Deltora Quest – 10

Ah, I’ve been dying for the next instalment of Deltora Quest, and once again I must say: whoa! The Yurunai have really gotten more depth than you’d expect at first sight. At first, I believed that they were just the citizens of a city who were a bit too enthusiastic about their hygiene, but once again this anime surprises me to actually give them a reason to. I mean, when you live right next to a cave, covered with highly poisonous mushrooms that can kill you just by touching, it’d be perfectly plausible for these people to live cleaner than usual, to protect their people. There was just a huge need for this. I can imagine this fear for contamination lapsing into obsession over time. The origins of this obsession has never had anything to do with the shadow lord at all, though I do suspect that he did help a bit in making it worse. That’s the thing I love about Deltora Quest, unlike other brainless shounen series like Gurren Lagann, this one actually makes you and it characters think about the situations and settings. Not even one event doesn’t get backed up or explained by others. Heck, even the Deus ex Machina make sense! You just know that Tira would come back after leaving Lief, Barda and Jasmine, simply because she forgot their swords. For once you can see a deus ex machina come because it makes sense, instead because of blatantly obvious storytelling. The same with Fillie, the Yurunai said that they sent Fillie into the tunnel, though the creature would be smart enough to actually hide and wait for Jasmine to come and pick him up. When he saw her in danger, he obviously wanted to defend her. And regarding the Dai-Master sneaking up in the tunnel, obviously a smack by Tira hurts, but she remains a little girl, and when she smacks you on the head with a frying pan, I can see that you’d only lose consciousness for a short while, when compared to a punch from Barda, for example. There’s also one thing that makes Deltora Quest really unique among the shounen genre: the fact that killing off the big boss doesn’t mean the end of his subordinates as well. We already saw this when Thaegan was temporarily dead, but now we see this for real, as the Dai-Master won’t be getting up soon in the state he’s in. And still, the Yurunai are perfectly fine. And also the food! I never expected to be such a deep meaning to it, when it gets sold back to Tom’s shop like that. And the strange thing is, I don’t recall Tom actually selling food at all. Also, how did the Yurunai get so much food to begin with? These questions will probably get answered in the next episode. It’s a shame you almost hear nobody about this series, but I’m glad that it’s actually being subbed.]]>