Welcome everyone, to the first post of not only the Winter season but 2023 as a whole! Well… first series post, the first impressions don’t count. Anyways, the first series of the year is Vinland Saga! A favorite of mine, I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time, so lets jump right into it!
Starting off, lets take a more in depth look at the production. Unsurprisingly, Vinland Saga isn’t particularly animated. And that’s fine! It’s not a show that needs to be. Vinland Saga, at least in this arc, isn’t particularly kinetic or action oriented. It’s a slow moving, picturesque kind of series. A lack of fast-moving action animation is only a problem when a series tries to be such and fails. And Vinland Saga isn’t. That isn’t to say it doesn’t have it’s problems of course. There are a few wide shots that seem rather… flat, and lifeless. Stuff like the held wide shot of Thorfinn and Einar with no mouth, eyes or nose. Held for so long, with so little detail, it feels… off. Still, even with that and the lack of heavy action, Vinland Saga looks pretty good so far. Hopefully it doesn’t fall off as the story picks up.
Getting in to the actual story, many of you have probably noticed how little focus Thorfinn actually has. Considering he was our lead character for all of Season 1, it probably feels weird to see side-characters like Einar and Olmar get so much attention. But this is by design! Thorfinn is at his lowest point right now, he’s a whipped dog who thinks he deserves it. We can see this in scenes such as Einar talking about the warriors that sacked his home, and how he describes them as beasts. Or the derision directed towards Olmar for his focus on combat and being a warrior. Right now Vinland Saga deriding Thorfinn’s old way of life and how he carried himself. How he lived by tearing others down, rather than building things up like Ketil and the farmers do. He’s lost his pride.
Contrast that with Ketil’s son, Olmar, who is very similar to how Thorfinn was. He wants to be a warrior, to leave this idyllic farmstead and carve his name into the world with his sword. It’s a dream we’ve seen shared by many younger characters throughout Season 1. And just like Season 1 showed us, that way lies blood, death and despair. Just like when Thorfinn was a child, Olmar doesn’t realize what he has and what it is he is asking to become. But unlike Thorfinn, is old enough to figure some of it out. We see his concern for the wheat as the drunk soldiers stumble through it, how despite his desire to be seen as someone separate from his father he still does care for this land. Olmar is a rebellious teenage asshole. But like most teenage assholes, he can still learn.
As for Ketil himself, so far Vinland Saga is selling him as this “Good” slave owner. He buys them, tells them to expand his farm and that he will buy their crops from them at fair price, and that they can then buy themselves back. He’s presented as the benevolent man, and in a lot of ways he is! We see how he still works the fields with his people, how it doesn’t matter if they are Dane or Englishman, all is fair on his land. Sure there are some bad apples on his farm, people who don’t share the same point of view. But by and large this place sounds like heaven, right? Well we need to remember that, despite all of that, Ketil is still a slave owner. And there’s still of time to learn some unsavory things about Ketil. Only time will tell if he’s truly good.
Finally we come to Einar, who is simultaneously putting Thorfinn down and dragging him up. Einar has always been an interesting character to me. He’s someone who has lost everything, multiple times over. And yet here he is, willing to once again build a new a life in a new land. He doesn’t focus on how he’s a slave, but rather the chance to be free. Doesn’t linger on the wrongs of the day but a pretty girl in front of him. Of course some grudges are there, such as his hatred for the Danes who burned his farm. But that’s become more of a hatred for warriors and those who fight in general, English or Danish. He certainly doesn’t hold it against Thorfinn or the other Danish slaves working on the farm. In his eyes, anyone willing to work and build a life is better then those who destroy.
It makes you wonder how he’s going to react when he learns who, and what, Thorfinn is. Will he be as forgiving to the man he’s worked alongside? Or will he hold it against him? It’s been a long time since I’ve read this section of the manga, so I honestly don’t remember what his initial reaction was like. Or even how he finds out. But I do know that he will find out. Because why have an entire season about rebuilding your life after it falls apart and lambasting war and the mindsets that go to war if you aren’t going to confront how your lead character killed hundreds of people. You know?
So yeah, all in all I think this was a good episode of Vinland Saga, but I’m incredibly biased. I love this series. I think the way Vinland Saga tackles its themes of war and violence, as well as the viability of pacifism and how this world actively works against those attempting it, is beautiful. Hopefully this season by MAPPA can do it the justice it deserves. I’m not looking for grand animation spectacle, it shouldn’t need to be as high octane as their recent works such as Jujutsu Kaisen and Chainsaw Man. Just nail the character moments, the atmosphere as the idyllic life inevitably starts to crash down around them, and I’ll be happy. That and don’t ruin Canute’s return, because we all know it’s happening.
