for Rihito being able to tell Ann apart from all the military Shinkis, I'm not that surprised (and really, kind of disappointed that Ines and Lene actually had trouble earlier); as anyone who has known identical twins can tell you, you can tell people who look exactly alike apart by subtle differences in body language and such, given time. Rihito's known Ann since he was a child, so he can obviously tell the more domestic, shy, and willing-to-be-pampered Ann apart from the extremist Arnvals or military-grade Arnvals (likely with military-grade programming, leading to different idiosyncrasies such and posture and body language). I was expecting Ines or Rene to ask Ann what her career of choice was for the tell-them-apart question, but something as simple as "what's Master's name?" would have sufficed.
As to Kintaro's question, I'm pretty sure I'd be able to tell my Shinkis apart from others if they had actual AIs (and hence personalities and idiosyncrasies), though my Eukrante cheats by combining a non-standard hairstyle with some custom-made parts, so that makes it easy.
As far as Clara's master goes, I'm pretty sure she's a woman. In some of the pictures, we see a woman wearing a matching swimsuit with Clara's, and, while my Japanese is really poor, I don't catch Clara (or any of the other Shinkis) using a masculine pronoun for Clara's master. I shudder to say this, but...let the shipping begin.