From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
The Interim Protocol
This episode is part of the 2022 ONA series A Complicated Surgery Will Take Place on the Beach Tonight (anime). For series overview, see that article.
Episode 7.5 (unbroadcast); recovered from studio servers and fan-restored in 2024. Canonicity disputed.
The Interim Protocol is an unbroadcast episode depicting a **non-canonical 6-hour window** between the end of Half One — Newcastle and the beginning of Half Two — The interior—the moment Katita says Katita: “Honey. I know you've just woken up. But. We need to go for a drive.” and the scene dissolves to the desert.
The entire episode takes place in **her makeshift surgery out the back of New South Wales**—a corrugated-iron structure, dimly lit by a single overhead lamp. Leif lies on a surgical table, still unconscious, still bandaged. **Katita** is methodically preparing instruments: sterilizing the pipe-blade, checking the pacemaker's red diode, laying out sutures in a perfect grid. Her movements are precise, economical, never hesitant.
But Leif begins to **speak while asleep**—fragments of dialogue, non-sequiturs, a rehearsal of sentences that sound like they are being tested. At one point he says Leif: “If a coin has one side and it goes the whole way around, does that make the spinning stop?” Katita does not answer; she continues working. She does not smile.
The mechanical seagull **circles outside**, visible through a high window, casting a shadow across her face with each pass. Each time it circles, Katita pauses and watches, as if the seagull is a timer, or a witness.
The animation style shifts in the final five minutes: the surgery becomes **increasingly abstract**. Instruments become geometric shapes; Katita's hands become fluid, ink-like. When Leif's eyes flutter briefly open beneath the bandages, the viewer sees his perspective—the ceiling is not a ceiling but an **inverted desert horizon**, and he hears the sound of the earth rubbing against space.
The episode ends before Leif fully wakes, cutting to black as his lips form words. Leif: “I knew every word of it before you said it.”
It is unclear if this is canonical, non-canonical, or a glitch in the timeline itself. The studio claims the episode was never commissioned; fans dispute this, citing detailed color-model sheets and storyboard fragments. [citation needed]