Category: Finished Series: Adventure/Fantasy/Science Fiction

This episode almost seems like a compromise formed from the complaints I had last episode. Namely because the first half of the episode was what I look for in Kino and the second half was the most pointless fluff to grace the series to date. So let’s deal with the first part first which was quite good. Not the best KIno has to offer but still pretty solid and this week’s episode deals with a modern like country and it’s problem with radio waves. Kino is once again out of the protagonist seat and instead we have Riko, Shizu and Ti. Funny enough these three are not traveling for fun like Kino is and are instead looking for a country which they can settle down in. Considering their current role as secondary protagonists, I am guessing that plan won’t go so well. Sure enough the three find out that the relatively normal country has a problem with people going crazy every few years and committing horrible criminal acts. The reason behind this appears to be machines implanted in all the citizens brains from a time when they were slaves and a radio tower which sends out bad radio waves that cause people to commit horrible crimes. However it turns out that the radio tower is broken down and has not been operational in a very long time.

Therefore the horrible crime that happened in this episode where a teacher massacred his classroom of students, was in fact an act that he committed by his own will. Shizu once again shoots himself in the foot here by confirming this to the people, only to have them call him a liar and decide that he is now under control of the radio waves, despite how ridiculous that notion sounds. Again the characters in this episode don’t really act realistically and if you try you can certainly poke some holes into the setup. For example it’s fairly unrealistic that no traveler was sent out to investigate the radio tower before Shizu despite them living with it so long. But again, that’s not the point. The point here is the meaning behind the story and in this case I believe it’s people’s tendency to try to rationalize the illogical. It reminds me of conspiracy theory in a way as people, instead of accepting a simple truth, attempt to find some kind of underlying evil to blame. For example, there is a popular theory on the Jack the Ripper murders being a series of assassinations to cover up a secret marriage in royal family and orchestrated by a secret organization known as the freemasons. This theory is off course, ridiculous and falls apart when placed under closer scrutiny. However this theory is a far more comforting thought in that the murders had meaning and that these women at least died for a reason, as evil though it may be. This is at least a work of logic and easier to accept that over the far more terrifying truth. That a psychopath came to London and killed five women for absolutely no reason. For isn’t it far more reasonable if the devil or aliens made people do such horrible things? Surely ordinary people could not willingly commit such monstrous acts without remorse? No, of course it wasn’t their fault, it’s all because of the video games/corporations/government/satan/society/parenting/god or whatever you care to name.

So in this country they would prefer to believe that a giant evil radio tower was forcing innocent people to commit horrible crimes than accept that these crimes were of the people’s own choice. Unfortunately this belief is likely the reason for the high crime rate in the first place as the authorities do not punish those who commit these crimes and simply isolate them for a time before releasing them back into society. It’s up for debate whether there is anything to this radio story, it doesn’t make sense on a fundamental level but the criminal who killed that classroom did seem like he was behaving erratically as though there was a supernatural force at play. I somewhat wonder if this thing is thing is more of a subconscious suggestion and people just forsake any moral control because they are under the impression that they are being controlled. I could be possible that when Shizu lied about their being another radio tower to the man that just the very idea of it would be enough to push that man to become a criminal. All in all I do like this story though the payoff was a bit expected. But then there is the second half of the episode where we follow a day in the life of our resident grenade loli.

Let me preface this by stating that I like Ti. I like the dynamic of her looking emotionless while being prone to emotional outbursts, while Riko is a dog that looks happy go lucky when in reality he’s much more serious and Shizu is Kirito isekai-ed into Kino’s world to get karmically kicked in the nuts for all the crap he pulled in SAO. Ti wants the same thing that Riko and Shizu want but has an underlying desperation to her. To her, these two are her last chance for happiness and if anything whatsoever comes to threaten that then she will resort to any means necessary to protect it. I do really like that, she’s like an emotional time bomb who you never know when or how she will be set off. Her fascination with as well as endless supply of grenades only making her all the more dangerous. In a two cour series I won’t mind having half an episode to just show Riku and Ti bonding but as far as I know this is one cour and time is precious. So why is this prioritized over more important stories? You can’t tell me there were no stories to fit a half an episode timeslot. I mean it’s cute and all, almost makes me forget this girl was threatening to kill a baby just ten minutes prior, but don’t we have more important things to get to? As far as I know we have four episodes left and while I enjoyed my time with Kino I still feel like there is a well of untapped potential that it is failing to draw from. I hate to use the word disappointing as I feel this show doesn’t deserve the label but once again I feel that frustration I felt with Little Witch Academia, where in a good show could have been great if things just went a little differently.

Let me start this post by saying that this is indeed a fun episode of Kino. Once again the mantle of protagonist is taken from the duo and instead it’s Kino’s Master who leads this episode. Though the story is told by Kino as she approaches the country that is in the story. It is rather nice to see Kino’s master being a serious badass and we at least get a grasp on the kind of person who trained Kino to be as skilled as she is. I particular liked the Sepia tone used for the scenes that take place in the past, making them seem like an old time action movie. It is a nice funny little episode which could have acted as a nice breather from the series more darker stories. However here is where my own personal gripes come into this because while I enjoy this episode, it also has me rather dissatisfied and somewhat irritated. Again I will repeat that this is by no means a bad episode of anime but, quite frankly, this isn’t what I watch Kino for. I have mentioned before that the story selection for this anime was influenced by a poll run on fans favorite country and in that I felt that people tended to choose the stories which happen to make Kino be more active and cool as opposed to the stories which had great depth. I also notice another thread as well with this season and that is that out of all the stories so far, they have all had happy endings. Strange though it may be, I generally prefer Kino when it’s more dark and depressing rather than upbeat and optimistic. For example, my favorite episode from the previous series happened to be the second episode with the story about the three rabbits. It was dark, depressing but damn did it have an impact on me.

Thinking back over the old series I generally did prefer the darker episodes and this season may be feeling lacking because it is missing that particular darkness. Everyone picked the upbeat stories, the exciting stories over the more poignant and melancholic stories. Even the opening seems to display this with a poppy cheery theme that seems to not quite fit my image of Kino. We have the light side of Kino and we appear to be missing the darkness. There are of course episodes that still have parts of it but I think we are missing half of what makes Kino, Kino. That is why this bugs me, for as far as we know this series will only be one cour. It may very well be the last anime Kino will ever get for it was a miracle to get even this. So isn’t it such a shame to have episodes wasted on such simple stories like this? A story about people being badass isn’t a rarity in anime and I just tend to hold Kino at a higher standard.

Well I spent too much time discussing this and not much about the episode itself. Though there really isn’t that much to this. A country run by a corrupt police force attempts to frame masters companion with drug possession in order to steal money and get manual labor out of him. Master in turn ends up taking over the clock tower police station and holding a standoff against the police for three days until they literally have to pay her to leave. The only thing of interest to me was the aftermath with Kino revisiting the country to find that her master and companion have been hailed as heroes who were petitioned by the people to root out corruption in the police. Of course the flowery tale appears to have been made up by the police to save face from the fact that two random strangers had the entire police force on their last legs. Likely the reason for corruption getting rooted out in the government was due to greater public scrutiny after that colossal failure and a reform to gain public trust. The way that they avoided persecution by effectively glorifying the incident tends to mirror that of a person who dresses up his failures as secret successes in order to avoid admitting his own folly. As pointed out by Kino at the end when she mentioned about all the old men of the country happening to use canes due to her master shooting their legs during the incident. It’s a nice funny little tale but we are now past the halfway point so they better announce a second cour or make these last episodes something truly special indeed.

I would say there were plenty new watchers fooled into thinking this was Kino’s origin story and I admit to having the thought that the remake may be creating a new origin for her. But alas this is an episode focused on someone else entirely. Still I consider it a strong episode even if it got a bit too forced with the portrayal of the caravans people. I can forgive that as it’s not the first time that Kino has sacrificed characterisation in order to tell a story. In fact many a time in the old series did people turn into exposition puppets solely there to push the parable of the week. Kino in essence isn’t really about the characters but rather the underlying themes and questions brought up with the story being told. In terms of that we got a lot of meat here. The situation is that a girl is sold as a slave to a caravan in order to cover the expenses the country owes. However it appears the girl isn’t a very useful slave. Those the adults treat her badly due to feeling they got scammed and the children treat her even worse. However we have an odd situation where the slave girl is from a religious country that preaches in believing in the good in others and not hating other people. Thus her beliefs are put to the test by her horrible owners and the fact that she was sold off.

The funny aspect of this story is that while the slave girl does speak that she would never hate them and mention her beliefs, the look in her eyes does not suggest that this is what she truly believes. Instead it feels like the beliefs that she was indoctrinated with. She believes such because it was what she was taught to believe and despite that the beliefs themselves are not inherently wrong(Though naive) there’s something wrong in how she has ingrained them into herself. The big test comes when she realises that the herbs thrown into the soap were poisonous and attempts to warn the group. There is so much beautiful irony in this episode. One of the members of the caravan mentions that the girl is someone abandoned by luck but inadvertently by episode’s end she is the luckiest girl there. Indeed it was as if god himself turned events to her advantage. Her attempt at suicide was stopped by a coincidental bullying from one of the children. Fog stopped Kino from reaching the camp in time as she could have warned the group about the poisonous herbs. Though if Kino saw how they treated the slave girl, I wonder if she would have sat back and let them accidently kill themselves. The fact that the only member of the caravan to survive was someone who sympathised enough with her to free her shackles. Not to mention the beautiful line of him mentioning that his grandfather said that he shouldn’t be a picky eater and he inadvertently survived because he was a picky eater. The motorrad in the truck that could teach her how to drive and not to mention give her the perfect advice to combat her suicidal mindset.. Yes, everything worked out in this girl’s favor and that begs the question of whether her belief that the founder somehow knew things would work out for her was indeed true or if this was all plain coincidence.

Now when it comes to the girls abuse I actually thought the majority of this episode handled it well with it being rather low key instead of pushing it too hard. The point that really makes it forced is right before the caravan dies and the son of the caravan leader makes the suggestion that his father sell him the slave girl just for the express purpose of him proving himself a man by killing her. Yes this is quite forced, especially with it coming just right before they die to show that they are far beyond redemption. The funny thing is here that I can somewhat understand this kids reasoning. Judging by what Kino has to deal with, traveling is a dangerous job and isn’t one that allows for high moral ground. Even Kino isn’t against killing someone if the need comes. So I can understand just why this kid feels that it’s important for him to be able to kill. The logic fails here however in just how he is going to go about it. Killing someone who’s out to kill you is far different from killing and torturing a girl who can’t fight back. Of course it’s up for debate on whether this kid is truly capable of it as I can certainly see him talking a big game and losing his nerve once he gets to the act. I feel like this scene would have worked better if the father was in favor of the idea while other members of the caravan felt conflicted. Like the boy’s mother not being too keen on the idea of her son torturing a girl, regardless of who it is. If there was a failure in this episode it would be the adult’s reaction to the boys proposition. I don’t care how evil people are, suggesting this crap over a dinner table wouldn’t get unanimous acceptance.

That aside this was a very good episode that showed this shows strength over others. This episode could be a commentary about religion and how the ideals it teaches are hollow if you haven’t any resolve or real investment in them. It could be a message about abusive relationships and how the abused tries to see the best in their abusers despite all evidence to the contrary. The while altruism is an admirable virtue, it’s truly important to accept that you are only human and as such do not need to uphold a perfect ideal to be a good person. Or even a anti-suicide message for after all, you are inevitably going to die someday. So if you want to die then just live and it will happen eventually. Or quite simply, a moral that things may be at their darkest at times but the future always holds the potential for happiness. Not an easy episode to watch but I do love the food for thought. Keep it coming Kino.