If you’re going to introduce something like a legendary cursed sea, it helps if you set it up beforehand, even if it’s just something like a name-drop, which is all they would’ve needed for the Sea of Mists. I thought they were just going into ‘whalesquid territory,’ which it is, but not that it was also some supposedly supernatural place shunned by mariners since time immemorial. It’s like how attacking the whalesquid is supposedly some sort of ancient taboo, but for something with supernatural connotations, they didn’t really do anything about it. Rather, the Gargantian response to Ledo’s actions was weak. They tried to stop him when the whalesquid actually attacked, but there weren’t any mobs calling for blood, or discussions of some plan to stop him long-term since he was making it clear he was going to kill-‘em-all – they just filed complaints like some present-day concerned citizens. True, Chamber is a pretty compelling deterrent, but the only substantive response was ‘we have someone who can kill them handy? Sweet, let’s go after their treasure!’ It makes avoiding attacking the whalesquid look like a practical measure, akin to what you should do when you’re suddenly faced with a bear in the woods, not something based in superstition. It’s not like the Sea of Mists is a bad name, it’s a great one by all appearances, it’s the way they framed it that I’m talking about, because for all the existence of things like that and the taboo on avoiding whalesquid, the Gargantians don’t actually seem superstitious at all. And it's not like 'the Sea of Mists' is a bad name - it's an excellent one since it describes the area literally; it's the framing of it that I'm talking about. Granted, it didn’t help that the show wasted two episodes on pointless fanservice instead of setting any of this up.
As for the revelation about the Hideauze, well, I’m pleased
that I wasn’t able to completely say ‘called it!’ since they still managed to
surprise me with something. Also, obligatory reference
(and what Ledo would be if he did manage to make it back to the Alliance; you
know, right before they euthanize him because he’s obviously deranged). I did start to suspect something was up when
the Hideauze larvae looked like either Greys or human embryos, but I’m not
really gonna count suspicions I didn’t even have until the episode itself as
figuring it out beforehand.
A lot of it is definitely Your-Mileage-May-Vary, though.
Like how they didn’t even try to give
any technobabble on how they accomplished the transformation of humans into
Hideauze, and whether that’s a cop-out, or just as well since any possible
explanation would probably be nonsense anyway. And the whole ‘the Hideauze are humans!’ thing at all. Aside from the
general weirdness of the concept, there’s the issue of how it fits into the
themes of the show. Personally, I’m not really sure. On the one hand, it speaks
to how people on both sides of a conflict can get so wrapped up in their
differences they forget what they have in common, and how we dehumanize our
enemies, turning them into lower life forms so it’s easier to justify killing
them. In this case, they just went with an extreme version by visually
representing the Hideauze as monstrous when they were still humans (in a sense,
at least) the entire time. But on the other hand, since they’re human Ledo
basically has no choice but to re-evaluate his conception of them. Plus, there
already are humans who are obliging him to see that there’s more than one way
of doing things – the Gargantians. The Hideauze aren’t much more than a
refinement of that – not only is there more than one worldview, but also more
than one solution to the same problem. If they genuinely were a different species,
Ledo would be right that they’re different from humans, which would make the
realization that ‘different’ doesn’t mean ‘evil’ harder to accept, but, I
think, reinforce the show’s message of cooperation and coexistence all the more
strongly.
Flowers of Evil [ep.
9]
When Saeki refused to break up with Kasuga, I thought we
were about to find out she’s as bad as the rest if not worse. But nope, she’s
still better than just about everyone else in this series. She can tell Kasuga
really does like her and just wants to understand him better. I’m not sure I’d
brush off stealing her uniform as ‘that’s just how boys are’, but it’s nice to
see that she didn’t just jump to ‘you’re sick! I never want to see you again!’ Not
that it wouldn’t have been understandable if she was weirded out by what Kasuga
did and didn’t want to be with him anymore, but I like that the story hasn’t
gone for the obvious like that. Oh, I’m sure she still is at least somewhat weirded out by it, but she isn’t making a snap
reversal of her opinion of him, which is one of the things that makes her such
a good person.
Which is exactly why she’s right – talking to her would be
way more helpful than turning to Nakamura, who just encourages Kasuga’s anxieties
and harmful behaviours, under the pretext that she’s bringing out the ‘real’
him. Of course, it’s not and Saeki’s right. Sure, the theft itself was perverted, regardless of the fact he
did it out of panic rather than design, but one act does not a pervert make, it
makes an awkward teenager who hasn’t figured out how to balance his sexual
thoughts and desires with his more high-minded ideals. That’s hard to do, and
it’s worse when others, especially people you can’t avoid and whom you want to
have a good opinion of you, find out. He can avoid Saeki, more or less, but his
mom is a lot harder, though both are squarely in the category of people he doesn’t
want to think badly of him.
He certainly imagined the other two would have worse
reactions; Saeki actually doing the whole dismiss-him-as-a-pervert, while his
mother exclaimed “I’m disappointed! What will we tell the neighbors?” Because
apparently she’d care more about the family’s social standing than trying to
understand and help her own son. Now, I’m not familiar with all the nuances of
Japanese culture in this regard, so it’s possible, and I suspect it to be the
case, that Kasuga’s worries aren’t entirely unfounded. But that isn’t how she
reacted. It’s been pretty clear up to now that she could tell something was up,
what with her frustration at him always coming home late without prior warning,
and her actions after finding out, both the way she approached him and that she
went to look for him, suggest that she’s more worried than angry. Not to
mention, Saeki pretty much explicitly forgave him, and isn’t all that bothered
by the act itself. Not that either of them isn’t
disappointed, because they both certainly are, but they know him better than
that. Problem is, that’s not the reaction he was expected, and in some ways,
not how the thinks they should feel,
so he’s unable to accept it, and turns once again to the last person he should be,
but, in his limited understanding, the only one who’ll take him as he is.
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