Another day in the Mud Whale.
The story is going in a good direction. I’m liking this a lot.
Episode four features a great sequence with Chakuro diving through papers and stuff. Also, the secret of the Mud Whale is slowly revealed, with the threat of all of them dying imminent. The most interesting part is that the Mud Whale seems like an “organic” island with everything made from nature, but suddenly we’re shown that the base of the Mud Whale is actually metal. I’m interested in how this connects to how their ancestors were exiled and what kind of terrible secrets the elders are hiding.
Have I mentioned that Ouni and Chakuro reminds me so much of Sion and Nezumi from No.6? When they talk, I keep seeing those two’s faces. And Suou reminds me of 7 Ghost for some reason.
The anime continues to have a lot of stunning scenes, but the way the Mud Whale’s color and the sky’s color contrast each other too much is getting a little weird. That’s just me, though. And the characters sometimes don’t have any shadow or outline. I get that they’re in the middle of the desert, but that makes it hard to see the details on them, for example, their meticulously drawn hair.
Episode five has some melodrama about generation gap and stuff, mysterious girl fuses with the blob tree to keep the Mud Whale alive only to have her alter ego or twin or whatever appear later in the episode, and Suou finally starts his job as the new leader. However, there’s one scene I’m not happy with: the scene with Suou, Kuchiba, and the other girls in Suou’s office.
One of the girls remark that he’s acting completely different with Suou than with Taisha, Kuchiba just blushes and said ‘shut up!’
…Uh, excuse me, are you not going to show some grief that the woman you love just kinda died in front of you a few days ago? Hello?
I liked the speech scene, especially the part where Ouni came in and was all like ‘yeah I’ll lend you my powaaaa!!!’ and everybody cheered. I’m not a fan of how easily Suou cries, but it’s effective for moving people, so I guess it’s not necessarily a bad thing…?
And how come I have not realized that they’re counting down to the big attack until episode six? I mean, there’s like no tension at all, everybody’s just so chill. It’s like they’re not building up to anything. I guess you could expect that from people who knew nothing of conflict, but don’t people who’ve just lost loved ones act a little more serious? There are many instances of misplaced comedy, so the melodrama isn’t that effective. I feel that episode six is more like people savoring the last peaceful moments of their lives before going to war, rather than the Mud Whale preparing itself for war, which it should be since everyone could die in an episode or two from now.
Finally, I’m having a lot of trouble remembering characters. I completely forgot about Rasha midway through episode six and Nibi just didn’t make any impact even with the flashback. Ema…well, she’s like Neri copy-pasted. The person who’s most interesting at this point is Siena, eye-patch man’s wife. She seems to have some issues and I’m curious how she even married that guy. Other than that, the rest of the main cast has been pretty much static and predictable.
I like where the story is taking itself, but it’s quite slow and the characters aren’t really doing anything of interest. Yes, there’s that one scene where Lykos blushes, but that’s pretty much it. Scenery is beautiful as always, and I’m still looking forward to the next episode. Until we meet again.
bonutzuu 