Well, so this episode did have an amount of strange things that probably were explained in the manga again. Most notably the reason why the guards ended up deciding that the quickest way to kill off a fourteen year old boy with a giant mechanic robot called Necro Macro. I mean, all these prisoners have these things around their necks that inject poison, for goodness’ sake.
And yet, this episode once again was bloody intense. For the third episode in a row it continued to show hell on earth and there are still no signs of this slowing down or taking a step back. Especially Takami became more interesting in this episode as he reluctantly was forced to follow Ganta around.
Now, as for the acting, this series is obviously nowhere near the four classics that Manglobe pumped out (Samurai Champloo, Ergo Proxy, Michiko e Hatchin and Sarai-Ya Goyou), and it does have a few weaknesses here and there, but I’ve seen much worse. Ganta at times has difficulty at responding to the people around him, but at the same time I also like how he’s neither constantly sulking nor blindly running into everything. There’s balance to his character: he’s helpless, but not so helpless as that you’d want to punch him, but rather as what you’d expect when you completely torment a fourteen year old kid here. Shiro meanwhile is… really simple of a character, who probably would have sucked if the rest of the setting didn’t form such a sharp contrast with her. She’s out of place, but strangely enough she doesn’t break the mood, but rather adds to it.
The worst acting in this show was probably from that Olympic medallist in the previous episode, the other prisoners… weren’t as bad in this episode because they took more of a step back. The return of that masked guy in any case was more interesting than that whole race of death.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
I don’t recall there being a sane reason for the use of the robot to restrain Ganta. You can argue that the prisoner with the power from the past that everyone keeps mentioning wasn’t as docile as Ganta and Makina just decides it’s rational to release a killer robot to go fetch him from sickbay, or maybe that she dislikes the promoter, who pees on her authority. Proportionately just isn’t the credo of the inhabitants of Deadman Wonderland. It’s quite spunky like that.
This episode did a pretty decent job of staying on track. I think rather than trying to fit this into one cour they were just eager to get to the other characters that the fans like. At this point I’m just going to assume the desire is to have a second cour.
I can’t stop thinking on how stupid everything is. It’s the future and it’s a top modern prison. But they have strange robots with AI and missiles, that they fire inside the facility. Apparently they have no cameras in the prison and it’s possible to kick away panels from the walls. Really lousy security I must say, when they have prisoners with death sentence! And that girl, that everyone ignores and doesn’t wear metal junk around the neck, what is she doing there and why is she so stupid?
Eh… I hope it gets better.
@Daniel Jonsson
Mate, in case you didn’t notice, the setting isn’t exactly concrete. If you want to talk realism then you better question how it is even possible to send a 14 year old kid to jail. Correct me if I am wrong but I think there are laws to prevent the jailing of minors. (Can’t say I am confident in that statement though. I didn’t study law. This is just assumption) Forget realism. This show clearly isn’t designed to be realistic.
If I had to guess why they used the robot to restrain Ganta I would say this. They were defying orders. The boss didn’t want Ganta harmed. So by using a robot you have the excuse of saying when questioned “The robot malfunctioned and we lost control of it”
The series won’t get any less ridiculous.
From the boys’ reaction I think you can tell that Shiro breaking the vent was a display of strength, and not representative of what a normal inmate could do.
Shiro also stealth ninjas into scenes from windows/vents/the sewer to where Ganta is, and has interacted with very few people. When she’s seen somewhere that’s segregated the people that see her comment. The race was unisex, though, so no one paid much attention to her presence there. However, the nature of the race was not properly communicated, due to the changes made to the events preceding it.
Hmm, you guys are rather negative xD
Concerning the use of the robot instead of the death necklaces, it might be because those rings’ only function is distributing a set amount of poison into the person each day. They might not be able to do anything else and the guards might not be able to remotely control them, to for instance, give a massive dose of poison at once as a way of killing a prisoner.