…just to do nothing with them whatsoever. Another apt title would be “Kickin’ the can down the road,” because this essentially captures the whole narrative thrust of this week’s episode. It dumps all these potential game-changers on the audience, and promptly ignores them. We don’t get any climax whatsoever! A plot twist is almost like a trump card. It isn’t hard to keep your audience’s attention when you’ve completely shocked them… well, this is assuming that the plot twist wasn’t predictable in the first place. So for Zetsuen no Tempest to just trot them out one by one like this, it feels wasteful — a big, boring waste of potential.
Is Hakaze really dead? Eh, we’ll talk about it later. So the bad guys are really the good guys and the Tree of Genesis will doom us all? Eh, we’ll talk about it later. Aika and Mahiro weren’t blood-related after all, and something could’ve/might’ve happened between them? Eh, we’ll talk about it later. Yoshino betrays Mahiro? He did, but the latter “saves” the former from his “captors,” so we quickly return to the status quo by the end of the episode, i.e. more walking. C’mon, how is this good storytelling? On the contrary, this is utterly amateurish, if you ask me.
Plot summary: After retrieving the special talisman from Junichiro, another fruit appears nearby. Our heroes make an escape into the woods, but are soon attacked by Evangeline’s people. Yoshino initially appears to have been kidnapped, but we later find out that he’s struck a deal with the government. In the end, Mahiro “saves” Yoshino and they continue on their journey to avenge Aika and save the world.
Notes:
• Allowing Hakaze to die on an island was supposedly the only way to kill her without defying the world’s reason… or something. I get the feeling that this is supposed to be more meaningful than it’s coming across, but for the life of me, I can’t understand how.
• Junichiro could identify Hakaze’s skeleton because she apparently had a “nicely shaped head.” Was that supposed to be humor? Har har, then. Anyway, he continues to say that although his identification of her bones was based on instincts alone, he just knew. Y’know, with reason being so important and all, why not just check her dental records?
• Instead, we get to see Junichiro creepily stroke her skull over and over. Somehow, Hakaze’s tsundere for this guy.
• I wonder if the shot of a talisman lodged in-between Hakaze’s breasts is lifted straight from the source material, or instead, something Bones added to spice things up a show full of walking.
• Mahiro says, “And we have proof that she’s alive.” What proof? You’d think a person who’s seen and used magic firsthand wouldn’t automatically believe Hakaze’s alive just because he can talk to her.
• Nevertheless, ghosts do not exist because they do not fit within the world’s logic. Sure, I can buy that. I don’t really see a reason to think Hakaze isn’t actually dead though. If Junichiro’s portrayal was even remotely shady, there’d be reasons to doubt his word, but he seems to be a pretty straightforwardly honest character. As such, the debate over Hakaze’s death seems like an exercise in futility. Still, I want to see how they can claim that ghosts can’t exist, but somehow, her spirit does. Lemme take a stab in the dark… since she can’t die or something, her consciousness is perpetually stuck in time in order for her death not to violate the world’s logic! Am I right?
• Plot twists one after the other! It’s the Tree of Genesis that we should be worried about! Except I pretty much saw this coming. It’s as if M. Night Shyamalan wrote the story, but the dialogue isn’t anywhere near as good.
• The bus breaks down and our heroes are forced to walk. Heh.
• I… I don’t even want to try parsing the show’s “logic” anymore: “If the Tree of Genesis absorbs the whole weapon, destroying it, wouldn’t that reduce conflict? Isn’t that a step toward preserving the world’s equilibrium?”
• Another twist! Evangeline and Yoshino are in cahoots! What did he get in return for his services though? I couldn’t really tell. Whatever he got just look like canisters of some sort.
• Can your body handle another twist? No? Well, tough, ’cause here’s another one: Aika and Mahiro aren’t blood related. Aw snap, the incestuous vibes between them is now downgraded to slightly incestuous.
• The same complaint I had at the start of the season continues to persist even now. Yes, the general endgame seems to be saving the world, but the story appears to be lacking a unifying theme besides this vague pontificating about the world’s logic/reason/whatever. I feel as though I’m just watching a series of events rather than actually taking in a story with a cohesive point to make. I’m afraid I’m having some trouble articulating my exact thoughts, however, so what I’ve just said may not make much sense to some of you.
To put it another way… I don’t know… it’s just a lack of oomph, I guess. For one thing, there doesn’t seem to be any tension. When I get into a story I enjoy, there’s that palpable need to know what happens next. It’s the irrational thought that if you don’t turn the page fast enough, the heroes won’t make it in time to do whatever it is that they need to do! I don’t get the same feeling from Zetsuen no Tempest. Each episode doesn’t leave me yearning for the next. Sure, I know that the world’s at stake, but when is it not? Rather, what are our characters really fighting for?
There seems to be this emotional gap between our characters’ actions and their supposed goals. We’re told that Mahiro wants revenge, but I don’t feel his passion. As for the whole “The time is out of joint” dealio, it just doesn’t suffice. It’s too esoteric. Part of the problem is that the show continues to play its cards close to the chest, so we don’t get to find out, say, Yoshino’s true motives because that can is being perpetually kicked down the road. To a certain point, one can tolerate this. After six episodes, however, what exactly are we still waiting for?
I saw the weapon absorption thing as potential sophistry – either Hakaze is fooling the main duo, thus strengthening the “Genesis tree is evil tree” statement, or the authors are trying to get us to think that so they can reverse-plottwist.
My exasperation is more that there are so many counterarguments to the idea that you can simply get rid of weapons to ensure peace. It just seems overly lacking of nuance.
My theory Re: Hakaze is that they are communicating between different time periods. Yoshino and Mahiro are a few months ahead of Hakaze or something like that, especially considering how long it would actually take for a message in a bottle to reach them. The doll is actually transmitting between time periods.
Also, oh great, more faux-incest, because we don’t see enough of that. It’s getting to the point where I’d be happy to see a show have the balls to have incestuous overtones without undercutting itself, just because it would feel less cheap.
I agree it’s all feeling pretty amateurish, but I have to admit, I’m still intrigued. I want to know the answers to this mystery, and that’s enough to sustain me at the moment, especially since I’m pretty sure this is a 1 cour show. Natsuyuki relied a lot on flashbacks too, but it had the writing chops and character depth to pull it off. Mahiro are Yoshino remain largely enigmas, and Aika is pretty much 100% enigma, in fact, her character gets less comprehensible every episode.
You’re probably right. On a somewhat related note, I’m always leery of stories involving any sort of time travel even if, in this case, only information is being sent through time. Paradoxes out the ears.
Be careful what you wish for.
At this point, she’s more of a Macguffin than an actual character.
Yeah, agreed regarding the time travel thing. This feels like the sort of story that would happily tokenly shove that in there, too. Although it would mean that Hakaze is most probably going to die, and I’m not sure this show has the balls for that. They could always pull some shit about their actions changing the past or something, though, I guess.
Hahaha, I almost qualified that with “and nobody should feel that way” when I wrote that.
I hear the manga is still ongoing. With her being one of the main characters, I doubt she’s died off there. Plus, adaptations usually lack the cojones to make significant changes to any given plot. As such, I just can’t see her being dead in any real sense of the word. Yeah, her skeleton is right there in front of us, but they’ll find a way for her to come back to life using
magicreason! Anime rarely ever kills off a major character.Samon said that he kept Hakaze alive just in case the summoning of the Tree of Exodus goes awry. So it’s pretty much guaranteed that there is a way to retrieve her, wherever she is.
My current theory is that either the skeleton was Aika’s or the skeleton is actually Hakaze’s but Hakaze’s consciousness has been transfered into Aika’s body. There must be a reason why a Kusaribe magician killed Aika.
I admit this show has a strange sense of humor with Jun and the skull. At least, the main characters reacted to the comment instead of just agreeing mages are just weird in general.
@ Hakaze’s death? It’s similar to how it was explained in the manga. I read a summary about that detail when I was looking for some info. I wonder if they have enough time to explain all the odd facts around their idea of “logic.”
@Aika/Mahiro: Huh, their relationship was always odd, but now I’m confused. I wonder why Aiki agreed to date Yoshino in the first place.
@Yoshino: Well, we were warned that he was deceitful in the beginning, but I didn’t think he’d create plan that’d injure his friend in the process.
Um, about the timeline I guess it’s been a few days/weeks since they left their hometown? I wonder if does that mean Yoshino’s family/friends are all turned to metal or they are somewhere else? I always find it amusing when the characters go on a quest and their family just … disappears.
That’s crazy. How have they managed to eat? Where do they sleep? Do they always find abandoned houses to crash?
Adventurers don’t need to ask for permission to borrow food/shelter maybe. Now I have this odd impression half of Japan is full of empty “quarantined” towns orz
Your “Eh, we’ll talk about it later” paragraph made me wonder if it’s on purpose or not. Because the dropping of topics has been mentioned by my teacher a lot while we were reading Hamlet.