There really is something beautiful about the Mokkania arc. It’s only two episodes long, and it’s not as complex as the Colio or the Enlike arc, but nevertheless it was in no way inferior to them thanks to its portrayal of its three central characters: Mokkania, his mother and Winkery. And it makes things look so damn easy!
Seriously, this show is doing what every show should be doing: give ample time and development for every minor character; EVEN the villains. In fact, the only static characters in this series are the main ones: the Armed Librarians, Hamyuts Meseta and the major church people, who still have plenty of time left. The rest of the cast is truly well-rounded and developed. A true rarity, especially without coming across forced. It seems so easy to just give these minor characters that will never return again a bit of a lame backstory, or just not put in the time and effort to develop them in a short time-frame.
And that’s just one of the things why I like this series. Winkery was so a-typical compared to your regular anime side-villain. Despite being against the lead characters, he has a personality, he’s intelligent and actually can hold a normal conversation with his enemies. There’s no side that refuses to listen to the other, nor any cheesy ideals: Hamyus knows that she has made a lot of enemies with the church, and has no intention to talk their grunts out of their plans. That woman is so refreshing in the middle of “let’s all stop fighting and become friends”-anime. And that’s exactly what characters like Noloty and Mokkania are for: they’re meant to show that that’s just another way of thinking, rather than the truth, which a lot of anime lead characters seem to suffer from, trying to push the hypocritical pacifist ideals of the lead characters as the only right way.
I also loved that little hint to the Colio-arc, in which we see Winkery book a room for Colio and his gang as they prepare to bomb Hamyuts. It’s interesting that such a little thing can give the organization of the Church so much extra depth: it shows that people like him aren’t just focused on their own task, but instead take care of a lot of smaller administrative businesses as well. Even those so simple as booking a room.
Rating: *** (Awesome)
How many episodes will this series have?
There still Volken and his betrayal, and the big battle between the Librarians and the Church.
Your last point in your third 3 paragraph is exactly why I did not like Volken or Noloty. The same way Noloty annoyed Enlike into being good guy is what I feared Volken was going to do to (The Great and all powerful) Hamyuts. I really hope he never gets that opportunity.
This was very good arc, I really enjoyed it.
I also like this anime take on villians and how they are dealt with. The usual arrogant sociopaths with super powerful abilities like the villian of the first arc or book-eater of the second are shown to be rather pathetic individuals at the core.
They both get defeated in seconds, without much of a fight by people, who were supposed to be nothing, mere tools in the schemes of the Church. The focus isn’t on the fighting and magical powers (which are interesting to watch though). None of the villians were actually defeated by the Hamyus Metsu. In each arc the true fight of the heroes was to regain their humanity and once it was accomplished villian never stood a chance.
Well we’re slowly nearing the 2nd half of the series and I feared that they wouldn’t nearly reach the later parts of the novels, yet they appear to do a really good job.
Of course the 黒蟻の迷宮 novel is about 50 pages shorter than 愛する爆弾 (which took 4 episodes) and still about 20 pages shorter than 雷の愚者 (which was 5 episodes)…as I’m not anywhere near the 3rd novel yet I can only assume if it is over now.
We are getting a new focus next week, but the focus of the 4th book seems to be very different from what I’ve seen in the preview…so maybe we get a side story first.
But still we’re already nearing 神の石剣 and I strongly hope that we will get either the whole 9 novels into those 26 episodes or something else….I just don’t want an anime original ending
This anime is classified under the “seinen” category that is anime generally targeted to 18-30 audience (adult or mature people if you want)
Some examples are Monster and Akira.
Anime with the “let’s all stop fighting and become friends” mentality are quite often shounen anime.
The targeted audience is usually, but not restricted, to people being in the age range 10-18.
For instance, Naruto and Dragon Ball.
This is the reason why Seinen characters are often more complex and not so idealistic (and idealized)than their shonen counterparts.
Isn’t Hamyus Meseta a fine example?
An excellent definition of “Seinen”
http://www/animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/lexicon.php?id=119
Wow, what an episode. I’m so glad I decided to stick with this series.
“hypocritical pacifist ideals of the lead characters as the only right way”
Hahah, you just watched too many shows, psgels… You just seek creativity in characterization and directing (to remind you, not everyone does, e.g. kids, teens, people that does not watch too much movies? oh well).
But about the episode, yes, atypical, not conventional, it’s always interesting to see something not quite the way that we expected.
This is probably the strongest arc of Armed Librarians so far, I very much enjoyed it.
Hopefully there is more to this anime, I don’t want it to end so soon.
This show has suprisingly grown on me. I never know where the story will lead. Plus, Hamyuts makes a great female lead. It’s nice for once to see a strong woman character with actual intelligence and balls of steal. lol
In the preview, I was wondering if the girl Metta??(dude in bowler hat) was sleeping with is a young Hamyuts? She was wearing glasses, but how many dark haired chicks with HUGE boobs are there? It would make an interesting backstory…
My goodness Hamy summed up Mokkania and Winkery’s end well they really are both “dumb kids”, not that it detracts from the quality but I have to agree with her in seeing what they’ve done as a total waste because neither realized or perhaps somewhat denied the truth. And in the end they did were still dumb kids, and taking the easy way out rather than atoning for it with Mokk just made my blood boil. In any event this show just keeps getting better, it just retroactively fits each of its details to create such a lively world. This shows become my fave for the season now!