Short Synopsis: The second half of Birdy’s past
Episode Rating: 9/10 (FUCKING EPIC!!!!!!)
Oh my god. This episode was utterly incredible, the best of an already superb and magnificent series. I still can’t believe how amazing and outstanding this show has turned out. I knew it had a splendid director already, but that’s not always the reason to get your hopes up since in 50% of the cases, they just don’t live up to his previous works. Well, I’m glad to say that THIS ONE CERTAINLY HAS! If it continues to get better and better like it is now and the ending doesn’t mess up the story, it could actually make my top 10. The second season is simply brilliant, rich, grandiose, glorious… and I’m going stop now before I run out of adjectives.
Those flashbacks that we kept seeing were incredibly sneaky. Birdy has had deal with a pretty cruel event in her past, and yet we were given no hint to that until this episode. All the scenes that we saw were either from right before or right after Violin got killed. And holy balls, I thought that the terrorists simply detonated a bunch of bombs in central tower, but they slaughtered the entire place completely. Now I also understand why Nataru is so hung up on his past, because what happened there was downright terrible: Ryunka was abducted and protected by the ones that we saw Nataru kill off in the past few episodes. That’s why he hates them so much, because they pretty much ruined the life he could have had with Birdy.
Violin’s death was especially sad since Birdy grew up seeing her not as an android, but simply as her mother. When she got destroyed, this image of her broke completely and Birdy wasn’t even allowed to say a proper goodbye to her, since in her mind, Violin turned into someone completely different from who she grew up with.
And oh my god, the animation! The godly animation! This episode looked downright awesome, especially when the incredibly messy visuals appeared. It looks like Kazuki Akane plans to go further with his specific style than he did in Noein, which is promising SO MUCH goodness for the final episodes of this series. While at first it indeed seemed to be going into the direction of Kemonozume, but the end of this episode truly looked unique, and even went where Kemonozume didn’t go.
The question now remains: who the heck was the person who carried Birdy away later? The only one who he reminds me of is the grown up Natoru, but this show doesn’t seem to be about time travelling, unlike Noein.
I don’t really know about the execution in this episode. The visuals were all over the place and without much congruency despite they being actually very good by themselves. It was rather incongruous to put some cool off-model animation in what I gather is meant to be a more sombre episode. The crying cartoony drawings were practically laughable.
I don’t think they modulated the animation particularly well either. Fancy animation on twos and maybe even ones right beside some extremely limited pieces of movement is just too jarring for me.
This episode managed to set an already high bar even higher. I really enjoyed it.
The messy animation was very interesting, since it was not at all present in previous episodes flasbacks, if I recall correctly. If so, then the same moments in the series were animated in two opposite styles, and I wonder what’s the idea behind that?
With so many episodes still to go, I guess we’ll get a mix of both “realistic” and “expressive” styles in the following action scenes.
yeah… this was absolutely amazing – the animation style used was pretty epic
I’ve never liked Birdy Decode before, but now, I’m addicted to the series and the characters
I have an idea about the weird animation in the memory sequence. Maybe since her memories of that time were fuzzy…the animation wanted to show that by looking…unusual.
Perhaps you’d like to know who are the little animators who did these splendid pieces of work, i.e. Niho Tomoyuki, Norio Matsumoto (one of the best animators out there, this one just HAS to direct a series on his own…) and Ryousuke Sawa.
And yes, these guys animated many scenes from Noein. And from Naruto. One of the best of them, actually : episode 133, the epic fight between Naruto and Sasuke.
@DmonHiro
That’s actually a very good point! Perhaps the studio really wanted a hand at different styles of animation and decided that the best place to include the simplistic stuff like this would be in a dream sequence of sorts. Yeah, that makes sense.
Adjectives? More like hyperbole M I RITE?
Anyway, I completely agree. Almost shocking how well the second season has come out.
Ooh, this was indeed damn excellent. I’m looking forward to your “DAMN IT BIRDY JUST MADE ME DO IT AGAIN AS IF IT’S NOTHING” posts ;p