Category: Currently Watching:

Vinland Saga S2 – 13 [Dark Clouds]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Vinland Saga

Welcome everyone, to the 2nd half of Vinland Saga Season 2! This episode marks the end of Thorfinn and Einar’s (mostly) idyllic life on the farm and the beginning of reality rearing its ugly head. As you might have guessed, this isn’t very good for them. Now without further ado, lets dive in!

Now as you might have guessed before now, slavery is kind of bad. Even when you have a “kind” master like Ketil, someone who lets you work your way to freedom and generally doesn’t treat you like shit, it still isn’t a very nice thing. We’ve seen it a lot with the retainers, and even in small moments like Arnheid and Einar not remembering what freedom feels like. This arc though, started by this episode, is all about diving into slavery proper. About tearing back that veil and showing us that, for all his power and wealth, Ketil is in the minority of slave owners. Most are just terrible people who use and abuse their slaves. And that’s what Gardar represents. He is that average slave striking back. The first creeping tendril of reality finding its way onto the paradise that was their life on the farm.

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Wolf’s Rain – 11/12 [Vanishing Point/Don’t Make Me Blue] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Throwback Thursday, Wolf's Rain

Welcome all, to another week of Wolf’s Rain! Apologies for the delay, I had a tattoo appointment today and that took up most of my time. This is a big week for our villains, with lots of important drops, so lets dive right into it!

First up we have episode 11, “Vanishing Point”. This episode felt like it was all about the Nobles. Orkham, Darcia, and this new one named Jagara. Starting with Orkham, this really surprised me and I’m honestly not sure if I like it or not. The dude makes his first on-screen appearance and then just immediately dies. Does this demonstrate Jagara’s power, that she can so easily waltz into another Noble’s city and just end it? Yeah. But so would have simply letting Jagara replace Orkham in full. The Nobles are already terrifying. All this does is show us something we already knew, that they weren’t all necessarily friendly with each other. It just feels unnecessary to me to spend all that time setting Orkham up just to use him to prop up someone new that we are just now meeting. Even if they are our new primary antagonist.

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Vinland Saga S2 – 12 [For Lost Love]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Vinland Saga

Welcome everyone, to the halfway point of season 2 of Vinland Saga! This week is more Olmar and Canute, but it connects deeply back to Thorfinn and his struggle. Some very interesting things to talk about this week, so lets dive in!

It should be obvious, both from the episode and that opening, that Olmar is the centerpiece this week. On the surface level, it’s all pretty straightforward. Olmar gets insulted, his pride is wounded, he starts a fight, Canute uses that as an excuse to take action against the farm, exactly as he planned. Of course it wasn’t perfect, Canute didn’t account for Thorgil, not him being there nor being strong enough to take down around 10 men. Seriously, what is it with dudes with “Thor” in their name? Luckily that doesn’t really matter to Canute, because no matter how strong Thorgil is. One man can’t beat an army, and that’s what Canute has. Ketil was screwed the moment Canute decided he wanted his farm. If anything this willingness to throw away the lives of his own men says more about Canute then it does Thorgil and Olmar.

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Wolf’s Rain – 9/10 [Misgivings/Moon’s Doom] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Throwback Thursday, Wolf's Rain

Welcome back everyone, to another week of Wolf’s Rain! This week see’s return of Blue and the Hunter, Darcia makes a new friend, and the gang has a pest problem. Lots to talk about, so lets jump right in!

Before we get to deep into that though, I wanted to address some concerns regarding last weeks post. Namely, I think my concerns regarding Cheza were misunderstood. My fear was that Wolf’s Rain would treat her as a sort of McGuffin. That, based on her initial first impression, she would never become more. I wasn’t criticizing Wolf’s Rain, we had just met her after all, it would be ridiculous to do so. I even pointed out ways in which Wolf’s Rain had already started to avoid that. Rather I wanted to talk about what could happen in a lesser series. Something that I’ve seen anime screw up before, on this very website. So far though? Cheza isn’t bad. We haven’t seen enough to really judge her at all, I feel. At least until this week that is.

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Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 11 [Scale of Hope]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Kaina and the Great Snow Sea

Welcome everyone, to the grand finale for Kaina and the Great Snow Sea! Or at least the most finale we are going to get until the movie in October. I won’t lie, this week was a bit of a disappointment for me. Kaina really screwed the pooch at the end. There’s a lot of reasons for that though, so lets dive into them!

Starting off, more then anything Kaina’s ending felt rushed. It resolved more plot points in the last 3-4 minutes, from Valghia’s surrender to visiting the Canopy to convincing Ririha’s father of the Great Canopy Tree, than the other 20 minutes of the show combined. Considering Ririha lost the map in a fire, which apparently didn’t matter at all, it feels like an entire episode is missing from this finale. Some kind of “This is done, where do we look next” sort of epilogue. Knowing there is a movie coming softens this blow a bit, sure. But as a standalone season of TV, Kaina’s ending doesn’t feel that good. Considering the potential it had at the start of the season, that’s what I mean by disappointing.

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Vinland Saga S2 – 11 [The King and the Sword]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Vinland Saga

Welcome everyone, to another week of Vinland Saga! This week sees Canute and Thorfinn enter onto a headlong collision course, meanwhile Ketil runs into an old friend of ours and Canute shows he’s a bit of a baddass. Without further ado, lets dive into it!

Starting off, with Thorfinn in such a good place it’s not surprising that we got another Canute episode this week. And much like last weeks, Canute continues to show just how much he’s changed from that young man all those years ago. Case in point, despite still hating swords and violence, as seen by his reactions and his complete disdain for his armaments, he still trains with them, publicly, to reassure his warriors and gain their approval. As with so many things we see this week, such as his resolution to requisition farms to pay for his army of believing he needs an army at all, it’s a microcosm of Canute’s new attitude. Simply put: He’s become a Utilitarian. The ends justify the means, so long as an action results in more people being safe/happy then those who suffer, it’s worth it. And unsurprisingly, it’s kind of hypocritical.

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Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 10 [The Builder]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Kaina and the Great Snow Sea

Welcome everyone, to the penultimate episode of Kaina and the Great Snow Sea! This week sees some questionable decisions, both in universe and out. What am I talking about? Well lets jump right in and talk about them.

Right off the bat, I have to ask… did the people of Kaina not know you could… melt… snow? Into water? Is that going to be how the Sage made as much water as he wanted? He just knew how to put a pot over some fire? I really hope that isn’t what just happened this week, because that would be a massive disappointment if so. Not only does it directly undermine the main conflict of the world, IE resource scarcity, it makes every character in the show seem like a moron. Especially when they have steam baths/saunas, which they presumably use… Snow… for. At least I hope they aren’t using their precious water resource for that. Suffice to say, if Kaina doesn’t give us a justification for what happened and what this means next episode, I will be massively disappointed.

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Wolf’s Rain – 7/8 [The Flower Maiden/Song of Sleep] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Throwback Thursday, Wolf's Rain

Welcome everyone, to another week of Wolf’s Rain! This week is a bit of a lore dump, but it’s an interesting lore dump, which is how it should be. We learn more about Darcia and Cheza while Cheza finally meets up with the wolves, all things I wasn’t expecting to happen for a while yet. So without further ado, lets dive into the episodes!

So starting off, the visuals. This is the first week that I really felt some cracks in Wolf’s Rain‘s production. Not due to any scheduling issues yet, more just the limitations of the time in which it was made. I’m of course talking about the CGI airship fight at the start of episode 7. It felt… off to me. The ship moved weirdly, the lasers didn’t look very good, and the whole sequence moved in a confusing manner. Once we got past that Wolf’s Rain was back to its old self for the most part, but this sequence definitely took me out of it after an otherwise stellar start. Beyond that, I also found the way Cheza fell through the air to be kinda silly. I get it, she’s spinning like a flower in the wind, it’s funny and fits how she’s styled. But it was also a little silly.

P.S. Apologies for the delay by the way, I had some trouble getting images this week.

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Vinland Saga S2 – 10 [Cursed Head]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Vinland Saga

Another week, another episode of Vinland Saga! This week sees a timeskip, the return of Canute, and the first signs of conflict for the farm. Lets jump right into it!

Starting off, time skip! That’s right, 3 years have passed. 3 years on the farm, 3 years of cutting down the forest, 3 years for Thorfinn to figure his shit out. Does this skip over a lot of stuff, is it an excuse for Thorfinn to progress off screen? Yes, a little bit. But do I think it will enable a greater story because we can see these changes through Thorfinn’s actions to future events? Also yes. This sort of time skip, where a character truly comes into their own and changes substantially, are only a problem when a series fails to show us how said character has changed. And I don’t think that Vinland Saga will have that problem. Not with how much focus it’s already given to Thorfinn. What I’m saying is, to anime-onlies watching Farmland Saga for the first time, don’t worry. The time skip is good.

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