Well, I guess it was to be expected, but this episode reverted back to Denyuuden’s original art style, and it really seems like the previous arc was the work of one particular animator who was in charge of it. Really, people like those need to be in charge of the animation of a whole series: that would really make for some eye candy. A great example of that was Shion no Ou: its budget was small, but its graphics were non-stop powerful.
Anyway, this episode still was really good in the way that it kept juggling its moral scale: Tiia suddenly turns out to have a very noble goal, and the people of Gastark are horrible bastards who murder innocent children on one side, yet compassionate towards each other on the other. I have to admit, nobody in this series is pure good or pure evil, and I appreciate that a lot in this kind of a fantasy series.
On top of that, the drama also really worked. Ryner is suddenly thrust into an environment completely different from the one he grew up in: a warm and inviting one. Half of the episode also was a bit of an aftermath, but I especially loved how Shion reflected upon what happened in the previous episode.
I’m really glad to see that this series is like Kobato, in the way that it’s finally getting really good here. However, Kobato managed to close itself off perfectly, and it was really well planned out. Is the same the case for Denyuuden? I definitely hope so, and this episode definitely gave me hope.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
I just love how this series has gotten awesome in it’s second half
In real life, people are essentially all the same. They have people that they care about, but they also sometimes hurt other people who have people that care about them. Even an evil person usually has someone they care for, but they can’t seem to think at all when they hurt others who all have people that care for them.
This can be seen in how they portrayed Tiia, who feels superior to humans. He hates them, and looks down on them with contempt and doesn’t have any qualms in killing them and consuming them. But, towards the other people like him, who have the magic eye powers, he seems to really care about them, and his ultimate goal is essentially to make the world a better place for people with those eye power’s who keep getting persecuted by others as monsters.
Meanwhile, Gastark is trying to bring peace by conquering the other nations. Although they try to limit the casualties of their conquest by using any means possible to conquer other nations including murder, assasinations, and killing those with the magic eyes, it still doesn’t excuse them from all the atrocities that they committed. I know that they believe strongly that what they do will bring them towards their goal, but can’t they understand that hatred breeds hatred? Although some of the nations were ruled by dictators, while some of the aristocrats acted like scumbags, thus caused their people to suffer, but by killing those people, they also made the people who cared for them to suffer, and essentially breed hatred and revenge, and thus goes the never-ending cycle over and over again. While the way they treat the people with the magic eye’s(who they kill in order to gain those crystals that currently serves an unknown purpose) is no different then some of the people they killed that they claim to have oppressed their people.
To put it simply, those Gastark people kill those with the magic eyes to gain those crystals which serve a currently unknown purpose towards the achievement of their goals, while Tiia is resisting against Gastark and is now hostile towards all humans who keep persecuting him and people like him. Therefore their enmity will probably cause a lot of casualties, and fueled by anger, hatred and revenge, they will keep fighting, and thus the never-ending cycle of fighting will continue.
I just think that if every person treated each other the way they want others to treat them, this world would have been a much more better place.
The last three episode has really gotten better. I do hope that it’ll have a second season.