Welcome all, to the penultimate week of Kemono no Souja Erin! This is a short one, only 3 episodes. I do that so that next week can have 3 episodes as well instead of 2, it’s almost like I plan these things ahead of time a bit. Enough with the preamble though, we have a lot to talk about so lets just jump right into it!
First up we have episode 45, “Bird in a Cage”. This one sees Damiya further his plot, assuming direct control over Seimiya and the capital at large, as well as going head to head with Ial. Overall I thought it was pretty good. Damiya needed it, this sort of “Damiya-centric” episode has been a long time coming. And what better time to really take proactive control and start making overt moves against all of our lead characters then right after you basically become second in line for the throne? If anything it feels like Erin is backloading a lot of the work that could easily have been built up during the episode 30-40 stretch. This is fine, better late than never, but I can’t help but feel like that middle stretch wasted a lot of time. That’s not what were here to talk about though, is it?
Focusing back on the episode, the core of it is Damiya and Ial’s face off. This was decent, I like that there was no stupid plot to poison Ial “intelligently”, Damiya just poisons both of them and then takes the antidote later. It was a decent way to get around Ial definitely having been trained to notice that sort of thing. As for why he’s poisoning Ial, it makes sense. Damiya is replacing all of Harumiya’s Sezan with ones loyal to him. He’s basically trying to replace the government with all of his own people now, which is common in dictatorships. It also makes sense why he would go after Ial, the captain of Harumiya’s guard and one of the few more loyal to Seimiya than himself, at least one of the few who couldn’t be bribed in any way. That all makes sense!
What weirds me a bit though is the whole “marriage” thing. Not that Damiya would go for it, dudes a creep and he wants to take control. No, what’s concerning is that absolutely no one has raised any fuss about this guy twice Seimiya’s age, her Uncle no less, basically tricking her into an arranged marriage not days/weeks after her grandmother dies. Does no one find this weird? Not Seimiya’s handmaidens, not Ial, no one in charge? I get that Damiya has basically unlimited political power now, but I still find it odd just how readily everyone is accepting it. Maybe I’m projecting modern cultural values on a show thats meant to take place in a medieval fantasy setting, I don’t know. But nothing in Erin has lead me to believe incest was really that chill.
That aside, there was one more thing that I really loved about the episode, in fact I would call it my favorite part, and that’s Kiriku slowly breaking out from Damiya’s grasp. We’ve seen this coming for a while now, ever since he came to Kazalm really. He’s been seeing his sister in Erin, that idea of purity that he joined Damiya specifically to protect. So seeing him slowly realize how Damiya is doing to Erin exactly what happened to his sister, locking that purity away in a cage and slowly killing it rather than letting it roam free like he promised. has been really rewarding. I feel like his character arc is coming full circle, something not many other characters in this show can claim. And as such, he’s quickly becoming one of my favorite characters in the show. So uh… Good job I guess Erin?
This brings me to episode 46, “Their Bond”. This is, for me at least, easily the best episode of the week. And that’s because it’s basically entirely about Erin and Ial’s relationship. After being poisoned and wounded he stumbles his way into Lilan’s shed where Erin nurses him back to health, unintentionally getting her even more deeply involved in the capital politics. Then they start talking about their lives and how they got here. Some soft music starts, Erin playing the harp Ial loves so much. They look longingly into each others eyes, both clearly wanting it but prevented due to their circumstances. I know that Erin isn’t a romance show, it hasn’t been important basically ever. But I still like seeing it handled so gracefully, especially as Erin is a young woman now so it’s a lot less weird, even with their age differences.
Naturally this interaction brings a lot of their previous conversations back into play as well, such as Erin seeing Ial almost like a Touda bred for war and projecting her concern for them onto him as well. Meanwhile Ial sees in Erin the chance for a life he never had, still refusing to reach out for it because of what he sees as his duty. They inevitably open up to each other more, this time being Ial’s turn to tell Erin about his family situation, and they start to understand each other more and more. It’s just… It’s really cute, I really like their relationship and how both of them are trapped in situations they can’t escape from. I honestly wouldn’t have minded if Erin had spent a lot more time fleshing this out, because it’s some of the best characterization Ial has gotten throughout the entire show.
Sadly however not all things can last, as eventually Damiya comes barging in searching for Ial. Now while our romance has to take a back seat, this does reveal some interesting things. For instance to hid him Erin has Lilan sit on Ial, asking both Ial to trust her and somehow convincing Lilan to trust Ial. It’s a nice little demonstration of how Lilan’s trust in Erin can extend onto those Erin is close to. Basically showing us that it is possible for people at large, not just Erin, to live with Beast-Lords peacefully. As for the Damiya side of things, he really just continues to taunt Erin, as well as officially dismissing Kiriku from his service. This is probably a good thing, as it frees Kiriku up to help Erin, though I do sort of wish his inevitable betrayal of Damiya still had consequences to it.
Finally we learn a bit more about why the Beast-Lords respond to Erin’s harp and not the others. Simply put, the other beastinarians were afraid, and the Beast-Lords could sense that. Combine that with their memory of the mute-whistles and you have a pretty good justification for why it works for some and not others. What this also does though is remind us about the time Erin had to blow the mute-whistle on Lilan, and how their supposed trust was broken like… 4 episodes. And sadly, from the looks of things, that appears to have been completely dealt with off screen. I’ll be honest, I’m a bit disappointed in this. I was really hoping for some kind of arc or growth here as Erin has regain Lilan’s trust to fly her again. Some kind of strife. Instead it seems like Erin just brushed over that, which is a real shame considering what’s coming up.
Finally we have episode 47, “Pure Night”. This is probably my most contentious episode of the week. Here Erin confronts Seimiya with the same truth she told Harumiya, simultaneously outing Damiya for all of his plots and informing her of the history of her kingdom. On the surface, on paper, this is… fine. It needed to happen, Seimiya needed some agency, this basically throws the ball into her court and sets her up to make her own decisions. In practice however, with the way Erin executed it, I just don’t buy it. There’s no reason for Seimiya to believe Erin over Damiya, especially without there being any real evidence against him. All Erin has is “Facts and Logic”, trying to walk her through how she came to these conclusions, without any real proof to back it up.
Beyond that, the situation itself is kind of weird. Are you telling me no one noticed the giant Beast-Lord fly in and land inside the pools? The thing that glows in the night sky as it fly’s, one of the most brilliant and awe-inspiring sights this setting has to offer? Are there no guards around, no one to watch over Seimiya? Like I get it, the Queen’s Quarter has never really seen war. But Damiya literally just replaced the entirety of the Sezan with his own men, no doubt specifically to prevent people like Erin from getting in and having a conversation with her. So for it to happen this easily, with so little consequence, well… It just feels off. I get it, I’m nitpicking here, this is hardly a massive issue with the show at large. But it’s something I couldn’t get out of my head.
As for Seimiya’s response to this, it’s about as expected. She seems to have accepted it all, finally resolving to walk her own path. She invites Erin to join her at Tahai Aze, to watch events unfold, but doesn’t ask her to intervene in any way, so that’s nice. I suspect Seimiya is going to accept Shunan’s marriage proposal, both to save her kingdom and to get back at/defy Damiya. That or she’s going to plunge her entire kingdom into war just to spite them both. It’s probably the former, but there’s always a chance Erin pulls a fast one. Still, it looks like next episode everything is going to come to a head, which makes sense looking at how little we have left. Honestly at this point I’m mostly interested in what happens to Erin and Ial, this whole political drama came to late to really be interesting.
So yeah, all in all this was a decent penultimate week for Erin. A little bit of nitpicking in episode 47, but episodes 45 and 46 were both pretty good so they make up for it. It’s a shame Erin took this long to really get going. Everything after the time skip was pretty good, felt like things were finally moving. But there was plenty before it that could definitely have been cut or combined. I’d wager there are a good 10 episodes throughout the series, not including the fair amount of recap, that could be repurposed into something great. While that isn’t a huge deal for a show as long as this, there’s still plenty of content, it definitely puts me in a similar position as I was with Twelve Kingdoms. Though where that was a bit more actiony and fun, this is more relaxing and dramatic.
Still, overall it’s been a decent time so far.
