This episode was a huge improvement over its predecessor. I liked the first episode well enough, but this did a much better job of pulling me into the story. It's a mystery story done well. There are questions about what's going on, but you have enough to follow the story. I think that more anime series need to take their cue from this, because this achieves that perfect balance between the two.
As the episode opens, Re-l tries to track down the creature that attacked her; apparently, she blacked out and it just left without doing any serious harm to her. Unfortunately, there is no data of the incident, and even her personal autoreiv had its memory banks purged so that it has no idea of what she's talking about when she mentions previous incidents.
Matters aren't helped when higher ups start to question her mental stability. Not surprisingly, this only serves to frustrate her more, not to mention that it further proves her conspiracy theory. It's conspiracy theory 101: the lack of evidence is evidence of a cover up. Despite their efforts, Re-l is still convinced that something is going on. Though this does lead to an odd moment when she "realizes" this again later on in the episode. She exclaims that she wasn't dreaming, but she never thought she was. The closest she gets to doing so is when she's talking to a shrink and even then, it's pretty much inferred that she's putting up an act. Maybe a previous draft of the script had her seriously doubting her memories? I don't know.
The second half of the episode puts a bit more focus on Vincent, as he's pursued by the Proxy, in a public place, no less. I was going to say that this pretty much put the kaibosh on any possible cover up as there were witnesses galore, but they managed to do a pretty good job of sweeping it under the rug.
As said before, I found this episode to be very enjoyable. It didn't go too far into mind screw territory, yet it's still vague enough that the viewer won't be able to figure out exactly what's going on. The ending also made for a nice twist as it seems to imply that Vincent is somehow tied to what's going on, though the specifics aren't revealed quite yet.
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