Note: Turns out, I forgot to hit post on this earlier this week. Um… Oops?
Welcome all, to another week of Kaina and the Great Snow Sea! This week sees our heroes explore Valghia, make some friends, and maybe even begin a resistance movement. How do they do it? Well lets dive in and find out!
Immediately, I need to say that Valghia as a location is just awesome. Everything about it, from its construction to the people, is just inspired. It looks so massive and monolithic from the outside, this enormous titan of a ship. Yet the inside is a rickety strung together mess of wood, filled with small crevices and barely holding rivets. It’s clear how the inside has slowly been built up over the years, as there’s no uniformity to plan to the layout. Just people building what they can where they can. And this is all reflected in the people as well! All of them survivors and refugees of other nations huddled together in the bowels of the ship, no true comradery or national identity among them. Just like the ship itself, the very nation of Valghia is this hastily constructed “thing” that could shatter at any moment. I love it.
And it only gets better as we learn more about Valghia’s history! Originally an ark, Valghia started as the good guys. Going from dying tree to dying tree, picking up survivors and banding together in this dying world. Yet as they picked up more people, as the situation got more desperate, as the resources wore thin, the vision of the nation clearly became twisted and corrupted. Now it takes what it needs, both people and resources, by force. It inducts people into the military to keep itself strong, always churning through people to fuel its next conquest. All of this only further exacerbating the issues. It clearly isn’t sustainable! And that’s why I love it! Hopefully we learn something about the “real” Valghian’s, the original ones, at some point. I’m expecting some kind of tiered society personally, based off the tower we saw in one wide shot.
Getting back to the refugees and survivors though, we get to see this play out in real time with Amelothee and Ririha. Not only do we learn that Amelothee is from a conquered nation herself, most likely joining up either to protect it/someone from it or because she saw no other way to survive, but we see her offer it to Ririha as well. Abandon Atland, join her, save yourself. It makes so much sense when you think about it. Amelothee is completely different from all of the other Valghian soldiers we have met, including the Admiral. The reason her technology, weaponry and code of ethics all differ so much is because they aren’t from Valghia. She is, for all intents and purposes, one of a kind. Which to me is only more proof that she will side with Ririha and Kaina in the future.
Finally, I want to talk about our new big goal and revelation, the clear “endgame” for Kaina: The Giant Canopy Tree. I think this is a pretty good idea personally. It makes sense for there to be a central Canopy tree all the others sprouted from, it fits both how trees grow and the Sage story. It also makes sense that Kaina of all people could know it exists, what with his incredible view from atop the Canopy, further reinforcing this notion of him being a new Sage for a modern era. And while I have no idea what they will find there, I’m hopeful it will be more then just the actual sage, still alive and well. Maybe a precursor original nation or something, I don’t know.
The only real issue I see with this giant tree thing is… how could no one have ever seen it before? Do they just restrict themselves to a certain area of the sea? Maybe they don’t travel particularly far because of resources? You would just think that someone in Kaina would be able to notice a Canopy Tree markedly larger than the others. A country like Valghia that moves around so much going from tree to tree should definitely notice something. Especially if it’s “close”, I say close but at that height it would still be rather far away but still, enough for Kaina to see from atop the canopy. So yeah, it might not work mechanically as well as you would initially think. But I still quite enjoy the concept.
So yeah, all in all another solid episode from Kaina. I remain concerned about the timescale of the show, I just don’t see how it can give us a satisfying ending with only 4 episodes and a movie left. Especially not with it introducing new plot points like the Giant Canopy Tree. I don’t need Kaina to wrap up the whole story, though that would be nice. A satisfying conclusion before moving on to a new arc would be enough. But as more gets introduced, however cool and engaging it may be, the greater the odds Kaina screws up the finale and ends up leaving a sour taste over the whole experience. Hopefully that won’t be the case! But only time will tell as we head into these last few episodes of the season.
