Let me start this post by saying that this is indeed a fun episode of Kino. Once again the mantle of protagonist is taken from the duo and instead it’s Kino’s Master who leads this episode. Though the story is told by Kino as she approaches the country that is in the story. It is rather nice to see Kino’s master being a serious badass and we at least get a grasp on the kind of person who trained Kino to be as skilled as she is. I particular liked the Sepia tone used for the scenes that take place in the past, making them seem like an old time action movie. It is a nice funny little episode which could have acted as a nice breather from the series more darker stories. However here is where my own personal gripes come into this because while I enjoy this episode, it also has me rather dissatisfied and somewhat irritated. Again I will repeat that this is by no means a bad episode of anime but, quite frankly, this isn’t what I watch Kino for. I have mentioned before that the story selection for this anime was influenced by a poll run on fans favorite country and in that I felt that people tended to choose the stories which happen to make Kino be more active and cool as opposed to the stories which had great depth. I also notice another thread as well with this season and that is that out of all the stories so far, they have all had happy endings. Strange though it may be, I generally prefer Kino when it’s more dark and depressing rather than upbeat and optimistic. For example, my favorite episode from the previous series happened to be the second episode with the story about the three rabbits. It was dark, depressing but damn did it have an impact on me.
Thinking back over the old series I generally did prefer the darker episodes and this season may be feeling lacking because it is missing that particular darkness. Everyone picked the upbeat stories, the exciting stories over the more poignant and melancholic stories. Even the opening seems to display this with a poppy cheery theme that seems to not quite fit my image of Kino. We have the light side of Kino and we appear to be missing the darkness. There are of course episodes that still have parts of it but I think we are missing half of what makes Kino, Kino. That is why this bugs me, for as far as we know this series will only be one cour. It may very well be the last anime Kino will ever get for it was a miracle to get even this. So isn’t it such a shame to have episodes wasted on such simple stories like this? A story about people being badass isn’t a rarity in anime and I just tend to hold Kino at a higher standard.
Well I spent too much time discussing this and not much about the episode itself. Though there really isn’t that much to this. A country run by a corrupt police force attempts to frame masters companion with drug possession in order to steal money and get manual labor out of him. Master in turn ends up taking over the clock tower police station and holding a standoff against the police for three days until they literally have to pay her to leave. The only thing of interest to me was the aftermath with Kino revisiting the country to find that her master and companion have been hailed as heroes who were petitioned by the people to root out corruption in the police. Of course the flowery tale appears to have been made up by the police to save face from the fact that two random strangers had the entire police force on their last legs. Likely the reason for corruption getting rooted out in the government was due to greater public scrutiny after that colossal failure and a reform to gain public trust. The way that they avoided persecution by effectively glorifying the incident tends to mirror that of a person who dresses up his failures as secret successes in order to avoid admitting his own folly. As pointed out by Kino at the end when she mentioned about all the old men of the country happening to use canes due to her master shooting their legs during the incident. It’s a nice funny little tale but we are now past the halfway point so they better announce a second cour or make these last episodes something truly special indeed.
