Deltora Quest – 09

Short Synopsis: It’s now clear why the shopkeeper warned Lief not to take that road, it leads to the city of a very strange and strict religious civilization. Good: If you’re looking for a fantasy-adventure anime: go for Deltora Quest. Bad: Rather bad animation this time, but that can also be because of sloppy encoding or fansubbers. Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 It’s interesting. The new season brought us a lot of goodness, but none have been able to beat Deltora Quest on the fantasy-adventure part so far. I may have said this before, but I love how much thought has been put behind the different cases of the anime. This time, after having fallen off their “horses”, Lief, Barda and Jasmine are taken in by the Yurunai, who throw in a number of Kino no Tabi-vibes. They’re the perfect example of people clinging way too much to their religion. They believe everything should be clean, they abhor animals (bad news for Jasmine), and they keep repeating the same rituals over and over again. Especially the first part of the episode moves very slow, as they keep repeating “clean yurunai” over and over again. This has been a regular pattern for Deltora quest. The first half of he case shows how the people behave, without showing any kind of bias, except from the different characters. That’s another thing I like about this anime. Even though you know who are going to be the good guys and the bad guys, the director doesn’t choose sides, unlike other anime, in which you can see a bad guy with an evil grin when nobody’s looking. Now that I mention it, I’ve always found such a plot event a bit lazy. It’s better than to give no sign of this at all, but when you see a character with such an evil smile, most often than not it’s included because it has to be included, and not because it fits in the storyline. Deltora Quest does a perfectly good job of merging these events with the storyline, so that it doesn’t need to send off lazy hints. And another thing: chocolate. I was surprised to find out that the creators even added such a detail to this storyline. I never thought about it, but it does make sense that Lief has never had chocolate before in his life. Barda recognized it, because he once was in the palace, where it would have been perfectly possible to get the chance to eat some. It’s details like these that make this anime even better.]]>