Category: 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.

Continue reading “Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 11 [Scale of Hope]” →

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.

Continue reading “Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 10 [The Builder]” →

Welcome everyone, to another (late) episode of Kaina and the Great Snow Sea! I really need to get my shit under control, these are taking way to long. Let this be a lesson about doing 4 shows in a season, you just get to busy. Speaking of busy, Kaina has a lot going on this week, so lets just jump right into it!

Starting off, lets talk about the war. So far? It’s fine. A pretty standard affair if I’m being honest. The most I can say is that it’s nice Kaina is actually trying to use tactics. Setting up a beach head to prevent ships from landing, cannons to whittle them down from afar, Orinoga planning a surprise attack on their command. I like that it’s all based on imperfect information. Orinoga doesn’t know that Valghia is kind of a tyrannical dictatorship at this point, nor that there really isn’t a command structure. Of course they won’t care if he attacks the capital, there’s nothing of value there. The more people he kills the less mouths there are to feed later. It’s a decent way to add tension to the fight while giving him and Amelothee some one-on-one time while the ships duke it out. Not bad really.

Continue reading “Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 9 [Insignia of an Ancient Castle]” →

Welcome everyone, to another week of Kaina and the Great Snow Sea! This is a slow week all thing considered, which is weird when you realize it’s also the week of their great escape. Still slow doesn’t mean bad, just that it was nice and relaxing. So without further ado, lets dive into the episode! And apologies for the delay, I had some computer troubles this week.

Getting into the episode, this week was a bit of a disappointment for me. As far as escapes go, it was barely an escape at all. Resolved almost immediately, they used a small raft already made by those they had befriended. While it was sweet seeing them come to an understanding and inspire the downtrodden, it wasn’t the most engaging way to leave Valghia. It becomes even more disappointing when you see what they give us after that: Recaps. A bunch of recaps. Well I say a bunch, it was more like 5 minutes. But 5 minutes of recaps in a 22 minute episode is still a sizeable chunk. Regardless of specifics, it simply wasn’t the most exciting way to spend the episode for me.

Continue reading “Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 8 [Lost at Sea]” →

Note: Turns out, I forgot to hit post on this earlier this week. Um… Oops?

Welcome all, to another week of Kaina and the Great Snow Sea! This week sees our heroes explore Valghia, make some friends, and maybe even begin a resistance movement. How do they do it? Well lets dive in and find out!

Immediately, I need to say that Valghia as a location is just awesome. Everything about it, from its construction to the people, is just inspired. It looks so massive and monolithic from the outside, this enormous titan of a ship. Yet the inside is a rickety strung together mess of wood, filled with small crevices and barely holding rivets. It’s clear how the inside has slowly been built up over the years, as there’s no uniformity to plan to the layout. Just people building what they can where they can. And this is all reflected in the people as well! All of them survivors and refugees of other nations huddled together in the bowels of the ship, no true comradery or national identity among them. Just like the ship itself, the very nation of Valghia is this hastily constructed “thing” that could shatter at any moment. I love it.

Continue reading “Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 7 [Fortress Nation]” →

Welcome everyone, to the halfway point of the season and another episode of Kaina and the Great Snow Sea! This is a bit of a slower week, even with Kaina’s pacing, and perhaps one of the chlllest rescue missions I’ve ever witnessed. But was it bad? Lets dive in and find out!

Starting off, like I said above, this was a bit of a slow week even by Kaina standards. That isn’t automatically a bad thing of course, if the content is interesting then what’s the problem, right? And there was definitely plenty of interesting stuff, as we saw Ririha’s rescue and our first up-close glimpse of Valghia. Toss in a few more small character moments, such as Ririha quietly whispering her thanks in the crate or her father thinking her dead and asking for her forgiveness, and you have a fine episode. Its just that, personally, I was hoping for something a bit more… impactful? Some kind of meeting between Kaina and the Admiral, or some other confrontation of sides. Something to set them against each other on a personal level beyond the Admiral just being a stereotypical sadistic bad-guy. So it wasn’t bad, just didn’t fully scratch that itch.

Continue reading “Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 6 [Ririha in a Cage]” →

Welcome everyone, to another week of Kaina and the Great Snow Sea! Continuing its upward rise through the season, this was another good episode for Kaina, with a lot to like. So lets skip the preamble and dive right into it!

Having talked about the CGI and the backgrounds for a while now, this week I wanted to start with something different: The music. Composed primarily by Kouta Yamamoto and Misaki Umase, Kaina has one of the best OSTs of the season. Not just in the uniqueness and style of the music, but in how its integrated into the show itself. Tracks like “In The Snowsea” merge beautifully with the immense majesty of the undersea roots. Meanwhile “K_hide_G” I think it is fits the chase of the undersea fish so well. While I haven’t heard enough to truly make a decision on it yet, I can certainly say its something I notice every week. Its the combination of music and background that really bring Kaina’s setting to life I feel.

Continue reading “Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 5 [Rescue Mission]” →

Welcome everyone, to another episode of Kaina and the Great Snow Sea! This week we finally reach civilization, as Kaina escapes the Valghians and gets pulled deeper and deeper into this conflict. What happens to Ririha? Who is the hot knight lady? Read on, and find out!

Starting off, I want to praise Kaina’s production. By and large it’s still the same flawed CGI work its always been. But this week I saw some actual… ambition, from Polygon Picture. The swordfight between Orinoga and Amelothee, the leaders of their respective expeditions, had a lot of cool shots. Some jank ones to, sure. The snow moved like blobs. And the ambitious ones were still rough around the edges. But stuff like the tracking camera and closeup swordplay lent their fight an energy that has otherwise been absent from Kaina. And then of course stuff like the backgrounds, such as the undersea roots or Atland at night, continue to be beautiful. Its like Kaina is slowly ramping itself up as it gets more and more used to its models and world, like this CGI approach and reuse is only making production easier as it goes.

Continue reading “Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 4 [Conflict at the Snow Sea]” →

Welcome back, to another week of Kaina and the Great Snow Sea! This week we reach the bottom of the tree, Ririha and Kaina get to know each other, and the villains introduce red-haired general lady. Lots to enjoy this week, so lets dive in!

Right off the bat, I want to say that I’m actually starting to get used to Kaina’s visuals. It still doesn’t look good, sure. But without the wrinkled skin old people to show us just how texture-less it is, it’s nowhere near as noticeable. It also helps that the Canopy Tree is a fantastic backdrop, and that Polygon Pictures actually did a decent job of compositing them onto it. They stood out, sure. But they still interacted with it, and were framed against it, pretty decently. Take the ledge scene for instance. They fit pretty well onto that small outcrop, and it felt like they interacted with it well. Most likely it, and the tree surrounding it, are CGI models themselves with a painted texture. But however they accomplished it, it didn’t look bad. At this point, it’s really just the hair that stands out. Most of the time.

Continue reading “Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 3 [Traveling Down the Orbital Tree]” →