Short Synopsis: Casshern meets a woman who wants to create a bell for her church.
Highlights: Interesting twist on religious themes.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
The thing I like best about this series is not the main storyline, of how Casshern has supposedly killed the unkillable Luna, but rather the random stories that shape the world around it. At this point, I really don’t care how Casshern killed that Luna, all I want to see is those excellent stories, where Casshern walks around and meets random people, who each have found their own way of living after the apocalypse he caused. The fact that it happened is at this point just necessary backstory.
This episode is about a robot-woman, who wants to be create a bell in order to proof that she can bring something new to the world. I personally loved the architecture of the factory that she planned to put it on, and the one who came up with it deserves a lot of credit. She actually tries to turn Casshern into that bell, but that one obviously fails.
In any case, I really love what the creators tried to tell with this episode, how the girl tried to create faith by sounding the bell to lonesome travellers in the area, and how the robots alongside her just want to play games and not care about anything.
And well, I guess that Ringo and Ouji are this series’ Ricardo and Lilio (from El Cazador). There’s no reason for them to go the same path as the lead characters, but they just do. Just like El Cazador: it was annoying at first, but after a while it just became part of the series’ premise, and I got bothered by it less and less, and the same thing applies to Casshern Sins. In fact, I found it a nice touch to see them meet up with the woman after Casshern left her, so that we could exactly see how she developed.
Casshern is a chick-magnet. At this point, I could see where this series is probably going before it proceeds to the conclusion of the main storyline. I hope this is not how they got this series up to being 24-26 episodes.
Like the 4th episode (and probably the 8th as well, judging from the preview), this feels more like a filler to me. While it gives the people behind the show a chance to showcase their talents, episodes like these are more of a time-waster for me. I prefer that they just get to the point and cut down on episodes about hot-but-somewhat-whacked female robots that will probably never appear again in future episodes.
By the way, I’d like to note that earlier in the episode, Casshern seems to have been drawn to look younger than he usually does. This is probably to highlight Rhythbell’s more mature character design, but I don’t really know.
So Casshern encounters and becomes close with female robots based on different female character stereotypes… I guess there is some sort of harem element to this series. I’m not really big on the concept (I’d really rather see more development between Casshern and Lyuze), but it could have been worse.
Well, I agree that Casshern’s chick-magnet skills are a bit on the unbelievable side, but this is a travel-anime after all. It would just get boring showing Lyuze meet Casshern over and over, and the people that Casshern meets help shape the world that this series takes place in.
But yeah, the creators could think of showing small references to the recurring character in every episode. That would give the a more connected feel to this episode.
Creating a church?! Sorry, but that wasn’t in the story as far as I understand it.
The robot woman used to work at that old factory, and so did the parts-building robots who now only play games all day. The robot woman however didn’t want to die without doing anything, so she started building the tower atop of the factory. The reason for building the tower, was because she wanted to create a bell at the appex of that tower. Once she sounded the bell, she wanted the surviving innabitants of the world to understand that you still can create something beatifull in a dying world.
The robot woman is also drawn to casshern because of him still being in such a perfect condition. I wouldn’t say she’s in love with casshern it’s rather the affection a mechanic would have for a piece of machinery.
She also wasn’t such a good person. She killed the other robots and made them a part of that bell she was building, that could be the reason why the sound the bell created was so horrible.
For a moment there casshern also wanted to become a part of that bell, so that he could feel he could bring something to the world beside destruction. That’s why he feigned to lose consciousness when tried to use those strange candles to make him fall asleep. However just before he was crushed he decided to leave, because he figured he still had something he needed to do.
In the end, the horrible sound of the bell only managed to move casshern. He once he heard the sound of the bell, he felt for the first time, that this world was still beautiful, and he also came to understand that even if the world is coming to an end, there are still people who try to create something new.
This episode also showed the casshern seems to be starting to have more control of his own actions, even when he is attacked. This was the first episode where he didn’t leave a trail of destruction in his wake, but actually managed to give some hope to the people he interacted with.
[i]But yeah, the creators could think of showing small references to the recurring character in every episode. That would give the a more connected feel to this episode.[/i]
As well as the non-recurring ones. That way, episodes like this (and the 4th) won’t seem like a filler, even if it is one. I guess they could do that and cut down Casshern’s screentime a bit while at it.
[i]The robot woman is also drawn to casshern because of him still being in such a perfect condition. I wouldn’t say she’s in love with casshern it’s rather the affection a mechanic would have for a piece of machinery.[/i]
I’ve only seen the raw vid so far, and it simply just doesn’t seem like that (or at least, just that). But I guess, when you consider the trend of how every female robot who does not have a “special someone” seems to develop some kind of attraction/affinity for Casshern, but none of which has clearly ended up in romance, maybe you’re right.
——–x—–
A thought occured to me just now. Is it just me, or does that woman in the preview resemble Lyuze’s sister? Maybe it’s just the red hair, but I don’t know.
The red-haired woman is probably Leda (who we saw with Dio before), if I had to guess.
“I’ve only seen the raw vid so far, and it simply just doesn’t seem like that (or at least, just that).”
Well, if you were able to understand the dialogue, you would have catched lines like
at 10:04 “でもやっと鐘を作るだけの材料がそろったんです”
“待っていたの、私、あなたを待っていたの”
at 12.38 “あなたも鉦の美しい一部になるのよ。 どうせ、あなたがやることないんでしょう？だったら鉦になりなさい。
which pretty much proves my point.
So no, she’s was not in love with casshern. She wanted to turn him into a part of the bell, to fullfill her own wish to bring something new to the world, like explained in my previous post. There’s really nothing that points to her being in love with casshern and the reason why she is hugging him earlier in the episode is because she is intrigued by how his body constantly renews itself. It’s something she as a mechanic notices. The only time she really show some real affection toward him is at 19.15 where she hugs him, but that’s probably more because he managed to get her to understand that what she had created was not all for nothing. Because if she really was all hot and horny for casshern, why the hell would she stay and toll som imaginary bell? GAH, it just annoys me that you try and argue with me when you don’t really understand the dialogue.
I also wish psgels would change is post so they at least represents the story how it really is. If you don’t trust my knowledge of the language at least check one of the subbed episodes and you will get all this verified.
Ok, I fixed it. Thanks for those corrections, Aegd. 🙂
And indeed, now that you mention it, the only girl who fell for Casshern so far for rather shallow reasons is Ringo. Lyuze like you mentioned isn’t really in love, but rather has a strange sense of pride, and it’s also obvious that the girl who’s obsessed with fighting would be attracted to Casshern, since the guy is indistructable and all.
Take it easy, man. I saw the subbed vid, and I must say that I’m amazed at how accurate the things you said were. As I was watching it, I was expecting the things to turn out the way you described it, and basically that’s what happened. Just how many times did you watch it?
It wasn’t even that much of an argument, what I said, so please calm down. And I did say that I’ve only seen the raw vid then.
I’ve realized that Ohji and Ringo would probably have been killed if they arrived at that factory (kinda looks like an oil rig) before Casshern did, which wouldn’t have been unlikely considering that they had wheels and Casshern’s just travelling on foot and moping most of the time. So yeah, this episode shows Casshern making a positive difference in someone’s life. But was this the first episode that he didn’t leave a trail of destruction behind? I think that honor goes to the 4th episode… or was it the 3rd (excluding the part that picks off from the 2nd)?
This episode also shows more insight into the kind of person Casshern really is, and how much more he now knows what he has or wants to do in life than he did before. I’m talking about his reasons for deciding not to proceed with becoming part of the bell, and the things he said to Rhythbell after rescuing her from being trapped.
Thanks psgels.
Take this as an advice from another language student. It’s easy to get concieted and think that you understand more than you do. It happens to me a lot and it’s even easier when you watch anime and can follow the story even if you can’t understand all of the dialogue.
This is something that still happens for me when I watch series that have lots of technical or otherwise specialized dialogue (tytania, one outs, gundam 00) and I sometimes have to stop myself and really think “wait a minute, how much of that did I REALLY understand?”. It’s at that point I usually a pick up a dictionary. 😀
I also recommend you to start writing down new vocabulary that seems important. All kind of verbs and nouns that are frequently used. Try and focus on words that you think are in common use. If you are learning kanji i recommend you that you try and write the words a couple of times. If you are not learning kanji, I very much urge you to start, because it will give you a better understand of the language and how words and sentances connect. It will make it easier for you to break up sentances and pick out words that you wouldn’t otherwise understand.
to CASSHERNxLYUZE
I usually only watch a episode once, but I if I encounter some dialogue that’s complicated and I don’t understand, I usually pause and look it up. I think that’s the best thing to do. Series that have a lot of advanced or technical dialogue usually needs to be watched twice before I can get a good grasp at what’s going on.
Obviously when I posted my second reply I had to watch parts of the episode again so I could take out the dialogue. It would be pretty strange if I could remember that by heart 😀